Playtesting Round 2: Added Features

Our second round of playtesting was carried out during the tutorial on Wednesday... Since Weiwei has already written a detailed description of the session here, I shall keep this posting short and just add in a few thoughts of my own...

For this round of playtesting, we had changed the life/hit points as mentioned earlier, incorporated the use of "events" cards, added directions to where the game pieces are facing, tried out the BACK ATTACK DAMAGE x 2 effect, etc.

With the adding of directions as where the game pieces are facing, the game seemed to make more sense in that they not only provide players with a clearer idea as to where the respective pieces are heading but more importantly, they allow some form of strategic gameplay. This is especially true for the use of back attack (especially since it's x 2) because the "life" of one of my "student" piece was nearly shortened by half when it was first attacked from the back :p The good thing was, I figured out that the "student" piece might be the most useful in carrying out such an attack due its flexibly provided by the allowance of 3 moves :) Hence, this could probably lead up to some interesting variations in gameplay, I think.

As for the use of "event" cards, ummm... unfortunately, we didn't really have enough time to test out their effect but I reckon that it would probably somewhat similar to that of Monopoly... except for maybe some of the more bizarre ones such as:

“Top University.”

Congrats! Your university has been ranked the top in the world.

ATTACK DAMAGE of Deans and Lecturers of ALL FACULTIES +3 on next turn.

Well hopefully, they would be able to provide some laughter and more interactivity among players. That was the original intention anyway :p

Oh, by the way, I've also suggested to Ahmed after yesterday's class if maybe we could include special marked-up areas on the game board that would automatically increase the attack damage of a game piece as it lands on it to attack that of another player, somewhat similar to those found in Scrabble that increases the number of points when an alphabet is placed on it. But would that make the game more complicated as it already is or is it even feasible at all? Perhaps we could try that out in our next round of playtesting...

Stay tuned for Playtesting Round 3...