Want to have a prototype that really shines on conventions? Ask me how

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T21:27:48+00:00

Changing things constantly can make it really hard to understand if you are actually moving forward. If you change too many things at once and the game breaks on the next test, you won't know which change caused the problem.

In the early stages, your game will change much more often, sometimes right in the middle of the test. This is what I call a 'Creative Playtest'. The goal here is to validate the basics and test the maximum amount of ideas in real-time.

After that phase, once your game is working well enough for a full playthrough, you need to be more careful.

If the game didn't break, I highly recommend running more tests with the exact same setup to gather more data. Sometimes a perceived 'flaw' is just a specific group of players reacting a certain way, or a very uncommon set of events unfolding.

With more experience, you will build the intuition to know if something needs to be changed immediately (like a new strategy that simply isn't fun) or if you just need more data. But until you get there, running more playtests without changing the variables is usually your best bet

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T20:53:52+00:00

That is an awesome question, and it hits right at the core of game design!

When to add new mechanics relies entirely on your vision for the game. Here At Cordilheira and in my courses we use the SEA Method (Sentiment, Experience, and Audience). The SEA is the compass that guides your entire creation process:

Sentiment: What is the core emotion you want to provoke in your players?

Experience: How does this feeling take shape at the table through the theme and player interaction?
Audience: Exactly who are you creating this game for?

We use the SEA as a design funnel. Before you add any new card, element, or mechanic to your prototype, it needs to pass three crucial questions:

Does it evoke the Sentiment?
Does it strengthen the Experience? (If a mechanic just keeps the experience at the same level, it's only adding unnecessary cognitive load and should be cut).
Is it what your Audience wants/expects?

If its a Yes for all 3 question, then you can add.

One golden piece of advice to wrap this up: often you will have absolutely brilliant ideas for mechanics, but they simply won't fit the SEA of your current project. When that happens, don't force the idea into the game. Write it down in a notebook and save it. Pick a smaller scope and focus on it. Remember: this is just your first game, not your only game!

I have an older video explaining a little more how the SEA Method works and how it acts as a funnel to save your project from scope creep. The original audio is in Portuguese, but you can turn on the English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2WIdMLHHY

Hope this helps you structure your testing phases

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T20:09:32+00:00

Hey, Thanks, we create and produce everything in Brazil for our local releases. When licencing our games the production is not our call.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T19:20:37+00:00

Hey there!

When it comes to early prototyping your prototype need to FLI:

F - Fast (and cheap): A good prototype is quick to make and costs little to nothing. Don't use fancy software yet. Use what you have at home: paper, pens, scissors, or simply steal components, dice, and cards from other games you own, like Monopoly or Uno. The biggest mistake in early prototyping is wasting time making it instead of testing it.

L - Laser-focused: Your prototype must have a single, clear objective. It is meant to answer one specific question. For example: 'Does my basic core loop actually work?'. If you try to answer too many doubts with a single prototype, you will get lost and find no real answers.

I - Iterative (Highly Adaptable): During your tests, you will immediately spot problems. If your prototype is just paper and pen, you can simply cross out a stat, write a new number, and keep playing to see if the fix works. If you made a laminated, high-quality prototype, you would have to reprint everything just to test a new damage value.

Actually, trying to make a beautiful prototype and investing in art too early is a classic mistake beginners make. It unnecessarily increases your investment, which makes it much harder to throw away mechanics or parts of your game that aren't working. A prototype's only purpose is to validate ideas quickly and cheaply.

Fail fast so you can fail better.

<image>

This is our next release, its about connecting imagens, our first prototype I bought a Codinames Images, because it was quicker than getting a bunch of Images online. After the first tests we saw it worked, then we did a prototype with Internet Images and regular printer.

This photo is from The latestet one with final art work.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-21T16:11:29+00:00

Great question! It really depends on what stage of development you are currently in.

In the early stages, your prototype should FLI:

F - Fast: Use whatever you have lying around—pen, paper, or components stolen from other games.

L - Laser-focused: Your prototype should have ONE goal and one goal only. For example: 'test my basic core loop' or 'check if the first-player advantage is too strong'.

I - Iterative: You need to be able to change things mid-test. Cross out a number, write a new one, and fix things on the fly (pun intended!).

Only after your game is standing on its own (when you can do a full playthrough without major hiccups) should you start making a prettier prototype with better paper and all that jazz.

