I have taken what feels like a big step for me and committed to running a public playtest of one of my games at the UK Games Expo this coming weekend.
One of the features of the Expo is a playtest zone, being run on both Saturday and Sunday by Playtest UK, a group which facilitates meetups in several locations around the UK for the purpose of testing out games. I've not been able to attend any of their regular meets as most of them are weekday evenings and far from me, so are awkward, but there is a monthly Sunday afternoon meet in London, so maybe I'll get to one of them some time.
The deal at Expo was tables available for assorted time slots on a first-come-first-served basis, and I was able to secure myself a 90-minute slot from 1:00 on Saturday. Of course, the big decision is what game to take for testing, and I decided to go with Boogie Knights as it seems to me to be in the most presentable state, and it would really benefit from having a few play-throughs in order to find the rough edges.
As an aside, I think that I would have most liked to take Scurvy Crew along, but I am in the middle of a complex re-tooling of the game and have no idea if I would be able to get it into a properly playable state in time.
Now here is where my insecurities start to set in, as I am certain that most of the other designers who will be there are much more experienced than me, and most will probably have far nicer looking prototypes than I have (the art and design of Boogie Knights is rudimentary, at best), but I think I need to suck it up and give it a go. After all, everyone has to start somewhere, and I only have to survive for 90 minutes.
Plus, of course, I'll hopefully be able to gather some decent feedback to help me take the next few steps forward with the design.
So if you are at the Expo on Saturday, please do come over to the playtest tables in the Monarch Suite between 1:00pm and 2:30pm. It'd be great to see you.
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