2020-2021: A playtesting retrospective

 A couple of years ago I posted a playtesting retrospective spanning late 2017 through the end of 2019, and I thought it as interesting to see the breakdown of time spent on various games, especially while considering the state that I know those games to be in now.

Now it's a couple years later, most of which has been spent in a global pandemic. Let's see what I managed to get playtested in 2020 and 2021...

2020

January
Throughout January, after a break for a Disneyworld vacation, we iterated a few times on the All For One revamp, and I brought Apotheosis back out after 6 months on the shelf.

All For One seemed to be working well, and I remember being pretty excited about the new updates. Unfortunately I haven't played it since, though in the interim I did create a Tabletop Simulator mod for the game, and I've even pitched it to a couple of publishers that way.

Apotheosis progress was coming along, and we ended up playing it a few times a month throughout 2020.

February
In addition to Apotheosis, February saw the debut of an Isle of Trains board game. First we played Dan's first draft version. Then a few weeks later I brought my own take on his concept, which was a lighter, more straightforward game, and we played that a few times.

March
March was weird, because I had to cancel most weekends for my Anniversary, and then a COVID scare. The 1 time we did play, we tested Apotheosis one more time, and enjoyed a published game: Glen More. Beyond that, I did play Apotheosis one more time at home with my wife.

April
Sadly, I had to cancel my weekly playtest meetup indefinitely due to COVID. I didn't test anything at all in April, but I did figure out how to implement prototypes on Tabletop Simulator, starting with Apotheosis.

May
Thanks to the technology of TTS and the internet, I was able to get a test in now and again online. In May we played Apotheosis a couple of times.

We also played the Isle of Trains boardgame once, and I think I've come around to thinking that maybe Dan was on the right track wanting to make a heavier game.

Finally, we played an updated version of Automatown which designer Michael Brown joined in on as a co-designer. He made a TTS mod and we were able to see his updates.

June
I was still getting the hang of making digital prototypes, and getting online playtests together. Unfortunately I didn't get any tests in June at all.

July
In July I pulled couple of older prototypes out of the woodwork. I played Reading Railroad at home with my wife, I played Exhibit online with my testers, and I got together with a designer who had come on board to work on Kilauea with me to check out his ideas for the game.

August

I got an online tests of Reading Railroad in August, as well as a couple games of Crusaders at home with my wife to test new faction powers I was developing.

I had an online pitch meeting for Apotheosis, which seemed promising. The publisher wanted to set the game in their fantasy universe, which was a perfect fit, so Rick and I reskinned the prototype with their art assets.

September

I kicked off the month with another test of the new Crusaders factions with Michelle. 

A few weeks later I had a prototype of a brand new game, Keeping Up With The Joneses, which I played twice with Michelle, and twice solo - and solo testing is something I almost never do!

Online I played one more game of Apotheosis with Rick and Aaron, my two main testers since going digital.

October

October was a busy month for testing, mostly on account of solo testing for Keeping Up With The Joneses - I played 6 solo games in.

I got in three online tests of Keeping Up with the Joneses as well, and three tests of Apotheosis too.

November
I revisited a couple more older games in November via digital prototypes with Rick and Aaron: Exhibit and Dice Works. I also played one of Rick's prototypes called Cwen.

December

We finished off the year with 4 tests of Apotheosis with some significant changes based on playing with the publisher who had showed interest, and the game got better and better.

2021

January
I started out 2021 playing games by a couple of my testers' latest games: Andy's Gemstone Pylons, and Rick's Stardock (later renamed Starlight).

We played Keeping Up With The Joneses once, and Apotheosis twice (once with the publisher)

February
I only had 2 test sessions in February, and we switched gears and played Sails & Sorcery, trying to figure out how to fix the issues with the Plunder action.

March
I didn't test any of my own stuff in March, but I played Rick's Starlight game a couple of times, as well as a skiing game that Andy was working on as a developer.

April
In April I revived another prototype, Deities & Demigods, to reacquaint myself and my players with the game. We also played Exhibit again, then later in the month I had the opportunity to pitch it to a big publisher (unfortunately, they passed on it). 

May
I started off the month with two more pitch meetings: Apotheosis and Keeping Up With The Joneses with one publisher; Riders of the Pony Express, Deities & Demigods, Sails & Sorcery, and Apotheosis with the other.

I played Rick's Starlight once more as well, then missed the rest of my sessions due to a vacation to Hawaii, lack of players, and technical difficulties.

June
Another tough month for playtesting... I had a first test of a new I-Cut-You-Choose game idea (later titled Division of Labor) with Rick, and a pitch meeting for Sails & Sorcery, then missed the rest of my sessions for one reason or another.

July
I got a 2nd test of Division of Labor and found some fundamental issues that would need to be addressed, and finished off the month with 3 tests of another revived prototype, Skye Frontier.

August
Another rough month for test sessions, I only got 1 playtest in: I got a gig developing expansion content for Amun-Re, a classic Eurogame from 20 years ago, and I tested some early content for that with Rick.

The rest of my sessions were canceled, but I did have a pitch meeting for Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (unfortunately that didn't go anywhere)

September
I started September with a solo test of Keeping Up With The Joneses, then spent the rest of the month working on the Amun-Re expansion - 3 live tests, and 6 solo.

October
Six more solo tests and 5 live tests of Amun-Re took up all my testing time in October.

November
One more Amun-Re test in November, then I switched gears to Deities & Demigods because (drum roll please)... it got signed by a publisher! The publisher requested some changes, and I spent November working on those.

December

I finished off the year with 3 more tests of Deities & Demigods iterations as I worked on addressing the publisher's concerns.

The switch to online playtesting was a setback in my playtesting throughput, and it cost me some of my regular testers, but TTS has allowed me to continue testing, and pitching games, through the pandemic, and I've got at least a couple of regular online testers.

I miss testing more, but the good news is that I am finally making a little headway with pitches. Over the course of the pandemic, Isle of Trains got picked up by a new publisher who's going to do the base game as well as the expansion Dan and I made what, 7 years ago now? Deities & Demigods has been picked up, and I got that development gig on Amun-Re. I've had a few meetings recently to try and find a publisher to ick up the EmDo and Crusaders game lines, hopefully one who's willing to pick up the entire line (base game, expansions, and as-yet-unpublished content). No luck with EmDo an Crusaders thus far, but I just had a promising meeting or two about them, so hopefully something will come of that.