Meetup Sunday 15th April

The next Playtest (London) group meetup will be on Sunday April 15th. This is the third Sunday of the month as usual. 

Since joining Meetup.com a few days ago, we may need to look into a new and bigger venue to house our playtesters this month, as the group will run out of space at the Old Star.

I'll be using this as an excuse to have a drink in a few pubs in London over the next few days ;)

Time: Sunday 15th April 12.30pm - 7pm

Venue Details (TBC)

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)

Playtest joins Meetup.com

 Playtest has joined the website meetup.com. This should make it easier to organise meetups and encourage the Playtest members to communicate with each other and discuss new ideas. I'm hoping that we can use the site to schedule playtests more clearly. 


The group went public about 24 hours ago, which means that Meetup start to list it in searches for keywords and we have already got a lot of new members.


This is our page: www.meetup.com/Playtest/


I'm really looking forward to the next meetup. See you there!

Boardgameguru to sponsor Playtest at the UK Games Expo

We are proud to announce that BoardGameGuru will be again be sponsoring the Playtest prize draw at the
UK Games Expo 2012.

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. 

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 27th May.

March Meetup Debrief

March's Playtest meetup took us from the Tundra, where we were fighting aliens, to Europe as Venetian merchants and then to a fantasy realm to battle it out for supremacy. 

Three very different and new prototypes were played, enjoyed and reviewed. The first was a semi-cooperative board game with a traitor mechanic. The paranoia spread around the table as the humans finally managed to survive. The second prototype was a competitive city-building fantasy card game adapted from a board game. The next game had a variable board and some very interesting trading gameplay, as well as great wooden pieces. 

Many thanks to Brian, Brett, Chris, Lawrence, Matt and Rob for the playtest feedback. Perhaps revised versions will be available to playtest at April's Playtest meetup.

(Note: April's meetup will be on the third Sunday of the month.)

Europa Ludi 2012

This is a quick post to congratulate two members of the Playtest London group: Brett Gilbert and Matt Dunstan, for getting on to the shortlist for the Europa Ludi 2012 Prize. (www.europaludi.com) 

The competition is for as-yet unpublished games designs and is open to games designers worldwide. This year the prize is a partnering of two very well-regarded contests from Granollers, Spain and Boulogne-Billanncourt, France.

Matt's game is called 'Wandering Monk' and Brett's is called 'Gnomes of Hawthorn Hall'. Both games were playtested at the club and proved very popular with their playtesters. We wish them both good luck for the next round.

See you Sunday for the next meetup!