My next series of playtests were in person with a deck printed on low quality card. These playtests had the goal of determining the physical elements of the game and more personal play. We also played many rounds Coup, using a standard playing card deck, which helped me to understand some elements of bluffing games that I had been unsure of.
We played around 10 rounds of the game over the period of a week and I took feedback from my family after each round to iterate on the game. The first changes made were to use a physical spinner to determine the starting player of the game. We then went around clockwise each round.
Feedback and Iterations
Through the rounds, as players took their cards they immediately revealed them to all players. While this had no effect on play, I realised that it was more fun to reveal all cards at the end of the round as players could then react to each others reveals in a “surprise moment”.
We also decided to place all cards that were taken into the players score piles in an easily viewable area so players could see what cards were remaining. As the game went on, this allowed players to figure out what cards remained in play and make their choices based on that information.
I also came to the realisation that the game became a lot more enjoyable as the rounds went on due to the players learning the cards, and meta strategies developing. I realised this after playing many rounds of Coup, a bluffing card game. The core element that I wanted to add more of to my game is information for other players. This is because bluffs and choices become more meaningful when a certain amount of information is available for the players. Coup allows players more complex decisions, with the tradeoff of more complex rules, and I wanted to add an element of that to my card game.
I decided that I would do this by adding effects to some of my cards, such as a card that once placed in the sore pile that allows a player to ask another if they have a certain card remaining in their hand. I would likely have to do this with the lower value cards such that taking low value cards gives you information with which to bluff and make decisions in future rounds.