New Pieces, and Playtest

Legos

I ordered some Legos to use for game bits: nut dispensers, roasters, salters, nuts (can add extra Lego to mark roasted/salted), and squirrels (the squirrels are cute).

These are easier to grab and move around than the paper.

One downside: I got two different shades of brown for nuts (light brown is Almond and dark brown is Peanut).  The mapping is non-obvious, and for people who are colorblind it might be very confusing.  Maybe I should go with radically different colors (like green and blue or something). But the designer in me thinks it's weird to have green mean Peanut.  Maybe change the game narrative to peanuts (brown) and pistachios (green)?

A salted roasted almond, roasted peanut, and a Squirrel.

Playtest

I ran another playtest with my friend and his daughter (tween).  I'd say both of them are pretty smart and occasionally play games but they are not "gamers", like they don't regularly play or collect board games.

We played a new cooperative version of the game.

Basic idea: you configure the factory using a limited set of Action Cards while a timer is running.  When the timer expires you run the factory and see how many orders shipped.

Takeaways:

We did 3-4 games, and only once did we ship all 6 orders.

* 5 min timer

* 1 squirrel

* 2 question marks on Orders.

Overall it was fun.

* It didn't drag while people thought about moves (universal complaint from previous playtests).

* No social engineering element of deal-making or backstabbing.  Some folks (me) like this kind of gameplay, others (my wife) actively dislike.  It does make things drag even more though: all plans have to be run through rounds of arguments, deals, etc.

* It's very short, so failing doesn't feel catastrophic.  You just want to try again.

Concerns: 

* I was one of the Players, and I know the game well.  For a bunch of noobs (common experience, you buy the game and try it at home) it'd be harder/more disorienting.  So first challenge should be easier.

* In this setup Squirrels are more of a no-op.  Given that much time and a lot of actions, you quickly move Dispensers or add Crosses to avoid Squirrels and then you're done.  That said, when we played with 2 Squirrels they did get a few nuts.  And of course there's no "Pooping" because there's just one round.

I think this is all fixable though.

Other News

I am starting to look into how to manufacture, distribute, and market the game.

Manufacture and distribution are solvable problems, you just have to put some money into it.  You can pay companies to create and box your game bits, and pay other companies (or maybe sometimes same company?) to be fulfillment center, shipping games to individuals or stores.  Still a bit I don't get here but feels do-able.

The big question mark is marketing.

I get the sense that a lot of people go with Kickstarter or some such site (IndieGogo, GameFound).

Seems like there's 2 reasons to use these guys: 
1) Raise money.

2) Get people excited so they want to buy your game.

Fortunately I am not too worried about 1.  Like if someone wants to give me money great but I think I can afford to make and distributer the game without outside help.

2 is pretty important though.  And here's where I get a little lost:

* How far along in the process are you before you launch on these sites?  I get the impression "pretty far".  Like a good launch includes nice photos of quality game bits, videos of people playing -> the game is pretty set in stone.

* What do I offer the contributors?  Got some clarity on this one from a friend who is big into Kickstarting projects.  At some low threshold you give them access to "print and play" version: docs they can print to generate game assets.  At some higher threshold they get the game when it ships.

* How do you rise above the noise.  Seems like there's a ton of projects out there.  How do I get noticed?  There's obviously questions of quality: good pictures, nice video, good game design, nice game bits, generous rewards to contributors.  But there's also how to just "game the algorithm": if there are human reviewers who could promote my project, how do I get their attention?  If there's an algorithm that determines what's "hot" and somehow makes that more likely to pop up, what do I do to be noticed by the algorithm?