I’m late! We’ll get to it in the retro but overall I’d say there were some wins, some distractions but still feeling like this is a good framework to continue to make progress.
The goal for this sprint was to refine my solo playtesting methodology to make some balancing progress as well as some book keeping and prep for a further engagement push. Sort of a hodgepodge release, but what tied it together was focusing on more internal facing deliverables.
Sprint Review
The stories planned for this sprint were:
- Full round of playtest balancing
- Card updates
- Second round of playtest balancing
- Draft Discord channel
- Follow-up on manufacturing and fulfillment emails
- Organize a list of potential reviewers
- Find two new reviewers to add to the list
- Sprint review/retro blog post and BMG diary update
However, I got distracted with some really exciting design for my future incredibly ambitious project. That, plus I’ll be honest, it took a lot to motivate me to jump back into playtesting. So I ended up not doing anything with my reviewer list, and my Discord channel isn’t as finalized as I’d like.
In terms of pieces worth sharing, there isn’t a ton, since like I noted these items are a little more behind the scenes. I will share my playtesting process though since I think there are some good things there but would also be very open to feedback.
Solo Playtesting Methodology
Playtesting can be an absolute beast. I found when I was beginning the process it was hard to know where even to start. So, similar to my design plans, I decided on a solo playtesting system to focus my efforts. Did I mention I was once a Systems Engineer…
The guiding light (or my primary user need for you fellow SEs) for my game’s balance is that I want every card to be playable, and no combination of 4 cards on either team to be outright dominant. The game is about building different types of teams, weighing options, and reacting to your opponent. Ideally there are several stronger team options (I call them my archetypes, like Sheriff Protection or Cheap Bandits) and while some may be strong against certain opponent line ups, they also should be weak to others. This creates a sort of rock, paper, scissors team building decision with extra variables to sub in and out based on what you think your opponent will be fielding. With only 8 cards per team, the card pool is small enough to start getting in the mind of your opponent.
With this guiding principle, and after playing several rounds to understand the game, I drafted 3 archetypes per team. I then did a battle matrix so that each archetype fought the others so I could see the results. And without getting bogged down in notes I set it up so that I would only record the bare minimum to be useful and a place for notes to record anything else. My sheet looks like this:
I record which version of the cards I’m using, which of the 4 cards per team are deployed, what their location is (Roof, Building, Street), what archetype those 4 represent, who went first, who won, and general notes. Quickdraw game is pretty straight forward, with me being able to play a solo round in about 5 minutes, so I don’t really need any more data than that.
Depending on the version I play more or less since sometimes I immediately see issues and start a new rev rather than sinking a ton of testing time after knowing there are issues (how very Agile of me!). Since I’m approaching balance, and since it’s been a while since I tested I wanted to do a decent playtest, some card revisions, then a more comprehensive test to really get a feel for the overall balance. Here’s what my battle matrix looks like.
I have several of these tables for the versions of the cards I did more extensive testing with. It’s a little touch and feel since sometimes you can tell right away when an archetype has a major advantage and move on, others you want a few more rounds to feel better. I was pretty happy where the Sheriff Protection archetype balanced out since this one has been overly dominant in the past. However my Pacifist build is not quite there. After playing those 31 rounds I did see where I had to make some changes, which would’ve really affected the Heavies archetype so decided it wasn’t worth to play them.
Other Sprint Deliverables
Not much to say about the rest of the work of the sprint. Following up with manufacturing and fulfillment is something that just has to get done, and especially now to try and understand more about when the tariffs get applied and what workarounds there may be. Others have much better things to say on this so I’ll just point you there if you are interested, like Jamie Stegmaier’s blog post We Are Suing the President.
I am excited to publish the Discord, I have some good ideas to get people playing Quickdraw and even designing their own teams. More to come on that soon, but if you’re interested sign up for the email list to learn more!
Sprint Retrospective
I really like having a little structure to my publishing work, so overall the check in after two sprints is this is totally working to make me more productive. Still smoothing out some kinks but that’s to be expected.
Let’s start by reviewing the changes I implemented after last sprint.
- Sprints now end on Tuesdays. No problem with this one. Ok well it is Wednesday. I still agree with this decision I just need to not slip again.
- On top of sharing my output with targeted audience, post it on my blog and my BMG page, and completed stories in my website diary. I’ll keep doing this for now, I don’t think it necessarily helped with engagement but its a marathon not a sprint.
- Add some more smaller tasks to the spring backlog, as well as a sprint planning story. This worked well-ish. I tried to not let little stuff distract me from the main sprint priorities, but that probably happened a little.
- Publish each sprint retro. Yeah, no issue here.
While I do like the structure, it’s worth noting I was late by a day. I think the “why” here is pretty straight forward 1) I spent time doing design work outside of this project, and 2) I really didn’t want to jump back into playtesting. I’ll accept #1 for what it is, and be happy I was still making progress toward some of my long term publishing goals even if it affected my sprint. For #2, there’s not much to say. However, if I choose to look on the positive side I would say that being held accountable by my sprint timeline and publishing my review helped motivate me in the final days to make some solid progress. Without that arbitrary deadline, a forcing mechanism I usually hate, I would probably have made less progress.
So I think I still have some to learn about time estimation on my stories, and making sure I don’t wait till the last days of the sprint, but other than that I think it’s going well.
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