44 Playtest

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

I got the chance to playtest 44 last night via Skype with Matt Snyder and Matt Wilson.

For those that don't know, 44 was a game concept of mine that I gave to Matt Snyder as part of his "Game For Hire" contest. My idea happened to win, so Matt is now writing and publishing the game based on the idea seed. It's been fun to watch it develop.

Matt recorded our playtest session. You can download the MP3 file here:

[44 Playtest recording] (76MB)

The session was a lot of fun, which is no surprise given my fellow players. But more than that, I think the system is really delivering what Matt is going for, and also what I hoped when I created the idea in the first place. I think it was also a productive playtest in that we were able to play the game and also comment on the game system at the same time. We hammered out a couple of rules tweaks that worked out pretty well.

Anyway, I'm just all buzzed and feeling positive after this game. It feels good to be part of a design community and hobby where this kind of thing goes on. I'm lucky to be around to enjoy it.

If you listen to the playtest recording, I'd love to hear what you think of our methods. How do you playtest? Do you use more or less structure? Did we do anything that you think worked especially well? Or did we do anything that you think could have been better, in terms of testing the game? All comments welcome.

posted by John Harper at 11:14 PM