Surround yourself with those who know: my first playtest with game designers

26/02/2023 - First playtest with members of Ludo, the Spanish Board Game Designers’ Association.

You don’t need to know everything to get started, you just need to take the leap and surround yourself well.

As I mentioned in the first blog post, the early mechanics of Disbiotik were just a copy of the very few games I knew back then. If I wanted the project to be taken seriously, something had to change. And who could help me with such a task? Someone who knew more than I did.

I could have read design guides, binge-watched YouTube tutorials, or gotten lost in the depths of the internet… but no. When you want to start a project, the important thing is to take action. Just do it. The learning will come along the way, thanks to trial and error.

With that in mind, and the first prototype ready, what I needed was to keep testing my game with other people. But not just anyone: I wanted to test it with people who know, with other board game designers. People who have already walked that path before me.

After a quick search, I came across Asociación Ludo, the Spanish association for board game creators. If you're reading this from another country, I highly recommend looking for similar groups in your area.

26/02/2023 - My “broken” prototype

I signed up right away. What took me longer was working up the courage to attend my first playtesting meetup. Fear of the unknown, I suppose.

Sometimes we think we need to be surrounded by big-name experts to learn (and sure, that’s great), but most of the time, being around people who just know a bit more than you is just as valuable. You don’t need an Olympic coach to start running, you just need a friend who’s been running for a while (and has a decent amount of patience).

It’s the same with game design. You don’t need advice from Reiner Knizia (though wouldn’t that be nice?), the experiences of local designers can be just as helpful.

And so came my first playtest of Disbiotik with real designers. I discovered that my prototype was “broken,” and I got some incredibly valuable feedback to help fix and rebuild it.

When we test our games with others, we have to be open and receptive to every opinion and suggestion. Even if we think our game is amazing and it all looks great in our head, the reality is that it probably still needs dozens, maybe even hundreds, of test sessions before we can call it “done.”

So, what are you waiting for? Surround yourself with people who know and start putting your project out there.

In the next post, I’ll probably write about the best event for refining (and wrecking) your game: Protos y Tipos.

Until then… keep playtesting! 🎲✨

Who hasn’t been through this while playtesting?