Internal Playtest 2

Internal Playtest 2 took place on November 08, 2023, and served as a quality assurance playtest for Iteration 1.2, which was also developed within the same day. It built upon feedbacks from In-class Playtest #1 regarding Iteration 1.1.

## Objective

We have made changes to the game overall - based on the feedback from the class playtest, and added two new Heroes to the previous five.

Changes to check and balance:

* fire fox rework, we have added to its skill the ability to fully heal itself after killing an enemy Hero
* snow bunny rework, we have extended the snow bunny’s ability and allow it to place the frozen marker in two tile range after moving two tiles
* added soul squirrel, whose special ability was connecting two Heroes on the board, until cast again those two heroes would share forced movement, damage sustained, etc.
* added crane, whose special ability was to get to other Hero in 5 tiles, damage them for 5 point and then switch places with them
* we have decreased the health pool of the water dog, as well as its initiative
* changed how the flag are spawned, only after someone starts their turn with the hero on the flag tile they score the points and reveal new flag
* the team initiative would change every time someone’s Hero died, making the turn order change from moment to moment
* added friendly fire
* out of bounds means death to the character (black tiles are now auto death)

The playtest was performed with four people from our design group and it lasted 50 minutes. All players had teams consisting of three Heroes.

Team I (Rajat): Monkey, Fox, Squirrel

Team II (Stan): Fox, Squirrel, Crane

Team III (Helsing): Dog, Bunny, Crane

Team IV (Igor): Fox, Crane, Panda

## Process

### Notes from the playtest

* The flag has spawned right in front of Rajat’s heroes (start)

* When is the flag spawned? Are the two decks independent from each other?

* Killing with soul squirrel - who gets the points - the person who killed gets both points

* Squirrel seems like a big advantage in combat

* Initiative is kinda all over the place

* Players now can go twice before the other players and vice versa

* Global radius for squirrel is too much power for it

* Tokens to signify the finished turn

* Bigger radius for scoring the points

* We will end the playtest after the first pair of flags was captured

* First flag was scored at the end of the fourth round

* Score point spawned on the wall - inaccessible

* When does the ice storm affect heroes

* Squirrel is too powerful

### Gameplay Results

Team I (Rajat): 5 points

Team II (Stan): 7 points

Team III (Helsing): 1 points

Team IV (Igor): 4 points

## Results & Analysis

* Seeing how broken the Team initiative proved to be in this playtest and how complicated to keep track we will go back and reintroduce the idea of Rounds and will only change the descriptions of the skills to be dependent on the player's respective turns.

* We will keep the flag spawning the same as in the second playtest - we will increase the amount of flags, one major for five points and as many minor flags as players minus one.

* The squirrel hero proved to be too powerful and unlimited. We have changed its range to the heaven that they occupy - they can only bind Heroes that occupy the same Heaven as them. Additionally the binding will only last until the first damage sustained by one of the characters and will only transfer damage and nothing else.

* The crane proved to be really balanced and we did not change a thing about it.

* We have decreased the amount of places the flags can be spawned and added the Ultimate Flag - the last one which will give the player occupying it 10 points and will be the last flag that can be scored. It will always occupy the same - central - tile (making it an accessible place).

* We have dropped the idea of black tiles being instant deaths and come back to the idea of them just being inaccessible.

* The hero rework was slightly changed - fire fox will heal only 2 damage every kill, dog has only slightly less hp and initiative than before and bunny works well and will be immune to its own skill (every bunny will be immune to ice storm token).