User Testing 1
This user testing was simply to test three parts of my game in preparing for the introduction of the attack and defence cards. Users decided their start location depending on who got the highest roll of the dice to the lowest (highest choosing first). The play then proceeded clockwise starting with the player that rolled the highest number.
The three stages I wanted to test were how well the navigation worked, whether or not the escape cards integrated well with the game and if trading worked smoothly.
The navigation seemed to work well with the players having no problem navigating the board and understanding my instructions, there was however one problem:- it was very time consuming to travel across the board. I knew that I would have decrease the size of the board/grid in order to increase the pace of the game.
The start to middle game was somewhat non-eventful with players travelling the board and being unable to interact with one another at this time, there was however tension in the air with players observing one another trying to guess what cards each player had as they secretly organised their decks. The arrangement, organising, naming, and colouring of the cards seemed to merge well with the game.
Trade Round
The trade round worked much better than I had expected, users enjoyed this part of the game with laughter and tensions raising as each of them traded cards. Rob was the first to exit the trade room and make his quick escape and Iain quickly followed... unfortunetly for Iain, Rob had reached the exit as Iain was no more than 4 moves away from his escape point. The game then ended with Rob being the first inmate to escape.
The main elements of the game I discovered from this user testing, was that the board seemed to work to a degree and the trading worked well. The negative aspect was the size of the board and the amount of time it took to navigate. I originally tested this game with one dice and had to increase it to two in order to make the game proceed quicker... but even with 2 dice it was still too slow.
The image below shows one of the users moving his piece accross the board as the others examine their cards to work out their next move.
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