First unguided playtest of GridCore

Dr. Lauren Woolsey is an astrophysicist and college professor from Michigan.

I had contacted her after stumbling upon her website CGS unit when seeking out an unguided playtesting experience as a first time game designer. I did not expect the support I received and what I would get out of this process.

Lauren played two full games with different audiences, returned detailed written notes, an annotated rulebook, and followed up with a video call that is significantly shaping the direction of GridCore’s development.

One fundamental change that surfaced for me was that I said the game values “interpretive divergence”, but this wasn’t actually true in terms of game design. The scenario cards had been optimized almost in an opposite way! In Lauren’s testing, only 1 - 2 signals ended up in the tray across two games !

What I wanted to express in the game is different - I wanted both “act from instinct” but also encounter the other players perspectives as something real at the table, and Lauren’s feedback gave me the clarity to see the gap - “solving” the scenarios by process of elimination was not the experience I had intended to design.

Lauren’s  experience and competencies (published designer, competition judge, tenured professor and Harvard trained astrophysicist ) together with the precision and generosity with which she provided the feedback - created a depth to the feedback that I still can’t fully wrap my head around, an opportunity to make the game what it wants to be, that would have been hard or impossible for me to access otherwise.

Her feedback is helping clarify not just where the game needs changes and refinement, but how players were actually engaging with it.

For example, Lauren reported that players naturally shifted into solving the scenarios to feel confident in their choices, rather than interpreting them through their temporarily assigned Core (eg courage).

This was an incredibly helpful nuance to understand - how players will naturally interact with this system, even though I had intended the interaction differently (I assumed everyone will bring only and automatically  their personal interpretations).

One  new design clarity emerging then is that the goal isn’t to change players’ motivations, or requiring them to be authentic, but removing certainty as a reliable strategy.

She also surfaced where mechanics that felt meaningful to me, such as OffGrid and the end-game reveal, were not yet showing up in player behavior or experience. There were many other refinements too that she noted and I will be incorporating in the next version. I was glad to hear that the scenarios were memorable and the game was described as having solid aspects already.

Lauren’s feedback didn’t push toward a single solution. Instead, it clarified the design space - how new rules, more uncertainty or different social interaction could shift the experience.  This gave me a clear direction for the next phase of testing. This unguided playtest revealed a clearer picture of how far along the game actually is (or isn’t), and how much meaningful work is still ahead. The neat thing of course is that this is the only way it will produce a work of art, one that clearly captures moments in time.

Specific design levers i will work on next: making card mappings less solvable, and adding constraints (like unique slot selection) that increase interpretations aka “play by instinct”, with player order starting defined as clockwise from reader.

Lauren’s willingness to engage seriously with a first-time designer at this stage of the process was generous and rare. The game is starting to figure out what it is, and is providing insights back to me!