Meetup Sunday 8th January 2012

After a great Dragonmeet in November and a busy December, Playtest returns for 2012.

Playtest (London) group's next meetup will be this Sunday 8th January.

We are being kindly hosted by Gamesforce at the Old Star pub,
opposite St. James' Park tube station. (See map)

Games to be playtested:

'Amongst Thieves'(WT) - 5-player card game prototype (Brett Gilbert).
'Wandering Monks' (WT) - a boardgame prototype for up to 4 players (Matt Dunstan).
'Bee Game' (WT) - a strategic dice game for up to 4 players (Mike Nudd).
'Gnome/Mexico' (WT) - a strategic tile-laying prototype for up to 4 players (Brett Gilbert).


Please feel free to contact me if you would like to playtest your prototype at this event.
(contact'at'playtest.co.uk: please replace 'at' with the appropriate symbol).

BoardgameGuru to sponsor Playtest @ Dragonmeet

We are proud to announce that www.boardgameguru.co.uk will be sponsoring the Playtest @ Dragonmeet prize draw.


Sit down and play a game at the Playtest stand and you will be automatically entered into a prize draw to win a £20 gift voucher to use at the BoardGame Guru website. 
Anyone who brings a prototype to play will be entered as well.


If you have a prototype that you would like to bring please contact Rob Harris at contact@playtest.co.uk


Details at www.dragonmeet.co.uk


Thanks Paul for your support.


Look forward to seeing you on Saturday.


(Please note that there is some transport disruption in London over the weekend, so plan your journey carefully).

Playtest @ Dragonmeet 2011

Playtest @ Dragonmeet will return to London on Saturday November 26th 2011. 
Please check the www.dragonmeet.co.uk website for more details.


This will be a public playtesting event for card and board games prototypes. If you are a games designer this is a perfect opportunity to play your game with the great gaming public and receive more feedback in a day than you usually would in a month.


If you have a prototype that you would like to bring please contact Rob Harris at contact@playtest.co.uk


Or come along if you like playing games and would like to give constructive feedback.


Both designers and playtesters will be entered into a prize draw to win games vouchers. (More details to follow).


Dragonmeet is London's Gaming Convention, held at Kensington Town Hall every year. There will be plenty of events, special guests, traders and a bring-and-buy stall.

Meetup 24th July 2011

Playtest (London) group's next meetup will be this Sunday 24th July.

We are being hosted by London on Board at the Old Star pub,
opposite St. James' Park tube station. (See map)

Games to be playtested: (TBC)


Please feel free to contact me if you would like to playtest your prototype at this event.
(contact'at'playtest.co.uk: please replace 'at' with the appropriate symbol).

BoardGameGuru sponsors Playtest prize draw

We are proud to announce that BoardGameGuru will be sponsoring the Playtest prize draw at the UK Games Expo 2011 next weekend.

The winner will receive a gift voucher for £30 to spend at www.boardgameguru.co.uk on their wide range of board and card games and accessories. 

Paul, the owner will be known to many of you already as the organiser of the London on Board meetup and due to the friendly and knowledgeable service his company provides.

Every attendee who playtests a game at the Playtest stand will be entered into the prize draw along with every games designer that brings their prototype. 
The winner will be drawn at the Expo on Sunday 5th June.

Free Download: Designer's tracking form pdf

Due to the success of the Playtester's Feedback Form here is the second addition to the Playtest files section. It is a Designer’s Tracking Form to be used in conjunction with the Playtester's Form. 

The form is available as a .pdf and is designed to track a playtest as it happens. There are boxes for notes and logging details as well as a useful scale for noting how engaged players are during different periods of  play. This form is used at our Playtest meetups and together with the Playtester’s form creates a dynamic workflow for recording feedback. Please feel free to download the form and use it for your own playtesting as long as you always credit www.playtest.co.uk and don't use it for paid playtesting.

Most of all have fun with it and improve your games.

Designer's Tracking Form is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Fashion @ UK Games Expo

Just a quick shout out to the www.playtest.co.uk team that will be running the playtesting stand at the UK Games Expo on Saturday-Sunday 4th/5th June.
There will be three of us: Brian, Oliver and Rob.

