Internal Playtest 1

Crash test of initial conception

Internal Playtest 1 took place on November 01, 2023 and was also the very first development meeting of the team after initial idea conception. The team took the course's instructor's advise regarding creating a Minimum Viable Product and in this playtest, created a simple game loop with three core systems: the heroes, the hexagonal board, and the flag generating system.

## Objective

During the first playtest we have aimed to balance the ideas that were put into the game and crash test main mechanics we have designed. See Iteration 1.0 for initial development idea.

The game rules for this playtest:

* Each flag gives two points for holding at the end of every even round;
* Two flags are drawn every second Round;
* Flags are randomly chosen from all of the tiles on the board, except the spawn zones
* Spawn zones are furthest lines of tiles from the centre of the board in every sector
* Each player moves all of their Heroes at once
* Team Initiative is being calculated at the start of the game and makes the turn order for the whole game
* Walls obstruct range in abilities
* You can either move your Hero or perform their action

The playtest was conducted with three players. All of them made teams of three Heroes, chosen from five Heroes lists.

Team I: Snow Bunny, Wind Panda, Fire Fox

Team II: Earth Monkey, Wind Panda, Fire Fox

Team III: Water Dog, Wind Panda, Fire Fox

The playtest lasted 10 rounds - flags have changed 5 times

## Process

### **Notes from the playtest**

* Earth Wall is spammable and quite powerful.

* When you kill somebody you get a point (rule that we have added during the playtest).

* Spawning places cannot become the flag places.

* Bunny's ability is very limited >> give it range

* We need more variety of characters to change the playstyles >> encourage different playstyles, speed versus strength, crowd control vs displacement, etc.

* Change the abilities to include movement.

* All abilities have movement components and make all the characters move at all times.

* Narrative upholds that.

* Make a speed turn every turn

### **Gameplay Results**

Team I: 8 points.

Team II: 5 points.

Team III: 5 points.

## Results & Analysis

* We have transformed the idea of abilities in the game, before they were mostly static. We added movement to most of them and lift them to the level of Earth Monkey’s Wall Ability (the ability that we have felt was the most satisfying one). Adding power and meaning to all of the abilities should make the characters more distinctly important and interesting. Adding the movement element to most of the abilities we allow players to move their characters at all times. It writes the narrative of quick combat and fast paced battle royale. Moreover this change makes the game more dynamic, and since the game is based on the importance of positioning your team, we allow the players to actually enjoy planning and moving their Heroes onto vital tiles.

* We have changed the game board to limit the places that a flag can appear and we have divided the flags into two types - major and minor. Major flag can appear in the inner part of the board, and the minor flag in the middle part of the board (between the inner part and outer part). The outer part has become the spawn zone part. We have kept the six sectors. We have also limited the amount of play area on the outer part of the board to make the spawn zones more safe for the players.