Before P1, I was skeptical of teaching games. I had tried a few well-known ones, but even with impressive visuals, their mechanics rarely felt fun to me. They often seemed like prettier, more interactive textbooks. I had trouble imagining a game that could be both enjoyable and effective at teaching something useful.
Our project helped change that. We designed a travel game Don’t Die in Belladora where the map, rules, and goals all supported the same idea: helping players have a healthy, enjoyable trip. The cards introduced unexpected events, both good and bad, along with resources players could use. These situations connected feelings like surprise, anxiety, and frustration to things that could happen while traveling. We hoped that experiencing those emotions during play would make practical travel tips more memorable. At the end, players could “brag” about their trips, giving them a chance to revisit what happened and learn from each other’s experiences.
One of my favorite parts was playtesting with my teammates. As the creators, we were probably the most patient and invested players, but I was still surprised by how much more fun the game felt in action than in our discussions. Jessica’s Unknown cards were a big reason for that. I love unexpected events, and those cards made the trips feel unpredictable.
I also appreciated working in an all-women group. In our particular team, we shared an interest in making a gentler game. Rather than focusing mainly on competition or optimizing numbers, we wanted players to appreciate the experiences and scenery along the way. To us, that felt closer to why people travel in real life.
My biggest takeaway, though, was the value of playtesting. I now believe a rough or even boring prototype can become something exciting through repeated testing and feedback. Working on the rulebook made this especially clear. Initially, I thought the rules were good enough as long as everyone on our team understood them. Watching other people play showed me how wrong that assumption was. Even though our rules were not especially complicated, players spent a lot of time figuring out how to begin. Something obvious to us could still be confusing to someone seeing it for the first time.
Feedback from playtesters, teammates and TAs helped me repeatedly rethink both the wording and visual presentation of the rules. That process taught me how difficult and important it is to make instructions easy to understand.
More personally, I became less embarrassed about sharing unfinished work. I used to think of design as something private: work alone until I had something polished enough to represent my abilities. Now, I see showing imperfect work, gathering feedback, and revising repeatedly as a healthy part of designing. In future projects, I want to test earlier, listen more carefully, and let players help me discover what the game can become.
