Board Game Design – I Hate Solo Playtesting

I hate playtesting. This would seem to be a problem for a budding board game designer, so let me elaborate. I don’t hate being a playtester, I enjoyed a recent visit to a Playtest UK meet up (need to make it to more of those…) and hopefully helped a few designers with their games. Likewise I’ve been ok in the past playtesting my design with friends. No, what I hate is solo playtesting.

 

Going Solo

Anybody who is into design has “The Notebook”. The place we go to splurge new game ideas before they are lost to the ether and our incoherent memories. Sometimes, when an idea really catches our imagination we expand on it! I give it it’s own notebook and start filling out ideas. Honestly, I could probably spend forever on this stage but you have to bite the bullet and figure out a prototype so you can test it. This is where the ‘fun’ starts.

You see, I could force some people to playtest it with me. I’m sure I’d get some valuable feedback but if I’ve never played it, I don’t know whether it will be even remotely playable! That’s not fair on my playtesters! It’s a waste of their time and most likely a waste of mine as well, not to mention making them less likely to try it again next time. No, the responsible thing to do is to solo playtest your design first.

Why you no like?

I’ve not often played even published board games solo, although I recently got hold of a copy of Friday for review, and you can read my review of Sans Allies here, but I still feel a little odd fiddling with my cardboard alone. But this is infinitely weirder when you are supposed to be playtesting a multi-player game! How are you supposed to keep track of multiple players’ stuff at once without just doing the same thing? Have you ever tried playing yourself at chess? It’s awkward as hell too, stretching across the table constantly to manipulate other bits. Urgh!

It takes much longer as well. You are thinking about your turns, and other players’ turns, as well as the design itself. To make matters worse, the game I’ve most recently been testing has an element of simultaneous play… which is obviously impossible in a solo playtest. So the entire process feels clunky and takes forever. Gagh!

Finally there is the painful realisation that stuff doesn’t work as I want! That’s just dispiriting! Though thank goodness I discovered that now and not with people generously committing their time to help me.

So… screw you solo testing?

Absolutely NOT! No, you see no matter how awkward it was, how frustratingly slow and dispiriting, I got so much out of even my first stumbling attempts. In going through my thoughts after the playtest I got 2 full pages of notes and ideas to follow up on! That’s fantastic! I got to see that my initial ideas at a core mechanic were fun and interesting (after the third attempt ;p). I can see progress! Plus I’m learning about the process already:

 

Lessons and Tips for Solo Playtesting

 

• Focus on a core mechanic – rather than trying to explore a fully developed game on your own, it is much easier (and more useful) to test those core mechanics. Are they fun? Are they giving you interesting decisions? This is particularly useful at the very early stages of design, when you’re most likely to be doing solo tests.
• Forget the opponents – Sometimes it’s just easier and faster to just forget what your “opponents” are doing. The game I was testing recently had a drafting element, so instead of selecting their cards I just randomly ditched some as if they had chosen them. I didn’t care about point values or comparing between players so I could just focus on my decisions for my own benefit. I’ll worry about player interaction later.
• Don’t play a full game – If each turn or round is taking way longer than you expect, definitely don’t play a full game! You’ll be there all night and probably not learn much more than from just playing one or two rounds. I played a single round of drafting. In part because I could already identify difficulties my current mechanisms would create for later rounds, and because it let me test out something else straight away.
• Try out new things as they occur to you – one rule not quite working out how you like it? Change it on the fly and see what happens. Make sure you take notes as you do so though, a game designers notebook (or google doc or whatever) is their best friend! It’s much easier doing this on your own than in front of a group of judgemental playtesters!

So do I really hate solo playtesting? Well in terms of my discomfort, yes! In terms of it’s value, no! So I need to work on overcoming that discomfort. In my opinion the best way to get over discomfort is to face it head on! Do it and keep doing it until it no longer feels uncomfortable. Like exercising or dieting! More importantly, setting clear goals and planning my playtest will help. If I know going in how I want to run it and what I want to look for, then maybe it will help things run more smoothly. So, let’s set this ‘in stone’ shall we?

 

August Challenge

Playtest, playtest, playtest! I’m going to challenge myself to solo playtest one of my designs at least once every week this month. That sounds like it should be pretty simple but each playtest will require planning, analysis, some iteration in the design, not to mention the time for the actual playtest, so this could be more of a challenge than it first appears! Keep an eye out on my Twitter for regular updates and check back in a month to see how I got on…!

 

Further Reading

Some useful links on the subject of solo playtesting. Just click to view!

Game design concepts blog on solo playtesting

Formal Ferret Games blog on solo playtesting

 

Do you have any advice for running solo playtests of games? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!