We will be wearing these cool black t-shirts. So feel free to come up and say hello and play a game. You could even win game vouchers in our prize draw.

Many thanks to Chris from the Unboxed Game Blog for organising this: http://unboxedbgb.blogspot.com/ . As you can see we will be sporting the playtest logo as well as wearing our affiliation with the UK Gaming Media Network on our sleeve, um, well actually our back.

Playtest @ UK Games Expo 2011

Calling all budding games designers and playtesters!

www.playtest.co.uk will be running a playtesting event 

at the UK Games Expo 2011 June 3rd-5th. 

Details here: http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/playtest.php

The aim of the event is to bring designers and playtesters together to play games, encourage feedback and to help create better games.

You know that boardgame idea you've had knocking about for years that could be brilliant or just might not work? Create a prototype, bring it along and have fun figuring it out. Who knows, your idea might end up in a box on a games shop's shelf! 

Do you like to play games? Do you know what makes a good game fun? Your opinions could help to develop the prototypes and perhaps lead to a playtesting credit in a published game. 

There will be a prize draw for each attendee that playtests a game and for designers who bring a game prototype.

Feel free to contact me for more details at contact@playtest.co.uk

Free Download: Playtester's feedback form pdf

Playtesting leads to better games and more playtesting often means more insight, but sometimes it can be difficult to keep track of all of this precious feedback.

For this reason we have opened a download section (on the left), where we will post useful files to help fellow game designers and playtesters.

The 1st file is a version of the playtester's feedback form used during Playtest meetups and convention events. Before starting a playtest hand out copies to each of your playtesters to track which sort of gamer they are and their thoughts about your game. 

Comments are welcome on how well the form works and any improvements or additions you may suggest. Happy playtesting!

Playtester's Feedback Form is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Sunday 16th January

Playtest was kindly hosted by London on Board gaming group during their session at the Old Star pub.
The New Year brought some new faces, such as Chris T. and also Brian and Chris B.'s welcome return.

 Games playtested were: Duel, City of the Dead, Brave the Elements and Ladders.


London on Board was in full swing when the playtesting began. A new games designer called Chris Towl introduced himself after winning a game of Glen More. He hopes to bring down his latest game to a subsequent session.

We started with 'Duel' a 2-player card game themed around creating attack lines for your spaceships. After a few plays the gameplay was holding up well and there was clearly a skill to the game as Brian kept winning convincingly and the designer is yet to win a single competitive game of it.Notes taken:
* The iconography could be clearer and this will call for a new prototype.
* The scoring system seemed to work well and created a close game.
* There is still too much luck of the draw. Although it will statistically rarely unbalance the game, it does prevent the player from playing more strategically and having more choices.

Next we played 'Brave the Elements', a card-based game sent to us for playtesting by Chaos Publishing. We played it as a three and then a four player game. We were all impressed with the graphical quality of the production and the simplicity of the gameplay. We had a good discussion about the game as we played and then afterwards and made some suggestions for possible developments on the playtest forms.

It seems that the i-pad is the latest playtesting accessory. As we looked on enviously, Chris Birch used his to demonstrate the rule system for his new zombie game, 'City of the Dead'. He brainstormed through the rules to show how the structure of the game will work. Chris' unusual ideas on how to represent the zombies has really set this game apart from the norm. I am really looking forward to seeing how this one will develop in the future.

Finally we played the prototype, 'Ladders' with three players. The new placement rules seemed to help the gameplay a great deal and ensured that the initial setup was more balanced. This made for a more enjoyable and slightly longer game, but it still didn't outstay it's welcome.  A new prototype is in the works for this game and the playtesters made some great suggestions on how to update and simplify the graphics.

Meetup

The Playtest (London) group's next meetup will be this Sunday 16th January 2011.
We are being hosted by London on Board at the Old Star pub, opposite St. James' Park tube station.

Games to be playtested:

Brave the Elements; a card game design for 2-5 players from Chaos Publishing (Miles Ratcliffe)

Duel (working title); new prototype of a card game design for 2 players (Rob Harris)

City of the Dead; a board game design for 1-6 players (Chris Birch)

Ladders (working title); a prototype of a card game design for 2-4 players (Rob Harris)