It was initially difficult to get people to play the game, especially given the fact that I was traveling home last weekend. Nonetheless, I did manage to recruit my younger siblings to be play-testers. I thought that they would be interesting subjects to play the game as the premise of Cruel2BKind is to give compliments to other opponents, which I know would be difficult for my siblings due to sibling rivalry.
To compensate for the fact that there were only three players, I modded the game such that I had the players pick a number from 1-10. The player who chose the number closest to the one I was thinking of initiated the game and got to decide which player they wanted to attack. I altered the weapons in order to make the game more intriguing by having three weapons be associated with a phrase that my siblings would not normally say to each other (Weapon A: “I love you”, Weapon B: “You have a nice…” Weapon C: “You are the best sibling”). The weapon hierarchy was the same as in the original game. It was quite hilarious to see the two oldest players squirm as they felt uncomfortable expressing their love and/or appreciation for one another.
In the second round, we introduced a bounty collection component to the game, allowing a player to collect the object of their opponent after defeating them. Given the age range of my players, this part of the game became chaotic as they were quite unwilling to part ways with their personal objects. In the future, I would have modified the game such that each player would give away pieces of candy if they are defeated by their opponent as they would not be personally attached to the item.
Overall, it was quite fun to watch my siblings play the game. However, it would have been interested to see the game be played outdoors by a group of strangers as it was originally intended.
