I've had my first play tester, writer D.C. Corvino, and she gave me lots of good feedback and things to think about!
Firstly, she didn't read all the instructions before starting to play, and ended up confused because of the order I had laid out said instructions. That is 100% on me; I can't just assume players will read the instructions in full before playing. So she helped me reorder the instructions to make more sense for those players that tend not to read through the instructions before starting. And that leads into the content of the instructions. Apparently they weren't all that clear, so Corvino worked with me to clean them up.
She also pointed out little things in the game that I had overlooked, such as being able to fish at bodies of water or drink from the river. So I'll be adding those things to the cards. Also, D.C. didn't really like the way I handled combat, she said the way the damage table is set up takes the player out of the scene, and suggested a different way to calculate damage. I tried her suggestion, didn't really like, so I'll wait to see what other play testers say about it.
^ D.C. Corvino's map ^
It was really fun seeing how someone else played the game; she thought of things I never would have thought about. For example, on Corvino's travels, she chose to go to the forest simply because she wanted to see the forest animals. Or, when she ended up at a city zoo, she saw starving animals, and made a plan to buy them some food (She wasn't able to because she didn't have enough resources to pay for the food, but I loved that that was her first thought upon meeting them).
D.C. Corvino's most important comment, though, was that the game felt like it's still in a middle ground. I totally agree with that, but wasn't sure how to fix it on my own, so her comments were a big help.
I've updated the instructions on itch.io and the google drive folder; I'll be updating the TTS version later today.
That's it for now; thanks for reading and have a great rest of your day.
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