Last night the first playtest with 6 people occurred!
Not surprisingly, several issues came up, but overall it was a success.
- Networking held up perfectly (this was my biggest fear where things could go wrong).
- the desired gameplay did arise intermittently (albeit in a very unpolished form).
- after playing for a bit, everyone started trying to trick the person in the robot
- an issue that came up is that buying the drop ship almost never helped the person who bought it, but the next person who took over the robot
One of the most surprising things was that when some people first played, nerd rage came out because they kept losing when they played in the style of 'kill everything that moves'. I purposely put in various disincentives to play this way, and I thought that the lesson would come quickly, but it didn't. I am not sure how to communicate how to successfully play in this game, it is the most difficult things I am encountering so far is communicating the game. Maybe it is just a side effect of making something that doesn't play like other games, but shares many of the tropes (shooting, inventory, etc)?
I am planning to make a video about it soon to help.
