What I Look For When Playtesting Other People's Games

Playtesting your game often means playtesting other people’s games. It’s the law of reciprocity, after all. When it’s time for someone else’s game to get to the table, I’ll typically use a form I’ve made to help me remember what things are worth mentioning.

Let me see it!

Download the one-page form here (PDF)

A few important things to note before going any further:

This is not a form one prints off and hands the designer. I use it as a reminder of a thing to mention when it’s time to give verbal feedback, or as necessary / requested, written feedback.
These are the sorts of things I personally look for when playtesting. As such, it’s fairly personalized to me. If you were to make your own form along these same lines, I suspect you might choose different things to pay attention to – whatever floats your boat.
This is a lot of shorthand to fit a couple dozen important things onto a single A4 sheet. I’ll usually write more details on a separate sheet of paper to remember them.
The red, yellow, and green colors are a simple system to point out what’s working well, or what needs attention.

Let’s dive in.

Setup

Strategic decision(s) required – it’s a personal pet peeve, but it also asks players to make a strategic decision before they know what they’re doing.
Make setup simpler – If you can streamline it, do it. In the virtual format, have as many things pre-placed, shuffled, and ready to play. Avoid scripting where possible. In the real world, organize, then delegate (‘can you shuffle this deck of cards for me?’ or ‘Alright, we need to place two random cubes on top of each tile’ are easy directions to follow without knowing a thing about the game).
Time needed to setup / learn: I’m mainly looking for whether this amount of time matches / correlates with the length of the game. Twilight Imperium famously takes a long time to setup, but then again it’s a long, heavy game. A 10 minute party game that requires 10 minutes of setup time is a mismatch.

Teach

There’s really just the one question here: was I able to follow the designer’s teach, or what areas can be improved? Sometimes it’s a matter of what’s being taught and when, while in other cases, the designer just needs some more practice.

Play

We’ll spend more time playing than anything else, so most of the checkboxes are focused here.

Is it fun?: Always a tough question, but a pre-requisite for a game. Expectations are set by the type of game – a party game elicits more laughs than a thinky medium-weight Euro, but both can be fun in their own right.
Interesting decisions: I’m always looking for multiple, strategically viable options. In Azul, you might have to choose whether you want the one red tile or the three yellow tiles – and there’s a lot of things to consider. The number of times there’s an objectively correct choice or only one thing to choose from should be as few as possible.
Player interaction: It’s one big reason people play. Not every game has it (or is expected to have it), but in general, I want to feel like what I’m doing is affecting the game state, my own personal area, other player’s choices, etc.
My heuristic: By ‘heuristic’, I mean the process of trying to solve the puzzle of the game. None of these options are ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ – my intent here is to say if I developed a heuristic while playing, here’s what went into formulating my strategy.
Theme / mechanic connection: Not every game requires the theme and mechanics to be tightly connected (any abstract game or early-design game if off the hook here), but it’s definitely a thing I like to see. Can the theme explain the mechanics in some way? Notes here might include opportunities to integrate the two things together.
Analysis Paralysis: If any AP is felt or seen during play, this is where I’d note it.
Downtime: Nothing to pay attention to or plan when it’s not my turn. As with other elements, the expectation is set up by type of game. Heavier games can have more downtime, while party games should have little to none.
Exceptions: In a perfect world, there are zero exceptions – the rules as they’re explained / shown are consistent and uniform. Sometimes exceptions come up to fix a specific edge case or are a ‘band-aid’ to fix another problem.
Catch-up mechanism: How does somebody come from behind? Mario Kart gives lagging players the famous Blue Shell and lots of Mushrooms to help them catch up.
Cognitive Load: How much thinking are players doing? Asking players to remember a ton of rules or elements can make an easy game feel heavier than it actually is.
Admin: How much extra stuff has to happen to make the game run.
Pace of game: How fast the game feels like it’s moving. The expectation is set up by type and length of game.
Flow of game: If it’s smooth that’s great. If it’s funky, stop-and-go, or it had some hiccups, it’s noted with specifics on what elements was causing it to feel that way.
Economy: Were resources too easy to get, too hard to get, or just right? Did I feel like I could plan really far ahead, or not at all?
Components: If there were enough pieces for everyone, great! The other issue here might be that it’s unclear who’s using which pieces
Less / more: If I think the game could use more (or less) strategy, luck, tactics, or randomness, this is where I’d note it.
Stated goal / market fit: This is basically a reality check. If you’re making a gateway game that took 45 minutes to teach, it’s worth noting.

