We had a busy and exciting time at the India Science Festival (ISF) at Fergusson College this January, where we presented a board game version of Pralay. We had around 500 participants play our game :) AND, and all of them enjoyed playing. For us, as game developers, it was a pure joy to see audience meaningfully engage with the game. By meaninfully, we mean that the players “got” the game and strategised to win while ensure the best for the fictional world. We also had an activity, where we asked the participants to read the headlines to guess which ones were fake. The activity gathered equally good response facilitating conversations around misinformation, news framing, and emotions the headlines elicit.
This week, there was also a Hindu feature of our game, which very explains the mechanics of playing it. (non-paywalled link :P)
Feedback#
For us, the Festival was our first time user testing our game and we expected quite a few hiccups. A major internal question we had was regarding how the tokens move ahead, which we eventually figured out. However, there were some more points that came up:
- Game Mechanics:
- Make a point calculation matrix
- Advantages: Ensure balance
- Content: Use more accessible language to rewrite
- Design: too many tokens on the board
- Aesthetics: the colours, game cards, and so on
- Roleplaying: Ensure that the player is incentivised to be the character
- Balance between story and the board game mechanics
- Rethink Jalwa Index—how much should it fluctuate?
- Rethink Happiness Index—what happens when Janta are too happy/too sad?
- How are Jalwa and Happiness Index is moved? What do the units mean?
ISF Gallery#
