UKGE 2017 was absolutely delicious! We played games, met lots of lovely people and most importantly, did a whole lot of playtesting. We had a 3 hour playtest slot thanks to the lovely folks of Playtest UK and the feedback we got was more than useful. Here's what we learned and how it's affected the game...
We scored very highly in 3 areas: Fun, Theme and Game Length. I cannot emphasise enough how much of a relief it was to get that high fun rating. I mean, no one likes a game that's no fun, right? We can now continue the campaign in the confidence that we've got a game that people will enjoy. Phewf. The strong theme score is also good to see. The general consensus is people like the goblins and the mechanics of the game fit their gross and wondrous nature. We've also hit the nail on the head with game length, this is very much a casual game and the 20-30 minute play time fits the bill.
So enough patting ourselves on the back, here's what we need to improve on: Rule Clarity and Balancing. We didn't score terribly in these two areas but there were a couple of things that came up. Adding special abilities to each goblin category proved to be a step in the right direction (we've made these the standard rules for the game), but a couple of the goblins abilities were a little overpowered. We've nerfed the geeky and the worker goblins to combat this.
In terms of rule clarity, it became obvious quite quickly that the goblins' special abilities needed to be on the cards and we've added them as such. Keep an eye out on Twitter and Instagram for previews of how that looks. There was also a couple of action cards which needed a bit of rewording, that has been duly noted.
Today marks day 100 of our Gobblin' Goblin campaign trail! A very, very big thank you to everyone who has supported us so far. If UKGE taught us anything it's that board game community is quite lovely and we look forward to getting ourselves to more events in the future.
P.S. Mandy rolled three 12s with three 12 sided dice (see photo evidence below). We must assume she is a witch, we'll burn her at the stake tomorrow.
