Playtest Notes: Watch Strangers Break Your Game

There is a specific kind of humility available only to people who watch a stranger play their game for the first time. It is not optional. You have to buy some.

The setup

Five players, one laptop, zero help. The rules of the session are fixed:

Say nothing while they play.
Write down every hesitation longer than two seconds.
Ask "what do you think the game wanted from you?" afterwards, then write that down too.

What broke

Three findings from the last round, in order of pain:

The tutorial was invisible. Players learned the dash during the moment they needed it, which sounded elegant until everyone described their first successful dash as an accident.
Death was loud, failure was silent. Near-misses — the most exciting event in the whole game — produced no feedback at all. The best moment had no sound, no flash, no screen shake. Nothing. It was the game's best joke told in whispers.
Score was a tax. Two players asked what the number meant, guessed wrong, and stopped looking at it.

Players are never confused by accident. If three people read the same thing three different ways, the thing is ambiguous. The bug is in the design, not the audience.

The fix list

Near-misses now get a 90ms hit-stop, a white flash on the trail, and a sound like a struck match. Score got demoted to a post-run summary where it can't interrupt anyone. And the first forced-dash moment now happens before the first hazard, so the accident happens safely.

The next session is scheduled. The laptop is ready. The ego has been warned.