Other notes

In general, these are specific issues that I saw or perceived as we played. These are yellow or red boxes, so they’re issues worth raising

Rich get richer: Whatever the leaders are doing or getting, it’s helping them get further ahead relative to other players.
Felt like an efficiency game: Naturally, this may or may not be the type of game you’re trying to make. I see it as a potential issue because they might not have a catch-up mechanic, or might make someone feel like an early mistake would make it too hard to come back from.
One dominant strategy: It might just be a perception or a feeling, and what I’m doing that feels dominant might have a counterstrategy that a more experienced player might be using
One objectively correct move: the opposite of interesting decisions. I’ll usually try to note when I felt there was one objectively correct move.
Order of operations: This could mean the order of operations needs clarifying, or if the game needs to define the order of operation for one reason or another.
Puzzle, not a game: In other words, I feel more like I’m solving a puzzle rather than competing (or cooperating) with others to play a game.
Focus on first-play experience: people are statistically most likely to be playing the game for the first time, and people that don’t have fun or don’t ‘get’ the game that first time are less likely to try it again. Think of how many games sit on your ‘shelf of opportunity’ (having played them zero times!) or are on your shelf and you’ve only played them once.
Replayability needs considering: In a perfect world, the game is fun the first time you play, the second time, the fifth time, the hundredth time, and so on. There are layers of strategy and depth that the player can discover the more they play.
Band-aid solution: something in the game feels like a ‘band-aid’ – a temporary fix
How do you track _______________ ?: Something in the game needs to be tracked, not memorized. Sometimes this is as simple as adding a cube on a card.
First player / Last player has an Advantage / Disadvantage: Someone has a better (or worse) position based on turn order.

Scoring

These are all yellow boxes, meaning they’re worth noting but not generally game-breaking:

Unclear: Something about the scoring wasn’t made clear during play. The result may be people may not play optimally because they didn’t understand something about it.
Counter-intuitive: Probably one of the rarest things I’ve marked, but whenever something about the scoring feels backwards or counter-intuitive, I’ll note it.
Unbalanced: Something about the scoring felt unbalanced – maybe because the effort-to-reward ratio is off, or because certain ways of scoring are prioritized (or de-prioritized)
Unfair: Something about the scoring felt unfair, possibly because it was arbitrary, dependent on player order, or similar.
Took too long: As with other notes, it’s based on the type of game and player expectations. Perhaps scoring can be done as you play, or it can be changed to make it take less time.
Too complex: Again, it’s based on the type of game and player expectations. Scoring and figuring out who won shouldn’t take forever, of course.
Point salad: It may be the name of one of my favorite games, but not every game benefits from having a million ways to score. I may try to identify some specific elements of scoring that could be combined or cut to simplify the game.
Too many calculations: While similar to ‘too many calculations’, a game might have lots of simple calculations contributing to making scoring take longer.

UI / UX

Even in prototype form, a game’s User Interface and User eXperience can be user-friendly, and can contribute to making the game more intuitive.

Double-code icons: To double-code icons means to make icons different in two different ways. Color and shape are two classic ways, while size, patterns, textures, and numbers can also work.
Needs a reference card: I’m a big fan of reference cards (AKA player aids AKA cheat sheets). I like them because they help a player answer their own questions, and because it helps them not have to remember any more than necessary. Things like what you do on your turn, the order of operations, or the phases of the game are great to have on there.
Needs better contrast / Bar test: Contrast is more than just colors. It’s the difference in hues, or tones of the same color. There’s a lot of ways to check contrast, but one of my favorites is at https://coolors.co/contrast-checker. As for the ‘Bar test’, pretend you’re playing your game at a bar – a place with low light or non-white light. Can you still play the game correctly without squinting or struggling with the icons / text?
Counter-intuitive: Board games have a vocabulary, and games that use common symbols in uncommon ways might throw their players for a loop. A heart usually indicates health of some kids, as one example.
Inappropriate content: Something about the game’s content may be inappropriate in some way. There may not be much that’s considered ‘inappropriate’ in an adult party game, but a family game has more potentially inappropriate things that might have been included.
Unclear / ambiguous language: Your game is always clearest to you, because you understand its logic better than anyone else. No one else is you, though.

Perceptions

This section is primarily for my perceptions. I save these for last since they’re more opinions than anything else.

Shorter: The game went on longer than expected, or the game began to drag after a certain point.
Longer: The game hit its climax sooner than expected, or the game ended earlier than expected.
Lighter: The game has fun elements / moments, but some of the weight is getting in the way of that fun.
Heavier: While very rare for me personally to mention, some games might stand to add a little more meat to their bones to fill out the promise of the game.
Different theme: Whether the current theme isn’t working or I have an idea for another theme, I’ll check this box and write it down to suggest it.
Different mechanics: Whether there are too many mechanics in the current game or too few, the theme / core loop / gameplay might benefit from some different mechanics.
Cultural sensitivity / potential issues: Plenty of potential things to highlight, but this is naturally very context-dependent.