Playtest 2

Goal:

My goal for this playtest is to see if the changes I've made have improved the game's understandability and ease of use. I would also like to gain some insight into how the player strategizes, as well as more general feedback on what aspects of the game are enjoyable.

Instructions: 

Controls:

E: toggle examine mode

ESC: Quit

Tab: Toggle 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 damages an empty placement spot .

Card Stats:

Each card displays its health (left number) and attack (right number). Sometimes , certain abilities may affect a card's health or attack. Hovering over a card while in examine mode will display any applied effects.

Examine Mode:

Hovering over a card while in examine will display more detailed information about that card. Try it out!

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 can return active cards to your hand and free placement slots, so plan carefully.

3. Placement Phase

• Place cards from your hand onto empty placement spots by selecting a card and clicking the desired spot.

• Continue placing cards until all spots are filled.

• Click the "End Turn" button when done.

4. Attack Phase

• Your active cards will act from left to right. Then the boss will attack.

5. Repeat

• After the boss attacks, the discard phase begins again.

Card Types & Energy:

Major Arcana:

• • Have unique abilities, hover over Major arcana in examine mode to read its' abilities description

  • Require energy to play, hover over a Major Arcana card to see its energy cost.

  • Do not generate energy

  • Are represented by the crown symbol, this symbol will be white when you lack the energy required to play the card and gold when you meet the energy requirements

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).

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:

I definitely gained some valuable information and feedback from this playtest. Overall, I would say that the changes I've made HAVE improved the game's understandability and ease of use. When comparing this playtest to the previous one, the tester had a much more comprehensive understanding of the game just from the tweaks in the instructions. The UI changes also were able to guide the tester through gameplay much more efficiently. I still have more changes and tweaks to make, but at this point the issue has more to do with UX. The instructions and guides are at a good place now where the game can be more easily understood, I just also could restructure how/when the user is introduced to these elements to lessen the game's 'buy in'.

I was a little surprised by the tester's feedback on the boss itself. I didn't disagree with any of their feedback, and a lot of it was actually things that I had already been wondering about myself. What surprised me was that I just didn't really expect to hear much feedback about the boss at all. Right now, it's a very limited implementation of a boss that just really exists for testing purposes. But hearing so much feedback about the boss has made me think that I should take the boss battles further and have them be a more core element of my game's development. I think creating interesting boss battles could potentially be the 'fun' for this game, so this playtest helped me realize that. My player also seemed to enjoy the energy generation and the main abilities of the Major Arcana card, which is great news since that is essentially the core of the entire game.