First Public Playtest

Last night was the first time that I've taught Affinity to anyone outside of my friends.  I found a group through Meetup.com that meets once a month of aspiring designers and people willing to playtest games in their prototype form and offer constructive feedback.  I got a chance to teach Affinity to 3 other people over the course of two games where I watched people play the game and instructed them along the way.  The reception of the game was very positive, they felt it was very balanced, well-designed, and had a desire to play again.  There were only two negative comments that I recieved, which I'll get to in a bit.

The first thing I realized was holy cow am I rusty at teaching games.  The second run through I was much, much better, but the first time I was jumping all over the place and didn't have a dynamic flow for teaching the game to players who were completely unfamiliar with the mechanics.  Teaching the game to new players is not something that is mentioned much, if at all, by designers and I quickly realized how important this process is.  It's commonly said that first impressions are everything, and I think that is going to hold true for teaching a new game to someone as well.  You'll occasionally hear reviews for games along the lines of "You need a few plays to really understand what's going on" and I now understand how important it is to mitigate that feeling if at all possible.

After each game we played, which took about an hour to teach and play a full game, we did some brainstorming as to what would help a new player approach the game.

• Problem: Remembering the order of the phases, remembering what the keywords on the cards do.
• Solution: Cheat Sheets

This was a suggestion that I completely agree with.  I've played collectible card games for 15 years and these have been in nearly every game I've ever demoed or played.  I overlooked creating one of these before this playtest session, but I will certainly have these prepared for the next one.

• Problem: Not realizing the different nuances of the factions.
• Solution: Faction Blurbs

This was something that game up in the second game because one of the factions is a bit combo-oriented and not necessarily obvious how to play them to their fullest potential at first glance.  I think this can be alleviated by having a few sentences about each factions that explains in a general sense what their strengths and weaknesses are.

• Problem: When playing the game, you need to draft a deck for yourself to play before knowing what the cards do.
• Solution: Splitting the Demo into two parts

This is the biggest thing that I took away from this playtest session.  There are really two parts that you have to learn in Affinity one being the drafting/deckbuilding mechanics and the other being the mechanics in playnig the cards against one another.  Unlike similar games, you're not just buying cards that allow you to draw/buy more cards.  You're buying cards to combat your opponent, and those interactions need to be learned and understood to help you decide what you want to draft in your deck.  The problem arises in the actual game that to play cards to combat your opponent, you need to draft them to build your deck before knowing what they actually do.  In an attempt to solve this, I'm going to work on a setup of cards that can be used to quickly demo the interactions of the cards and display the game mechanics for a few turns which can hopefully be done in 3-5 minutes and then stop that "demo" to start the full game with the drafting mechanics.


All in all, I think the night was very productive and I plan to attend each session if possible.  Outside of teaching and playing the game, I also did a little bit of networking with another designer who let me know of another design group that gets together twice a month that I should be getting an invite to.  Also one of the perople I taught the game to has an artist that they'd like me to get in touch with and a publisher that is located a few hours from where I live that they are in contact with.  Not sure what the future holds, but I like having some potential prospects.