I did it! I ran an actual playtest of Doomed Colony with actual playtesters and it actually wasn’t terrible. Oh, it wasn’t great. It wasn’t even particularly good. But it was playable, and occasionally even fun.
For testers, I had myself, my daughter, and two of the producers of the new Games in Five web series, with whom I’ve been gaming for years. (They insisted on taking video of the proceedings. Something about “documentary” or “blackmail” or something. I wasn’t really paying attention.)
Without further ado, here are my biggest take-aways from the playtest:
- The game took about 90 minutes to play, which was shorter than I expected, but longer than I’d like. I think an hour is the sweet spot for this game, so I’ll be eyeballing stuff to trim down.
- The “hidden role” aspect of the game was pretty useless. When there are four players moving colonists onto four rockets, it’s quickly evident who owns which rocket. I’ll be cutting that aspect of the game.
- The game ended smoothly, with the deck running out at the same time as the colonists.
- It’s fun to scan a colonist, then immediately move it with a card. Need to add more of that.
- The memory element with all the face-down colonists works, but it’s a little more mental strain than I like; it’s about 60% frustration to 40% feeling smart because you remembered the thing. I’ve got a couple suggestions to help flip those percentages, including changing the rules so that all “revealed” colonists remain face-up.
- I think we need at least one more Security colonist, and maybe one less Terrorist per color. I was hoping they’d blow up maybe one rocket, but the suicidal bombers ended up taking out two easily.
Overall, I’d call the game a success. It’s by no means ready for prime time, but the wheels stayed on long enough for us to play it all the way through, and no one hated it, so I think I’m ready to start iterating on this design.
