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2024-2025: A playtesting retrospective
It's about time I posted another 2 years worth of playtesting retrospective! Let's dig right in...
2024
January
While the year started out with 1 more game of The Sixth Relam, January was dominated by 5 games of Taiko Kiri and 8 games of Goballoon racing. For TK we were doing a lot of tweaking and balancing, as well as adding a new network bonus. For Goballoon Racing I added alone effects, which were a pretty big deal.
February
Taiko Kiri and Goballoon Racing continued to get played here and there throughout February, interspersed between 4 games of Eminent Domain: Coalition, and a couple of plays of a new game Rick whipped up called Cwen
March
March started out with another play of Taiko Kiri and Coalition (added scoring), then followed up with a chat with Rick and Steve about a new idea I had for a mono-match game -- a game with cards where any 2 cards match exactly one symbol. Then we played 4 iterations of that mono-match game, which used 7 cards and a 7-area board to drive a 2p area control game where you race to a certain score (with a little bit of engine building). We also played a couple of games of Keeping Up With The Joneses because a publisher had shown some interest in it (spoilers: that didn't go anywhere in the end)
April
Had to cancel test sessions a few times in the first week or so of April, but got a couple chances to just chat about stuff with Rick and Steve. Then we played 2 games of Goballoon Racing, a new game of Steve's called Ship of Fools, Another of Rick's called Portsmouth, something called Love Triangle from another designer who joined us for a couple of playtest nights (though I don't think I have seen him back since then). I played my 2-player Press Your Luck microgame with the designer of Love Triangle as well, but the highlight of the month (for me) was the three games of a new and much improved version of Division of Labor!
May
A few more cancelled sessions in May due to work or the baby, but managed 4 plays of Division of Labor that month. Also played one game of Taiko Kiri with Steve, just to play it.
June
June saw some more canceled sessions, but was pretty fruitful otherwise. We played Division of Labor with 4 and 5 players (most of the time we had been getting 3 players), I had a pitch meeting for Taiko Kiri, and had a design discussion with Rick and Steve about a new idea (False Prophet) as well as Steve's new necromancy-themed rondel game (which, spoilers, you will see again later in this post!). We also played yet another of Rick's games: Ultimus Libre, and one more game of Goballoon Racing.
July
Two of the Discord servers I'm in (KBGames and Decision Space) both did 18-card game jams at the same time, and I hadn't planned to enter anything in either one because I had plenty of games to work on. But in thinking about the jams, I came up with not one, but two new designs! One of them (Tic Tac DOH) was pretty bad, and was soon abandoned. The other (18-card Point Salad) I think was OK for a 2p, 18-card game!
I tried a simplified version of Keeping Up With The Joneses, which turned out to feel very chain-y, but TBH, I just like the regular version better so I never came back to that simpler version.
We rounded out July with 2 more games of Division of Labor, trying some tweaks here and there, a game of Goballoon Racing one day when we didn't have a lot of time and just wanted to play something quick, and a couple of plays of a new game of Rick's about gardening.
August
August was plagued with a few more cancelled sessions -- a disturbing trend for 2024 :/
I concentrated on Division of Labor this month -- 5 plays, including an in-person game with a friend who was in town with his teenage son... They really wanted to play Crusaders with me, but I talked them into a prototype instead, a choice I regretted since Division of Labor really wasn't working all that well yet, despite all the testing it had gotten thus far.
We also played new versions of Ship of Fools from Steve, and Ultimus Libre from Rick. And for fun I had made a custom tile set for Captain Flip, a game I'd been playing a lot at the time (the custom tile set worked, but was not nearly as good as the standard one)
September
3 cancelled sessions due to me not being available in time and/or not having players, and 2 more when I was sick with COVID :(
All I really got to play was one game of Taiko Kiri (in prep for another pitch meeting, which my notes say "went fine"), and one 5p game of Division of Labor, with a new "Candyland track" idea, which grew into the island map that's in the game now.
October
Five cancelled sessions and 4 games of Division of Labor. This month the boat map was born, which I think is a big help to that game. We tried a number of other variations as well.
November
Between me being late and Thanksgiving, I had six more cancelled sessions in November. One night, Ben, Daniel and I just chatted about Division of Labor, Press Your Luck games, and maybe some other stuff. Only games played this month were Division of Labor x2 (more variations on things), and Ultimus Libre.
December
Now let's take a look at 2025:
2025
January
Unfortunately, the canceled sessions continued well into 2025, but by the end of the year they stopped happening with such frequency. Also unfortunately, it seems like I've lost a couple of my players, potentially due to the erratic schedule, or the generally late hour of my sessions.
We started out the year with a test of a proposal I had for that log driving game, as well as a chat about another consultation I was doing -- a cooperative game about civic duty.
Then we had a couple more plays of Division of Labor, one play of a new game by Rick called Tektri (more or less about building a tech tree), and even tried a first draft attempt I made at a very old game idea a friend of mine had called Velociracers... sadly, that friend passed away years ago due to cancer, which is too bad for a number of reasons -- not least of all that he had a lot of good game designs!
