What do Prototypes Prototype?

Our game idea is part body twister and part truth-or-dare. Body twister means that in place of “right hand red” all players need to make contact with a specific player’s specific body part (“touch Tara’s elbow”).

1. Does touching other players’ body parts make people uncomfortable?

This is a big question I want our prototype to answer since it is the core of our game. When I imagine playing this with friends, it would feel comfortable, but I’m curious how this will play out among people who aren’t as close (e.g. classmates). To prototype this, we just need the cards to signify body parts and the spinner to signify players. And crucially, we need to test with a group of non-best-friends. Then, we can watch how the body twister component of our game makes players feel. I’m imagining that it will make people feel somewhat awkward at the start but I’m hoping this decreases while playing the game.

2. Does a card-and-spinner game setup work fluidly?

While typical Twister just uses a spinner, we need both a stack of cards and a spinner to make our game work. We considered doing it entirely with cards, but they’d need to be dry-erase for players to write down their names, and at that point a spinner feels easier. We want to test whether it feels bulky/cumbersome to use both a spinner and deck. We’ll use the cardboard spinner and paper cards we made in combination to test this. I’m guessing this will not feel too bulky for players.

3. Does writing down names on a spinner make logical sense to players?

This is an implementation question. We need players to write their names down on a spinner. We chose to make a spinner with 8 spaces and ask players to somewhat evenly distribute their names across the segments. This gives us a max of 8 players. I’m wondering if this logic might confuse players, especially for groups with an odd number of players. My hope is that it makes intuitive sense and players will not mind the inherent unfairness since Twister is a low-stakes game to begin with.

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