The first round of playtesting went well.
A few issues came to light:
Wormholes
Due to the lack of wormholes on branching timelines, there was an imbalance of risk between taking a path containing a wormhole and one containing a loop.
The solution was to add extra wormholes to the branching timelines in order to force the player to make a choice between the two paths (see image above).
The spacing between the wormholes was also adjusted in order to avoid the possibility of skipping both wormholes on the first roll, thus adding an extra element of chance.
Direction
Although it was possible to move either forwards or backwards, I found both myself and my fellow playtesters completely forgetting about this game mechanic until we reached the end of the board.
The mechanic was initially intended to allow for more strategic gameplay, however it only worked to make people more cautious at the end of the game resulting in the gameplay becoming less exciting.
I initially intended to correct this by allowing players to only move forward once they reached the original timeline (see image above), although it may also be worth removing the mechanic altogether; with the exception of a few special instances which I will discuss in my next blog post.
I will be testing both versions of the mechanic in my next playtest.
Scale
While the gameboard I designed worked well for the first few playthroughs, it is evident that it will need to be larger in order to incorporate the additional game mechanics I wish to add in the next stage of development.
I will be expanding on the design of the board; moving from A4 to A3 and adding in extra timelines in order to incorporate additional elements for the next playtest.
For now, I have included the gameboard in it’s current form bellow.
K00253257 - College Blog 