(My Velociracers idea ended up sucking, btw)
At the tail end of January, I tested a new version of Revampsterdam... by that time the publisher had found another designer to revamp Merchants of Amsterdam, because my attempt was so far out of scope. In retrospect I see what I was doing wrong, and I would have loved some more explicit feedback and another chance to provide what they were looking for, but alas, I don't blame them for finding another designer. So now, with their blessing, I was making some changes to the game to further disconnect it from a Merchants of Amsterdam, and will be pitching it as a separate game I'm calling Politica Galactica
In January I had that pitch meeting I'd rescheduled from last month. the publisher game the game a chance, and even met with me a 2nd time after I addressed some of their comments from the 1st play. Ultimately though they decided to pass on the game.
February
February is always a short month, which limits playtest opportunities, especially with all the cancelations I've been having. We started out the month with a play of Keeping Up With The Joneses to refamiliarize myself with the game ahead of a pitch meeting, then another play of Politica Galactica - was teaching a publisher's rep so they could play it and see if they wanted to publish it. Sady, that publisher is no more, so no luck there.
Rick and I also played his new Tektri game a couple of times (once with Bernease as well).
March
I actually got a good number of playtests in March, 3 of which were playing Keeping Up With The Joneses in person with Corbin! He likes the game, and at this point has beaten me at it a couple of times as well :) Playing with him was funny, because he focused solely on the cars... so much so that I decided to add a couple to the game for him, one of which rewards getting lots of cars :)
Looks like the only other game we played was Division of Labor with a few more changes based on the reaction of the publisher above.
April
April was dedicated to Taiko Kiri, mostly testing a sort of expansion module wed come up with. I also had 3 canceled sessions, and one night I just chatted with Rick.
We played one more game of Rick's Scarab of Ra to cap off the month.
May
Unfortunately, May had more cancellations than playtests. The only game we played was Usurpers (4 plays and a design chat with Rick), after some promising-sounding news from the publisher (the game was signed a few years ago at this point, and probably won't actually ever get published at this rate). We took the opportunity to show Steve the game, and to tweak some things that were bothering us about it.
June
June was a lot like May, only more so... 2 more games of Usurpers, and the rest of the sessions were cancelled for lack of players (and/or starting too late). I think things finally started to pick up after this month.
July
Three more game of Usurpers and 4 games of Taiko Kiri -- in both cases making changes with an eye toward publication. Taiko Kiri had been signed by this time, and they publisher is planning a theme change to "underwater steampunk." Steve and I were testing some tweaks to the tiles and setup to make sure late turn order players didn't feel screwed in the early game.
August
August was interesting because both Rick and I had new designs to try, both of which have gone through some iteration since then. After one game each of Taiko Kiri and Goballoon Racing, we played 3 successive drafts of Rick's shared rondel game Henge (which at this point, Jan 2026, I think is basically done and I love playing it), as well as a first draft of my Press-Your-Luck Rondel game about baseball, where your rondel is a little baseball diamond(!), which I'm calling Peanuts & Crackerjacks.
September
Only 1 cancelled session in September, 2 games f Peanuts & Crackerjacks, 3 of Henge, and the first couple drafts of Steve's new necromancy-themed rondel game Forbidden Art! Rondels all around lately :)
I already mentioned that I love Henge, and I've been enjoying Forbidden Art as well so far.
October
October featured one more play of Forbidden Art, 2 more of Peanuts & Crackerjacks, and 3 of Henge. I also introduced my players to a game that I designed with Corbin (!), which doesn't have a great title (I refer to it as "Truck/Boat/Plane"). It's not terribly deep, but it's not the worst game in the world, and it's co-designed by a 7 year old!
November
November started out with one more game of Henge to try a newly scaled board for 3 players, then it was all Peanuts & Crackerjacks, all the time (5 plays).
December
To round out the year, December started off with yet another two canceled sessions, followed by 2 plays of Goballoon Racing (testing tweaks offered by Ralph Bruhn of Hall Games, who seems to enjoy the game), Keeping Up With The joneses (just to play it), 2 plays of Henge (testing tweaks to the Henge-Bot, an AI player you can use to fill out a 4-player game), and 1 play of Peanuts & Crackerjacks (trying another version of a lineup rather than a bag of meeples to draw from).
Finally, I closed out the year with an evening spent chatting with Steve about Forbidden Arts, and a post-apocalyptic themed game idea he's mulling over.
Fewer canceled sessions than the previous year, I still felt like I missed a bunch of playtest opportunities in 2025 for one reason or another. And as for regular players, I seem to be down to just Rick and Steve for the most part, though I did have some other testers play occasionally.
As we go into 2026, I'm going to have to figure out a way to get some of my players back, or recruit some new ones. Not that I don't like hanging out with and appreciate Rick and Steve! But I'd like a more diverse (and larger) player pool for my games! Another thing I'd like to do is get more third party development gigs, that's been conspicuously missing these last two years!
One nice thing about my players designing their own games once in a while is that it gives me a chance to stretch my Developer muscles, which feels different than designing, even though there's some overlap.
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