Designer's diary - Part III

PLAYTESTING 

In retrospect when I'm looking at the process of creating Chromosome, one thing strikes me the most - how important is proper and massive playtesting. If you have a bunch of people who helps you with testing, you will be able to finish the job at least few months ahead. Testers are like fresh breeze for your game and ideas. Instant feedback that you can get from your playtesters is something priceless, especially in the first part of the project when a lot of ideas run through your mind. Testers will help you to chose the better ones. 

It took some time but the effort and put into this project has finally started to pay off. The game was more and more fun, consistent, dynamic and balanced. I resigned from many elements that I thought were crucial to the game but massive tests showed me that I was simply wrong. I according to my playtesters hints, I drastically changed it.

At that time I had a constant feeling that I was missing something, that something was wrong with the game. I was constantly changing the rules, adding or deleting new mechanics and so on. But a couple of new playtesters joining my crew gave me a lot to think about. They pointed out that the game was too complex, not intuitive, to slow and simply boring. So we started to rearrange everything again...

Czas i poświęcenie włożone w rozwój projektu zaczęły przynosić owoce. Grało się coraz przyjemniej, zrezygnowałem z wielu rozwiązań, które początkowo wydawały mi się obowiązkowe, a po pół roku testów wewnętrznych i zewnętrznych (pierwsza edycja Unpubu) zrozumiałem, że podstawa gry musi zostać zmieniona, jeśli projekt ma osiągnąć sukces i postanowiłem dokonać radykalnych zmian.

Thanks to a great work and sacrifice made by my playtesters I think we've managed to create a game that is simply a good game. It is rewarding, it is fun and exciting and hopefully you will be happy with the product we created.

I would like to say - THANK YOU - to all my playtesters! It's also thanks to you that Chromosome will be published !