Setup Intended Play Experience
the materials for the playtest were small wooden tokens that were printed by the laser cutter on birch and plywood. the diameter of these tokens was approximately 10 centimeters and the desired setup of the playground was about 60 cm by 40 cm. the surface of the playground was also a big issue friction would play an important role - the final playtest was on the normal desk table with the minimum friction possible.
for the laser cut tokens playtest, my desired playtest experience is these steps;
players see the tokens on the table and analyze what are the possible combinations by the hint panel on the side
players aim the desired character token and flick that to collide with other tokens
(if desirable) players will flick the tokens with a big force and there will be multiple tokens colliding with each other
after the collision happens, the player will notice the panel that changes the description to the newly combined character
How did the Playtest Went On?
the first playtest (Jessica) was by a person who knew Chinese. the playtest started after I explained the mechanics of the game. She started from flick a token YI with another YI that forms up an ER, and then she flicked the ER to another YI to form a TU… (here skipping the 3-4 moves she acted) and finally she flicked an ER to an SHI to form up the WANG, which was the goal character.
after that, we tried different rules, such as 1. starting with more tokens, 2. some tokens can be destroyed and new characters are being placed in the playground, and 3. removing the boundary that tokens can be flicked dar away (even off the table).
the second playtest (Bob) went much similar to the first one, but he did not know any Chinese characters. He flicked several times and then he successfully get to the goal character. he also flicked on the turn with a tiny force so the token did not quite move; however, he did get to the goal character with quite similar steps to the first playtester who knew Chinese before.
Feedbacks and Changes
character units: Jessica pointed out there are only 3-4 basic forms of characters, which can play but are kind of boring. She suggested adding more tokens available such as dots, slashes, vertical strokes, and other elementary tokens that can build up to other characters. Indeed, 3 strokes character combined with a 4-stroke character will end up being a 7-stroke character, which is so hard to find other combinations with. So adding more elementary tokens would make the collision process more diverse and random (such as the radicals of the characters, they can form multiple characters regarding what’s at its side)
this item may conflict with the current core pillar about dragging characters from the dialogue to the playground - most of the basic strokes (like dots, and periods) are meaningless and they are the only principal elements to form complex characters. most of the characters from the normal dialogues are complex ones. one way to solve this is to allow players to grab some parts of the character in the dialogue blob (like only the left half, or left-bottom quarter).
randomity: Jessica pointed out there are many characters that can combine to multiple different characters, such as a horizontal stroke and a vertical stroke can combine to both SHI (ten) and ER (two). introducing randomness can make the game more interesting and engaging.
preview lines: Jessica pointed out that the tabletop game test made aiming a certain character as a goal pretty hard, we can easily get the trajectory wrong and miss the desired target. as the game will be in video game format, showing the preview trajectory should be beneficial to players that they have a better idea about where the token will be flicked
difficulty: the current physical playtest’s goal is a relatively simple character: WANG (king), which only has 4 strokes. Jessica felt this was too simple while Bob said that is some point between too simple and okay. I think this level is okay for being some of the beginning levels but the difficulty will increase as the later levels (and there will be multiple goals or even a sequence of goals, just like the Chinatris game in the mindmap)
hint: Jessica thought it would not be necessary to show those hint diagrams all the time. the hint is only useful when the players are stuck on some character and do not know how to move on. so we can only show the hints when there are a couple of seconds without any movement or other indicators that show the player is currently stuck and need some help. we can also, consider adding the hint as one of the in-game skills. maybe?
Color: Bob pointed out the color variations in the physical tokens (however they are just burnt effects of the laser cutter). there is not yet a good idea about how tokens will different colors would contribute to the gameplay, but that is one of the interfaces that we can add something to later. (maybe showing something about the score? maybe there is some durability of each token that they will break after certain strikes?)
losing a level, punishments: Bob pointed out there is only one way of winning a level; however, there is not yet a way of losing a level. my initial thoughts were that players get limited time or moves and that they have to combine with the goal character before they are exhausted. however, it would be interesting if we implement some danger zones that will perform some deductive action or punishments on players.
rewards: Bob said a lot of things about the rewards; the first one is about adding new tokens. he suggested that we can let players choose from three tokens and select one to be placed on the playground. with certain ways to lose tokens and these ways to get a new token, there will be more variations on the playground and the gameplay will be more exciting
another part about the rewards he talked about was related to Candy Crush, which is a current three-pop game everyone is addicted to. the key component in that game is about some moves you can trigger more pops and such a butterfly effect will give players a huge surprise than expected. in this game, we also encourage players to perform a butterfly effect flick that makes multiple sub-collides in one move (however, considering the exponential growth of strokes and complexity, this should still be modified when designing the numbers and stats). There should be an exciting pop-up for the players if they did such a great move (maybe the scores, effects, sounds, etc.)
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