It is 2019 and Imperial Struggle is so close to players I can almost taste it. Thanks to Joel Toppen’s heroic work on the VASSAL test kit, the game has received much more intensive playtesting than it ever has – probably more in the last four months than in the rest of the development cycle combined.

Playtesting is such a challenge. Often, a designer will rely on two types of playtesting. The first is repeat play from a trusted group, sometimes a face-to-face hobby group that is generous with its time and tolerant enough to try a game that is definitely not finished. That type of testing is wonderful, but the same people testing a game against one another over and over will inevitably lead to favored lines of play getting much more play than others.

The second type of playtesting is to show the game widely at conventions and game gatherings. This has the great advantage of showing the designer how teachable the game is, where the rules gotchas are, and exposing the game to many sets of fresh eyes. But, typically, a given player will only play the game once at a convention, and so they will not be able to give good feedback on the depth or robustness of a system or mechanic. (They will be able to give good feedback on its curb appeal.) I guarantee this is how 99% of broken strategies survive playtesting – the wider group a designer consults just doesn’t engage with the game deeply enough to find them, and the narrow, dedicated group develops a favored approach and stops testing the limits. For example, if your dedicated test group over-indexes on historical aficionados, you may not see much testing of strategies that don’t make historical sense (but are allowed by the rules). Also, in-person testing doesn’t help the designer learn the difficulties of a pair or group trying to teach themselves the game.

Electronic testing, more and more popular these days, changes the first option’s logistics quite a lot. It allows distant players to test the game, expanding playtester pools. The disadvantage is that physical usability can fall by the wayside. For example, in Imperial Struggle, some spaces confer Advantages that allow extra actions on the board. In the VASSAL kit these are defined on tooltips the players can see by hovering on the relevant spaces. In the physical version, these will probably end up being tiles that players take when they gain control and flip when they use. Those are two very different player experiences, and electronic testing doesn’t help with the latter one at all.

Imperial Struggle has undergone both types of testing and a multitude of tweaks and changes to systems and mechanics since Joel made the kit available to playtesters, and I believe the game is better and more fun now than it has ever been. So what, one wonders, does the remaining work look like?

• Testing has identified some usability improvements that we can make to the map;
• We need to get the player aids and war displays designed and laid out;
• The counters are in good shape but need some art love;
• Some of the events are a little underpowered given the constraints players must overcome to play them; and
• I need to write a juicy extended example of play for the Playbook.

That’s it! That’s all that’s left. I have given myself until the end of February to address every remaining game design issue. While that’s happening, I’ll collaborate closely with Terry and Mark to get the art done as efficiently as possible… and then Jason and I will be proud to make our Imperial Struggle yours.

---