Tuesday, 3 December 2013

Play Test: Player's Perspective

Chris was one of our playtesters, so I thought I'd get him to share his thoughts on what he thought of the game. 

Hello fellow Pokefans, my name’s Chris, and like a certain Dickensian orphan of some renown; after a 12 hour playtest of Pokémon Journeys on Saturday, I find myself wanting more! You may have read about the brief playtest that my wife, Louise and I tried a week ago when we were visiting Jamie and his family; compared to that attempt, this was smoother and more exciting, which says a lot since it worked so well that weekend. 

For this playtest, we also had two friends from our D&D group, Otis and Dave, and my twelve year-old brother, Liam, who joined us just outside the second town of our test map. We started our ‘test-journey’ by creating our player characters, distributing 12 points over our four traits and then choosing a Profession that would guide our career in the world of Pokémon. I chose to be a Researcher which gave me an extra point to my Knowledge trait and two abilities that I could use once each day; which at the time were to identify a Pokémon’s level and identify its lowest Stat. Dave and Otis both chose to be Trainers which gave them a 10% boost to experience gained, a +1 to their capture rating (so it’s easier to catch Pokémon), and an extra move for each Pokémon they have (where my Pokémon can learn eight moves, theirs can learn nine but they can still only choose four moves for their ‘move set’). 

Once our player characters were sorted, we moved on to the most anticipated part of any Pokémon game: receiving our starter Pokémon! Excitement filled the air as we rolled our dice to see what cute critter we would each get; I missed out on a Charmander this time, instead getting Squirtle, a starter that I had never picked when playing the handheld games but was familiar with through my experience at battling it over the years. Otis received a Charmander, Dave got a Bulbasaur and then we each filled out our Pokémon’s character sheet with their base stats, level and experience, natures, known moves and lastly by rolling a d6 we found out if we had males or females. 

I chose to make my Squirtle a bit of a tank so that he could take a hit and stay standing but the beauty of Journey’s levelling system is that you can choose to make a fast Pokémon so that you usually move first or even a really attack-focused one so that you can end a battle before taking too many hits; it’s up to you rather than the unseen mechanics of the game.

The game worked so smoothly for what was effectively a second and more thorough playtest; we worked out some new ideas about player abilities, Pokémon attacks and damage, long-term player goals and small balancing tweaks but nothing caused us to have to stop or re-build the mechanics. Dynamic was my catchword for the evening, the game allowed us to use mechanics and tools that we were familiar with but in a way that was new and fun; the ability to shape how your Pokémon grow, the way that Loyalty and Natures combine to make you think and pay attention to how you train your companions, and the diverse ways that you interact with the world and work together to overcome challenges separates this from other mediums and means that no two adventures in this game will be the same. 

We all had so much fun and time really flew by as morning turned to afternoon, afternoon to evening and evening back to morning; we all agreed that we wanted to keep going, keep battling, keep catching and training, and most of all, keep Journeying with our Pokémon.

-Chris

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