To recap, Heartland is a game where players roleplay as farmers in the Central Valley, who are tasked with delivering the food necessary to supply the rest of the United States. The Heartland team did yet another short playtest with a group of three in the Mirrielees apartment among three Stanford students in varying STEM backgrounds, with little to no background knowledge on farming (one student had a grandparent that was a farmer). We aimed to test these students’ retention of the various challenges that farmers have to face on a daily basis, primarily focusing on environmental and legal factors.
As a TL;DR of playtest results, we revamped the interface to better onboard new players, balanced a lot of cards (cutting a few and adding a few), rearranged the ordering of different phases for clarity, streamlined some descriptions, revamped many crop cards to give money over time, and added “Challenge Cards” which aim to add an extra layer of strategy.
Our learning goal with this game is both Information (what do farmers have to face on a regular basis?) and Attitude (who are farmers, to you? how hard do they have it?). To determine the learning effectiveness of our game, we asked our players (1) how they felt experiencing the random events that occurred throughout the game through the lens of a farmer in the Central Valley, (2) which events they thought were the most impactful/brutal, and (3) what their strategy was with planting and dealing with competition against opposing farmers’ planting. As shown below in our quotes, our playtesters felt the brunt of the farming life through their reactions to specific events, and could list memorable events (e.g., the Red Flag wildfire) which impacted their playstyle. One thing that we noticed was that playtesters struggled to recall more specific historical events from the game (which we want to emphasize more), so we are working on this factor more for our next session on Monday.
Figure 1: Image of playtesters playing the prototype of our game
Quotes / Notes from Initial Playtesting:
- “This says turn (pointing to plot board), and this says round (pointing to card)”
- “What are resource cards?”
- Need differentiation in resources and crops
- “Wait, be right back, choose one of them for me (referring to drawing phase)”
- Chose a card without even reading all of the options; reduce the number of crop types
- “(looking at the new governmental hazard) Wait this is terrible”
- “(looking at the wildfire hazard) NOOOOOOOO WHAT”
- “So, everything grows, yaaaay”
- “I like that the theme is very strong, every part of this game is so complicated… for example, the different time and the amount of space a card takes, or relinquish crops to make compost … and learning about these government and environmental things”
- “The game is a little bit slow, like choosing one card and then having the next person draw one card”
- “Okay I need to look at them… sunflowers, weed, almond, lemon tree… this is so hard guys, I don’t know how to do this… sorry guys, one second”
- Potentially reduce the number of crop types
- “(for Multi-Day Drought) Might be easier to say crops don’t grow this round rather than they are set back one round”
- “In our group, there was a lot of confusion about cards and whether they were for this round, or next round”
- “Wait, so what are resources?”
- Need differentiation between resources and crops, since they’re in the same pile
- “What do plot points mean again?”
- ” I like the tactile point of the board, like having pieces to move through the money tracker and the visual progress of the crops growing”
- “Coming up with a strategy was a little hard”
- “Do these cards go in the discard pile? Do I just leave it here?”
- “So there’s some that apply to the current round and some that apply to the next round… oh I see”
- “I liked the interaction that we had with each others’ boards… in Wingspan, the only way to interact with other players is preventing other players from taking cards”
- “I think you can change the ways that things are done … [it would be less confusing] if we drew the event before the drawing round”
Figure 2: Image of the old board versus the new board (top = old board, bottom = new board)
Problems we identified / changes we’ve already made:
- Problem: Onboarding was difficult with the options at their disposal, and it was unclear what players were supposed to do each turn
- Fix: Revise the interface of the board to include a brief instructions list, so players know what they can do
- Problem: Game isn’t chaotic enough to reflect the state of farmers amongst government regulation
- Fix: Removed the “Nothing Happened” event cards, and now two events are drawn every turn (government AND environmental)
- Problem: People aren’t able to modify the state of others’ boards very much
- Fix: Added more “Resource Card” options that allow players to do more with other players
- Fix: Players can now compost their cards when they have too many to give their current crops a bonus, or opposing farmers a debuff
- Problem: The game stalls when plot points are full; also felt like it lacked strategy / potential for mastery
- Fix: There is now a “Challenge Card” component to the game, where players can complete smaller goals to gain more plot points for planting crops
- This challenge card also allows us to embed more historical moments in the game by referencing events where certain crops/actions were prioritized
- Fix: There is now a “Challenge Card” component to the game, where players can complete smaller goals to gain more plot points for planting crops
- Problem: Some events were confusing and required players to remember what turn they were active
- Fix: All events are now immediate and do not roll over into separate turns
- Fix: Events now happen before the drawing phase, to reduce confusion and allow players to choose more strategically after the event is drawn
- Problem: Confusion between “Crop Card” and “Resource Card” options, since they were from the same pile
- Fix: Added new backing to all of the cards (crops + resources are labeled as “Supply” to not give away information) for differentiation
- Problem: Wording was inconsistent (“turn” vs. “round”, “delay” vs. “set back” vs “+1 round”) in some cards
- Fix: Streamlined wording across crop cards, resource cards, event cards, and challenge cards
- Problem: People did not really strategize based on crop choices
- Fix: Exaggerated features of specific crops (e.g., oilseeds are harder to grow but give bigger benefits, fruits are fast to grow but give money over time)
- Fix: Certain crops now give “money over time” (e.g., apple trees grow apples over time, which grants $500 per round)
- Fix: Removed some crops that did not add much to the game (shortened choices from 11 crops -> 8 crops)
Overall, although the tweaks look simple, they change up the gameplay dynamic a lot. Instead of mindlessly choosing crops, we hope that players now become more mindful of what they choose to plant and what the “best strategy” is amidst surviving with natural disasters and regulation. Looking forward to playtesting more in class on Monday!
