Playtesting Makes Perfect (Donisi)

After a bit of a break from Donisi, the last few weeks have seen Aaron and I getting back to the grindstone. Aaron is doing his part, working on card and character art (see one pictured here) as well as a teaser trailer that will be coming out soon (keep your eyes open for that!). My main job has been the same as it has been for most of the last few months: playtest, playtest, and playtest. Here's a little rundown of my process lately.

Play through a mission with only one character. See how it feels. Too hard? Too easy? Do certain parts of the mission seem too hard or too easy? If something feels off, I'll make an adjustment. The adjustments I go to first are (1) number of enemies spawned and (2) location of spawn points. I'm not going to be changing the maps much at this point and the cards are pretty set, so this is the best place to do the tweaking. With this current mission, I actually tried completely changing the types of enemies that you'd face. It was a fail, so I went back to my original plan and tweaked the story instead.

If that seems good, I try playing two characters at once to see if things feel as good as they did with only one. I go through the same process - if it doesn't feel right, I make some adjustments. Currently I've done about 12 or so playthroughs of the current mission and it's feeling pretty close. I'm thinking of moving a spawn point or two a little bit and maybe having one of the spawn increases happened a turn earlier.

You might be asking yourself, "Does playing the same mission 12 times in a row get boring?" Yes, yes it can. This current mission has an interesting twist to it, however, and so I've been having a lot of fun trying to find the best strategy to beat it. My last play today was my best one - something I need to take into consideration when thinking about balancing because most people won't play a mission as often as I do and have the time to develop such a precise strategy.

The most satisfying thing about playtesting is when I get lost in the game and it feels new again. Even though I've played this game about a hundred times now, it's a good feeling whens something works out perfectly. I had a moment like that today.

Now you see me...

...now you don't.

There are few things better than roasting a line of enemies with lightning! This was actually the turning point in the mission (if Aaron were here he would call it the "TSN Turning Point," but I don't watch enough sports to use it) as this gave me some space to regroup and plan for the final few turns.

I'll be honest - I'm getting impatient with this game. I really, really, want to share it with all of you and have you bask in the glory and wonder if our hard work! Well, at least you'd better like it! I know that all of this hard work is important, though, because I don't want you getting past the first few missions and then feeling like the game drops off. Each and every mission should feel different and exciting and challenging! That's my commitment to you. I should play this game so much that I hate it and you love it, ha!