Playtest 1

Goal:

My goal for this playtest is to find out the understandability and ease of use for the game in its current state.

Instructions: 

Objective:
Defeat the boss before your deck health reaches zero. Deck health is lost when:

• A card is killed (-1 deck health).

• The boss attacks an empty placement spot (damage dealt to deck health).

Turn Phases:

1. Discard Phase – Choose 1-3 cards from your hand to discard.

2. Draw Phase – Pick up an active card from a placement spot or draw from your deck until you have 10 cards. You may need to press the draw button again to proceed. This is the only time you may pick up active cards and return them to your hand, so think about what cards you might want to remove from battle.

3. Placement Phase – Place cards from your hand onto empty placement spots by selecting a card and clicking the desired spot. You may continue placing cards until all spots are filled. Click the end turn button when you are done.

4. Attack Phase – Your active cards attack first, followed by the boss.

5. Repeat – After the boss attacks, the discard phase begins again.

Major Arcana & Energy:

• Major Arcana require energy to play and have higher stats, but future iterations will introduce unique abilities. Hover over a Major Arcana card to see its energy cost.

• Energy Generation – Minor Arcana generate energy at the end of your turn based on their suit and pip value (e.g., Five of Wands = 5 Wand Energy, Ace of Cups = 1 Cup Energy). Major Arcana do not generate energy.

Card Stats:

• Each card displays its health (left number) and attack (right number). This format may change in future updates for clarity.

Bug Reporting:

• Please feel free to comment on any bugs you come across.

• There is currently not any state implemented for winning/losing the game. The game may either crash or become softlocked. This is not really a bug, it just isn’t implemented yet. Please quit the game when this happens.

Playtest Report:

My playtest did help me test the understandability and ease of use of my game. I discovered that there are certain aspects that could be made clearer, and that certain parts of the instructions could be rephrased. Obviously, the actual 'tutorial' is not implemented in the prototype, so I wanted to test the written instructions as a sort of draft. I could have made that clearer in the playtest, and also made it clearer that the instructions were intended to be something that you can go back and review as you play. I think having a button on-screen that the player could click to view the instructions would have cleared up some of this confusion, but I honestly didn't think of that until the playtest. So, that is definitely something I will implement before my next playtest. I think that the answer to my playest question varied with specific elements. Some mechanics were easier to understand than others.

My playtester enjoyed the strategy aspect of the game, but also did comment on certain things that took away from the strategy aspect. These aspects were mostly things that just weren't implemented fully yet since this prototype focused more on understandability and ease of use, but they will still be good things to keep in mind for future builds. They did also enjoy the idea of the cards being characters in a way, which was good to hear because that is something I plan on exploring in the future.

I was a little bit surprised by a few things in the playtest. There were a few mechanics or elements that I had thought I explained well, but there was still some confusion. I also was a little surprised because I think the way my play-tester reacts to confusion is different than the way I do. When I play games, if there is a mechanic or instruction that I'm confused about, I usually just try to problem solve by continuing on and seeing if it makes more sense as I play. However, my playtester seemed hesitant to try doing anything until they fully cleared up any confusion. I feel like I tend to learn games as I play and experiment with them, so I was developing with this sort of problem-solving playstyle in mind. But, this playtest has made me realize that I should be designing with all playstyles in mind.