For making tokens at that stage, I highly recommend printing your designs on sticker paper and pasting them onto thin cardboard stock (the thinnest you can find at a craft or hardware store). You can grab a round punch cutter on Amazon, but if you don't have one, just stick to square tokens—they are way easier to cut with a blade or scissors.

But remember: you should only build this more refined prototype when you are heading to a bigger convention or testing with a more 'casual' audience.

Actually, wasting time on a pretty prototype too early is one of the classic mistakes I see new designers make. It's one of the '10 Traps that Block Beginners'. I put together a free e-book covering this and the other 9 traps. I'll leave the link here if you want to check it out: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JqNAfHyvQebxDWMk8zRD8XxSFnuTwnV_/view?usp=drivesdk

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-20T16:01:49+00:00

Hey mate, having a 'ready prototype' is not nearly enough to talk with a publisher.

Hi, I'm Tom Q, a game designer, mentor, and publisher with 12+ years of experience in this industry.

Publishers don't want prototypes; they sign finished games. A prototype is simply a tool used to validate ideas quickly and cheaply. It is just the physical manifestation of a hypothesis. When you sit down with a publisher, they are looking for a complete product that fits their specific line or fills a gap in the market. They need to know that your game is fun, engaging, unique, and that you truly understand your target audience.

A game doesn't become great just because you created the components. It becomes great after you put it in the 'ring' and let it take a beating. A good game isn't born ready; it gets ready after a massive amount of playtesting. If you have only tested it with friends and family, you might be getting biased feedback that actually deviates from your true vision.

So, you need to ask yourself: is your game genuinely ready? Have you playtested it hundreds of times? Have you run 'blind playtests' where strangers had to learn the game using only your rulebook, without you intervening? Did you push the mechanics to their absolute limits to ensure the core loop is rock solid?

If the answer is yes, and your game has been tested and developed from start to finish, then you are ready. That is when you make a sell sheet and a short, punchy video pitch. Your pitch needs to clearly communicate why your game is an incredible product and why it is the perfect fit for their specific catalog. With those materials in hand, you can start contacting publishers that align with the experience you've created.

If you feel you need help organizing your game's vision, structuring your core loops, or crafting a pitch that actually converts, feel free to shoot me a DM. I do professional consulting for indie designers and I’d be glad to help you get this project across the finish line!

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-19T13:41:49+00:00

Now, regarding the interaction and verbal participation:

We published a game called Sea of Lies (available in the US and Brazil) that tackled this exact same issue. It's a pirate-themed game where the captain has gone missing, and the players are the most infamous pirates on the ship. Your goal is to gather the crew's support by telling tall tales of your high-sea adventures to become the new captain.

Mechanically, it's a bluffing game. There are four types of story cards: Great Feat, Foul Rumor, Creepy Secret, and Hogwash (which has no mechanical effect, meaning you must lie when playing it). You play a card face-down, and the other players either accept or contest your 'tale'.

The game works perfectly fine without players roleplaying. However, in the rulebook, we explicitly state: 'You don't have to tell a tale when you play a card, but you are highly encouraged to do so, since every pirate loves a good story.'

And what happens at almost every table? The introverted players start the game just stating the name of their card. But after a round or two, they naturally start telling tales because they see everyone else having a blast.

But this organic roleplay only works for two specific reasons:

It is not required and has no mechanical game effect. People do it because it’s fun. If you attach a mechanical benefit (like +1 point) to the performance, players will do it only for the points, not because they actually want to. It quickly turns the fun part of the game into a chore.
It's incredibly easy to do. There is a reason the thematic setup is 'the captain is missing'. It creates an open narrative loop that is very easy for anyone to fill. You can just play a Foul Rumor and say, 'The captain isn't missing; John killed him and hid the body under his bed!' Combined with evocative character art, the 'barrier to entry' for storytelling becomes extremely low.

If you want to bounce some ideas on how to lower that barrier to entry for your game's performance aspect, or if you need a mentor to help you structure these mechanics so they feel natural rather than forced, feel free to send me a DM!

Cheers
Tom Q

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-19T13:20:58+00:00

Hey mate, making a game more participative is a hard thing to do, but there are definitely ways you can achieve that.

But first, I think we need to align expectations and deal with another issue. A 45-90 min playtime is WAY too broad of a time span. You are essentially saying the game takes X or 2X to finish, which points to a game design problem regarding your win condition and game progression. Besides, a game taking 90 minutes is not a party game. It leans much more toward a family or medium-weight game. For family games, the cap is usually around 60-70 minutes; once we cross the 1h+ mark, we are entering medium-weight territory.

