Splaturday

Playtesting! I lost

 This week I put the castle build on hold and went back to my main ongoing hobby project, which is making a game out of the random smattering of minis I already have.

For this project I’ve been trying a level of iterative design I haven’t really been able to accomplish before. With RPG stuff, playtest are multi-hour group sessions, but working on a solo war game means that I can knock out a test run by myself on a lunch break. The immediacy of coming up with an idea and then going straight into implementation has been really interesting and gratifying.

I’ve been trying to lean into this aspect of the design, finding the fun of the game through play first. To that end there’s still no real “fluff” for this game, no story to justify the maths. Of course a vague picture starts to form, but there hasn’t been much of the lore leading the mechanical development - again, a world away from RPGs where the lore is the mechanics.

Anyway, this week they announced the release date for the new Splatoon 3 DLC. Splatoon is an online shooter video game, on paper not to my taste at all, but the gameplay and theming are both hugely fun so I’m pretty into it. The new DLC actually looks like it functions a lot like this game I’m working on, a solo mode tackling an onslaught of AI enemies.

Enemies from the upcoming splatoon DLC. It’s like BLAME! with seafood

The reason I’m bringing it up though is that the developers of that game went through a similar iterative process when starting out. The first build of Splatoon had no graphics, or even an inkling of what its style and characters would end up being. Players controlled grey cubes in a featureless grey cube world, with the only aim being finding the fun of the gameplay. When the developers started finding themselves having in-office tournaments on their lunch breaks, they knew they were onto something.

If there’s a game you’re working on that you’re able to regularly test like this I’d really recommend it. That instant feedback on if an idea has legs has led to some surprising directions for this game, and remaining largely uncommitted to any particular setting or lore has made me focus on moment to moment gameplay in a way that really gets results.

With RPGs, maybe this could be something like character creation? It’s not usual for the kinds of games I chat about here but might be worth a try

Also, I want to start shouting out cool hobby stuff from other folks in these Straturday posts, games I like, creators i recommend, etc. Today it’s Gardens of Hecate, run by Ana Polanšćak, who does some of the coolest model painting and conversions out there. The post I want to link to though is her play report of TSPN, which is a solo miniatures game based on Tamagotchi. I’m all about gameplay outside the standard miniatures stuff and this looks way out there, definitely give it a read. And then look at her other work!

Finally, there most likely won’t be a Straturday post next week as I’ll be taking a little time off! But I plan on playing games during that time of course, so expect all the more hobby nonsense once I’m back.

Cheers and happy hobbying x