A La Kart playtests - UnPub Mini at Atomic Empire


The Game Designers of Carolina held a great UnPub Mini event at Atomic Empire last Saturday. This is the third year for an UnPub Mini at Atomic Empire, the second organized by GDoC, and it's grown each year. We had fifteen designers with full tables for nearly the entire event.

(Photo Source: Matt Wolfe)

My plan for playtesting A La Kart was to run two concurrent two-player demos of Fish vs. Chips at the AutoBun and Sugar vs. Spice at the Sundae Speedway. I made significant edits to Fish's deck after March's extensive outside playtesting revealed how overpowered it was.



I made some minor tweaks to the other decks as well, and kept track of win rates for each deck over the whole day. Sugar and Spice went back and forth a lot over the day, with minimal repeated final scores. That says to me a lot is riding on each player's decision and a little bit of luck, so I feel pretty good about where they stand now. Here is my handwritten record.


I found some odd results at first in Fish vs. Chips. The first two games had the exact same scores. Like, exactly. I made some edits over the course of the day to hopefully break that pattern and luckily I was able to get them closer to parity, but Fish still didn't win most of the time. Fish vs. Chips had some odd patterns where 21 point and 25 point final scores appeared three times each. 11 appeared twice as well. Despite tweaking the decks towards the end of the day, that pattern persisted, which tells me a lot of this comes from how the Autobun course scores.

I also compiled a few comments from the anonymous feedback forms:

  • Different characters was fun. It was cool that there were different themed race-tracks also, if I got into the game it\'s the kind of thing I would buy the extra tracks for.
  • More clear instructions
  • It didn't feel terribly strategic, maybe because there were so few cards & they were all pretty similar. Felt a little go-fishy in that sense. I had a few cards at a time & it was always really obvious which one to play. (high or low, or middle if I didn't care). Partially could be because of the "beeping" to move faster... maybe if there was more time to think, I would have noticed some tricks that I missed? I didn't feel like the cards for burying, scraping, etc. really had time to matter. Time in the sense of, there aren't that many turns in a game. I'm not sure how to make it feel more strategic to me. Also: take my feedback with a grain of salt, I spend way too much time playing abstract strategy, so maybe my expectations are tainted.
  • It was a really cute theme & concept. Would definitely feel comfortable playing with my 30yr old friends, or with my daughter in a few years when she\'s old enough to play it. The game is coming along great & seems like it\'s really close to completion :) Great job!
  • As suger, playing against spice, felt there were too few opportunities to buff steering, thus lowering my chances of winning desired card. 
  • Theme is fun and unique, cards were well designed with good art and keywords for easy learning. 
  • Could be a bit more tweaking with making the asymmetrical decks more equal. The defensive decks seem to have more of a learning curve. 
  • It\'s quick, it\'s not \"pay to win\" (MtG), it\'s strategy based and still randomly generated. Each game is a new course. 
  • Very fun! Might be nice to add a few more action cards to sugar\'s deck to balance it out a little bit more, I felt like almost every card almost was an engine card aside from maybe two or three.
  • Maybe make the decks slightly larger, so there are more choices left at the end, but at the same time the limit adds some strategy.
  • Knowing the numbers of the remaining cards makes what choices you opponent predictable, but the effects can add surprise 
  • Create a system to display each players current scoreboard, it will lend to strategy. I really like that the art in the game features non-sexualized images of women. 
  • Love the artwork associated, love the food puns. game play was fairly balanced, second game would be better for both players so that you know all of your cards for aviable.
  •  Needs a LOT of racer for replay ability sake. Different tracks only matter so much.
  •  Put out one course at a time instead of all three at once
  • The theme is a blast and the way each deck plays very differently is super cool        
Overall verdict is that folks love the theme, but the decks need more variety and the game needs to be easier to learn. Doing both is going to be tricky.

I must be getting older because I used to be able to run demos non-stop for a full eight-hour-day. I had to tap out two hours early because I was just spent. Apologies to anyone I missed that evening! It was a great, productive event and I even got to squeeze in one test of Trickster: Fantasy before I left. It was a lot of fun!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results that ar
Read more

The Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge

Image
UPDATE: The submission period has closed and here are the entries. If you're an entrant, continue sending pics or vids of people playing your game. The first step to a game lasting a thousand years is for people to play it today. UPDATE 2: And here's the winner! To support games designed for longevity – that can be learned, played and shared for hundreds of years – we offer this challenge to any game designers, artists and imaginative people who also share this desire. Challenge Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a "new classic," like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years. Prize $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012. Entry Deadline Entries must be submitted before midnight July August 31st, 2011. ( Update ) Entry Guidelines Enter by posting a comment below with a link
Read more