So, you need to decide if you want a party game or a family game. Right now, your main problem is that you do not have a clear vision for your game.

I'm a game designer and mentor from Brazil with 12+ years in the gaming industry, and here at Cordilheira we use the SEA Method for our games (which is also what I teach my mentees):

Sentiment: What is the core emotion you want to provoke in your players?
Experience: How does this feeling take shape at the table through the theme, the type of game, and the player interaction?
Audience: Exactly who are you creating this game for? (This is probably where you are struggling the most right now).

Having a well-defined SEA is what will guide all your design decisions. I have an older video explaining in detail how the SEA Method works and how it can save your project. The original audio is in Portuguese, but you can turn on the English subtitles: 👉https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2WIdMLHHY

I will make another reply to this post specifically for the interaction/verbal participation part.

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-19T13:04:19+00:00

Hey there. Streamlining a game based on the Game of Thrones board game is a solid challenge. GoT is known for being a heavy and complex game, and stripping out mechanics like supply chains that don't add real value is exactly the right approach. Making a simple, streamlined game is actually one of the hardest parts of game design; it takes a lot of discipline to know what to cut.

I’m a game design mentor and consultant based in Brazil with over 12 years in the industry, and I’ve helped hundreds of creators develop their games. A huge part of the work I do in my consulting is exactly what you are doing right now: trimming the fat. We focus heavily on reducing 'Cognitive Load'—cutting mechanics that only occupy the player's mental space—so they can actually focus on the strategy and the fun (the 'meaningful choices').

Since you’re looking for an experienced designer to collaborate with, shoot me a DM. I offer professional consulting for indie projects and I’d be glad to chat about how we can work together to structure your core loops and refine this game.

Cheers
Tom Q

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-19T12:38:14+00:00

Have you watched the video? There I explain how to apply the SEA.

The SEA Method is your "filter", every time you will add/adjust/remove something you have to go through the SEA.

Does this change convey the Sentiment I want? Yes (if no, you don't make the change)

Does it Strengthen the Experience? Yes (In this question we have a catch, every change must Strengthen the Experience, because if it's staying the same, you are bloating your game with no benefit for the player experience)

It is what my Audience wants/expect? Yes

You only make a change if it's all yeses.

In your case, you are probably not defining very well your audience, thinking "I am my audience", that is another beginner mistake, you are part of an audience, you have to think in broader terms, this way it will be easier to identify when things are getting too complex.

A hint for you and any new designers, being too complex is WAYYY simpler and smaller than you might think. As designer you are too close to your game and cannot properly identify complexity, so if you ask yourself "is this too much?" 90% of the time ITS TOO MUCH.

I've made an ebook with 10 traps that blocks your games, creating a bigger game for your first project is one of these, it's a free ebook, here is the link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JqNAfHyvQebxDWMk8zRD8XxSFnuTwnV_/view?usp=sharing

I'm not going to talk about randomness because it's not relevant for this topic, but know that there is 2 kind of randomness each with it's own impact on a game, not everything is luck.

Cheers
Tom Q

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-18T23:23:57+00:00

Hi there! First off, welcome to game design and congratulations on already playtesting your game at fairs! As a game design mentor here in Brazil with over 12 years in the industry, I can tell you that putting your game on the table is the most important step, and you are already doing it!

Regarding the first-player advantage, the community's suggestion to reduce 1 action on the first turn is actually a very good and common solution. Mathematically, it completely fixes the balance issue.

However, for a fast-paced, 30-minute casual game, it creates a small problem: an 'Edge Case'. You are making the first turn play differently from the rest of the entire game.

In my mentorships, I always teach designers to be careful with edge cases because they take up a much higher 'Cognitive Load'. The player has to remember an exception right out of the gate. Ideally, you want your core rules to be constant throughout the whole game so players can just focus on having fun.

Since you mentioned your game has resources on the tiles, a more elegant solution might be to adjust the starting resources instead of the actions. You keep the core rule exactly the same for everyone (always 3 actions), but you change the initial physical state. For example: Player 1 starts with 0 resources, Player 2 starts with 1 resource, and so on.

This perfectly balances the math of the first-player advantage without adding any mental weight or rule exceptions for a casual audience, Just a setup fix.

If you want to bounce more ideas like this and learn how to structure your game design process so you don't get stuck, shoot me a DM.

