Summary
Overall, players enjoyed V5 of the game. They highlighted that the flexibility and room for strategic thinking gave them a stronger sense of control compared to games that rely heavily on chance (e.g., dice rolls, random card draws). One player appreciated how the game revealed new “hacks” and clever strategies over time, and another noted that the Residents’ ability to cooperate felt true to real life, where communities support one another.
We also received helpful feedback on balancing and engagement. Although the Developer could quickly push apartments out by one block, the requirement to restart from the starting square made it extremely slow to fully remove apartments from the board. Additionally, the Developer’s win condition—pushing out half of all apartments—felt too demanding, making it difficult for them to win. On the Residents’ side, most players relied on a single dominant strategy: rushing to Community Centers for permanent protection. Very few explored alternative tactics, and once a Resident had fully protected their apartments, they often felt they had nothing meaningful left to do besides helping teammates. Overall, there’s still a lot of room to tweak numbers (e.g. number of moves, representatives count, restrictions) to make the game a lot more balanced.
Playtest demographics and information
4 co-term students outside of class who didn’t know much about gentrification before.
Figure: Photos of playtest in Munger!
Feedback and Changes
You can find the entire playtest video here.
| Feedback | Timestamp and Quotes | Changes to Consider |
| Felt like the developer had too few moves to push apartments off the board quickly. | [0:46:14] “Maybe we give her [the developer] like 10 [moves].” | Increase the number of moves for the developer. |
| Even if the developer could push an apartment quickly from 10 moves, he/she had too many disadvantages such as having to go back to the start (meaning only 2 out of the 8 representatives were used), making it still difficult for the developer to win. | [0:49:27] “I would never, I would never be able to, like, reasonably, like, use all of these [representatives].” | Consider allowing developers to keep representatives on the board after pushing an apartment, “spawning” somewhere other than the start square, or other strategies to make use of the 8 representatives. An alternative option is to redetermine the point count or threshold for how the developer wins the game since pushing apartments fully off the board was a slow process. |
| Residents enjoyed cooperating with each other and felt that it reflected real-life communities supporting each other. However, they didn’t feel like they were competing with each other and didn’t feel incentivized to win individually. | [0:44:26] “I actually like that we could talk to each other, because I actually feel like that does kind of reflect the community aspect.” [0:44:48] “I think you’ll probably have to have some more mechanisms for the residents to, like, fuck each other over like, like, now it’s like, too collaborative, yeah, like there’s no incentive for like… we didn’t even know where, I guess it’s partially because we didn’t know we’re competing till the end…” [0:45:54] “So basically, like, we wish there was more like a sabotage element” [0:53:08] “Potentially, what if we had two people on if you had two people on a block, or you can remove a block, or, like, something like that.” | Residents suggested introducing more competitive or sabotage options |
| Community Center mechanics felt too centralized—players only targeted specific areas of the board and abandoned play in other areas | [0:46:27] “I noticed that I think we have to do something about the fact that it’s just all central one community center, so none of the other things on the board really got used. So whichever one’s the closest will always get chosen” [0:46:39] “Yeah. I say maybe it’s like, every time you use the community center, one of the things [representatives] on the community square has to leave.” | Consider allowing Residents to have more moves so they can implement more than strategy at the same time (e.g. targeting two Community Centers). |
| Once apartments are all protected, Residents have little to do | [0:47:01] “If Abbie [Resident] had protected all of her houses in time, then she wouldn’t have anything do. Maybe you know how in chess, when you get to the end of the board, you become a queen. Maybe after that she could go to the end of the board and get a house back. Or, like, either get a house that, really, she starts being able to, like, spawn community centers or something like that,” | Consider how residents can sabotage others (e.g. make a deal with the developer) but make sure this reflects the reality of gentrification and doesn’t harm game balance or engagement. |
| “Boxing out” strategy is an edge case where the developer could quickly win the game, giving Residents no chance of winning or even moving. This would end the game immediately. | [0:51:54] “I think this is one of the biggest issues, like the fact that these, like, you [developer] can block off entirely everything.” | Consider adding a rule where Developers are not allowed to “box out” the start square since this is a “cheat code.” |
| Residents felt there was only one clear strategy (permanently protect houses) instead of temporarily protecting them with 2 representatives which no one tried. This aligns with feedback from our previous playtest. | [0:52:51] “ None of us ever did, the two tokens on a temporary [apartment] thing.” | Re-consider the effects of the Community Center permanently protecting an apartment. This effect seems a little too strong and too good of an incentive, not only deterring Residents from alternative strategies but also making it harder for the Developer to win if many apartments are permanently protected. One idea is to not allow permanent protection or allow permanent protection to be only allowed once in a Community Center. |
| Players felt like there was more strategic thinking required than pure chance which made the game engaging. The Developer player mentioned that she liked how she picked up more tricks and strategies as she became more familiar with the game. | [0:53:58] “Wait, this is pretty fun. Yeah, I think, I think there’s just, like, a lot more flexibility in this game. And so, like, it’s a lot more like, gratifying, versus relying purely on rolling the dice. Like there is a strategy aspect here where you’re in control.” [0:54:37] “It’s a nice game where as you play more, you can figure out the new hacks. Obviously, like, the first time around,I don’t have the strategy down, but you realize, like, oh my god, I can do this, and that’s really fun.” | Positive feedback on changing from dice roll to a given number of moves! Keep going. |
