02 Apr

Pokémon Journeys Dev Diary 2: Playtesting

mimikyu is cute
Playtesting is king. It’s a mantra among game designers, who often know all too well the pain of carefully designing a mechanic and then finding that it’s absolutely awful to play with or too hard to understand when playing in a real group. On the other hand, it’s a huge relief whenever a mechanic or idea that looks iffy on paper happens to test really well among players.

We’ve been pretty damn insistent that we want playtest feedback for Pokémon Journeys over untested theorycrafting, so it’s only fair we explain a bit of what we’ve learned through playtesting and what makes for a useful playtest for us. I’m going to be jumping through a number of sub-topics here, but I’ll try to keep each of them anchored to actual playtest experiences we’ve had in PTU or Pokémon Journeys.

If you haven’t gotten a chance to look at our draft materials for Journeys, you can find them at this link.
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