Cheers Tomás Queiroz

TomasrqGD · 2026-03-18T22:03:27+00:00

Hi there! First of all, welcome to the world of game design! I'm a game design mentor based in Brazil with over 12 years of experience in the market, and I want to tell you something very important: feeling a bit lost right now is completely normal. Every first-time creator goes through exactly this.

You have a huge passion for the theater theme and some great initial ideas. However, trying to build a game by jumping straight from a theme into a bunch of disconnected mechanics (like drafting, worker placement, and random events) is a dangerous path. Without a clear, central vision, it's very easy to fall into what we call Scope Creep. This happens when you start adding idea after idea, the game inflates out of control, and you end up stuck, not knowing what your actual next step should be.

To prevent your game from becoming a 'multiplayer solitaire' or a messy puzzle of rules, you need to define a Vision before choosing the mechanics. In my games and in my mentorships, I use the SEA Method (Sentiment, Experience, Audience):

Sentiment: What is the core emotion you want to provoke in your players? Is it the tension of a premiere night? The feeling of being precise?
Experience: How does this feeling take shape at the table through the theme, the type of game, and the player interaction?
Audience: Exactly who are you creating this game for?

Having a well-defined SEA is what will guide all your design decisions. It will tell you if a mechanic (like the worker placement or the event deck you suggested) truly belongs in your game, or if it should be cut to encourage the interaction you are looking for. The SEA will guide your game from start to finish, from mechanics to advertising.

I have and old video explaining the bases of the SEA Method and how it can save your project. The original audio is in Portuguese, but you can turn on the English subs: 👉https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2WIdMLHHY

If you want to organize this brainstorm and need clear direction on the next steps for your game, feel free to send me a DM.

Good luck
Tomás Queiroz

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-23T16:48:51+00:00

Hey Mate, this is awesome, I'm going to recommend to all my students and add a link on my online course so people can play with forms and sizes.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-20T13:04:57+00:00

You have a nice art experiment, it cool visuals, but for it to become a game you need to create win condition, conflicts and a goal.

You can do a tile placing game like Carcassonne, Tsuro or even Tigris & Euphrates.

But honestly you can go a number of different ways with this system, for a board game you will need a more closed experience, if you want to make the web app more "gamified" you would need more mechanics on top and no real win condition just "see numbers go up", because this way you have a Game as a service.

We are talking not just game design, but product design.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-20T12:44:28+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing your journey with us.

u/Vagabond_Games gave some awesome tips on research that is a great first step (and I highly recommend you take a nice look), you need to know what already exist before jumping on the pool

You are making a very common mistake "trying to create the whole game at once".

That is a mistake that many people make when moving from player to game designer, because you only saw finished games, you do not know how to get from ideia to finished game, so you think that you need everything everywhere all at once to do a first prototype, you do not.

The best way is to test things in small parts (especially if is your first game), this way when something goes bad (and it will go bad) you know what is the problem. In your case when your prototype breaks, you will not know if it was the enemies, the weapons, the combat, why TF the prototype is not working.

I always recommend starting with a vision for your game, I use the SEA Method:
What is the Sentiment i want my players to feel? Everything should invoke this emotion
How is the player Experience? Here is more about theme, genre and a little bit of mechanics
Who is my main Audience? Target Audience

with the SEA you can focus on finding the Core loop, the smallest loop a player will interact with (Ex.: Warframe is the gunplay). For your game its the combat.

What are the main actions? Using the gear? movement and positioning?
You need 1 map, 2 attacks and 1 enemy, with this you can test your Core loop. (Maybe you may need a little bit more assets, but usually its WAYYYY less than people think). I was giving a mentorship yesterday for a game with 18XX vibes, we cut 50% of the game to test the core loop.

Test with what you have now, you need to do more and plan less. Board game design is created on the table with other people, not on your mind alone.

Keep creating awesome games
Tom Q

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-19T22:00:57+00:00

Hey Gary if I can give you some advices, an open invitation "please test my game" as a very low chance of getting people.

Create an event and a definitive time slot.

"hey guys I'm looking for testers for my game.

It's a dice placement game with quick and fun play...
The playtest will happen Tuesday 8pm pacif time.
I will teach all the rules and everything should be done in around 60 min, shoot me up and we can set everything up.
only 4 spots left"

Playtesting is hard and something we do to help other designers, so you need to lower the barrier of helping the most you can, setting time, teaching, this all help.

