Reflecting on Feedback

By: Calvin Kammer

It’s been about a month since I last made a blog entry, and now that I have a moment to think, I’m instead going to write out what happened this last month.

It’s been a momentous last few weeks.

 

We now have a good amount of feedback from playtesters, and are adjusting our course slightly. Scriptless needed some more oomph. Only having 100 cards is limiting for a party game that is meant to be replayed many times.

 

I found that players craved more from the game, and only that the current prompts limited what scenes the players could create. Through some design changes I was able to double the value of cards that score, and drastically increased the “acting ceiling” available to players.

So far the changes have been a hit!

 

Scriptless however, may not be the best fit for our first Kickstarter. And as such we have to make a slight course correction. Since the game is practically done now, all we need to do is print and sell them as soon as possible.

 

When my escape room had it's first game completed I waited over two months before having "real" players in there. During that time I could have had more players in there giving us feedback that would make that game, and all future games to come, that much better.

 

Since Scriptless is ready, let's just launch it to the world and see what happens. If anything, it will verify to future Kickstarter campaigns that we are dedicated enough to see a project through to it's end.

 

Sure, if we launched it on KS we will learn valuable lessons, but of the two games we are currently producing I feel that Scriptless is the weaker “Kickstarter hit” that we are aiming for. Let's come out of the pen throwing punches.

Rough Draft has been met with similar feedback from all of our players. They love it.

 

The initial feedback is always about the design, players immediately comment on how they like the characters, both their style and expressions. After they look over the artwork, players tend to start to notice similarities between their cards, and the nuanced scene directions at the bottom of the card, often labled with something like “Dark Humor” or “Famous Last Words”. It’s at this point where the game is explained where players got the most excited.

 

Once players understood the end goal (of drafting a screenplay and then creating a narrative together) they would get focussed on their hand and try to figure out what kind of movie they can create!

 

You see, this is where the struggle begins. Rough Draft is a drafting game. Meaning after you choose a card, you pass your hand. For somewhat experienced board game players this wasn’t hard of a concept to get across! For new players it seems to be a challenging concept.

 

Hopefully by making a How to Play video we can get the idea out clearly and easily!

 

Through testing I found there were a few ways the game could be changed if not improved. There’s now a variant that gets you to storytelling (one of players favorite features) as soon as possible, with half the number of voting phases. Now, scoring is improved! It reflects the hidden inspiration process much better than before by streamlining who needs to count up point totals.

 

None of these changes would have happened without feedback from highly dedicated players. And for that, you all have my thanks. We’ve been able to make our first two games even more of the vision we had for them!