Week 07 - *Playtesting*

This week, we've begun to work on a shedding card game based around the theme of travel. After brainstorming, our group decided to make a game about traveling through and surviving different biomes. The game currently is similar to Phase 10, where you must satisfy goals before moving to the next round, however, you move to the next round or 'biome' as soon as you've completed your tasks- the round doesn't end. It's ultimately a race to satisfy all the goals in the game with aspects of trading, crafting, stealing, etc. 

After reading about the different types of playtests in chapter 11 this week, I recalled the experience we had with our sports game and can now identify the different playtesters that gave us feedback. We had our own internal playtesting, our fellow game developer playtests,  and new player playtests. I believe all of these are important, but the one we valued the most (which led to the most actual new implementations) was the new player playtests- where people who were looking from the outside-in provided their feedback. Macklin & Sharp state that new player playtests "are best for core game and complete game playtests to help see how new players will learn and enjoy the game." Most of the rules we added to our sports game were added to make the game fun for players, and those ideas came from the feedback we got from new players. I can't wait to see the feedback we get for our card game, as I really want it to be a fun game people genuinely enjoy.