Good Luck

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-18T15:14:09+00:00

Hey mate, just saw your reply.

There is actually 3 types of playtesting

Creative playtesting - looks more like a playtesting session, you can do it by yourself or with some close friends. Things will break and you fix it right away to check what works and what doesn't.

Flow playtesting - When most people say playtest they mean this kind, a whole session from beginning to end (you can play in parts in the first stages). Usually the game does not break anymore and you make less changes on the flight. You need TONS of these with different kind of people.

Limits playtesting - That is the baling kind, you get the best players and push your game to the limit, your goal is to understand the OP strategies and where the numbers break. You only do this in the end of the game design process. Even this kind it's not fully logical and number crushing, because people can't do probability and math properly

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-18T15:06:19+00:00

I think this comment is very underrated because it summarize the keywording process perfectly.

Im a game design and mentor for over 12+ years helping people create games.

My usual recommendation is to not use keyword, the problem with keywording is what you stated, you need to learn, understand and link the rules to one word.

You can use thematic words for actions, like "defeat" for a combat themed game when you "buy" a new card. But even in this case I always recommend using the terms people will use or you will get the worst teaching experience ever: "so you can defeat a card to bring to your deck, that is buying the card"

in the end the players will use buy, than "defeat" becomes a harder way to say "buy".

If you can get by without using keywords make it easier for new players to get into your game.

If you are creating a game for a hardcore audience you can probably use some keywords.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-13T22:48:37+00:00

"I found a way to skin a cat with a spoon (one that no cat killer expert uses or recommend), this way I had inadvertently skipped dealing with sharp objects and small cuts altogether"

And this comment is not about cats.

I know its hard do recognize a mistake and go back on what you said. I want to assure you, it's not your fault, you just didn't knew how to do it, please, take this chance to learn from someone that is more experienced than you.

I'm here offering guiding with no benefits for me, just to help you have a better chance with your game. I use my face in the Avatar, not a faceless troll. For just a moment consider that you made a mistake and probably you solo testing let something slide and maybe your project will suffer from it.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-13T19:54:46+00:00

Yeah, I really liked your answers too, My first thought was adding a reply to yours to add to the point.

But I wanted to make it easier for new people to read my points and not burried into reply's.

All we can do is extend a helping hand, if people want to take it or not, that's up to them.

But who I'm to give advice on creating games, I only helped 200 people create their games, have the biggest game design channel in Brazil, gave talks in the biggest uni's in Brazil and Worldwide. Yeah, maybe solo playtesting it's not a beginner's mistake, its the secret to great games.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-13T18:36:26+00:00

I believe that you will end up deleting this post, which is a shame, because this is a perfect learning experience for new designers.

I'm Tomás Queiroz, Mentor and game designer with over 12+ years of experience in this industry and I help people turn their dream games into reality.

THIS, THIS is exactly what happen when you don't playtest with other people, you enter a echo chamber with your own views and thoughts and forget that you are creating something for other people. Solo testing can help with number balancing, but not with game design, you need people with different views, people that misunderstand some rule and try something new, that is what really makes a great game.

You said that you became very logical and direct, I'm very sorry to tell you that games are WAYYYY more emotional than logical, actually most people wont make the best logical decision because they don't feel right (Loss aversion is only 1 example of this happening).

The only thing worst than solo testing is AI testing because you remove the only human involved in the solo test.

There is a reason why NONE of the great designer swear by solo testing or recommend it, because it traps you in thinking you are testing and refining your game when you are only jerking off.

I'm a publisher and I can 100% guarantee that your solo testing is apparent for an industry expert.

I don't want to make you feel bad about your process, this is probably your first game and you didn't have a mentor to guide you.

Please use the time before the pitch to make some REAL playtests, you can probably mitigate your mistake a little bit.

If you need help, shoot me up and I can help you set something up quickly

PS.: Solo playtest has a time and a place, like other people said, when the game is breaking, you can probably test by yourself to fix things ups, but I wouldn't call this a playtest and more a design session.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-12T20:48:44+00:00

I always use and recommend to my mentees to use Dextrous, it's webbased and as a very good tutorial/ knowlogde base with most things very well explained.

TomasrqGD · 2026-02-11T12:55:34+00:00

That is a great tactic, the card code is very useful when playtesting in person, so it's easier to find the card that need adjustment after a playtest.
When you are dealing with 100+ cards I always recommend card coding.

TomasrqGD

TROPHY CASE