P2: Playtest Prototype – Saharat “Game” Laksanasut (สหรัฐ ลักษณะสุต)

My game, What We Carry Forward, started as an interactive fiction project about Ang Sila, my hometown in Thailand. The player took the role of Saithan, a volunteer preparing an exhibition in an old house. By exploring objects such as a water container, a stone mortar, and a fishing net, players could learn about everyday life in the past. They also made choices about which stories to bring back and how to represent them in the exhibition labels.

I wanted players to learn about the community while thinking about why different people might make different decisions. However, after two rounds of playtesting, I realized that learning about the objects was not enough. I also needed to give players a stronger reason to care about the people and their choices.

Figure 1: A screenshot of the digital prototype.

First and Second Playtests

During the first playtest, P01 spent approximately ten minutes playing the paper prototype, not including the feedback discussion and Google Form. P01 chose to take the water home to the aunt and focus on the work involved in collecting and carrying water.

Some parts seemed to work well. P01 rated the clarity of the cards 5/5, could distinguish a historical detail from an invented one, and felt that the choices affected the final exhibition label. At the same time, P01 suggested that adding a personal account, such as a journal, could help players connect more closely with the people behind the objects.

I took this suggestion into the next version. Before the second playtest, I turned the paper prototype into a digital prototype game with three object journeys. I added more situations and follow-up conversations, hoping that giving players more time with the characters before returning to the exhibition labels would make the experience more meaningful.

Figure 1: The second playtest on October 20, 2026 (P02).

What I Learned from the Second Playtest

On October 20, I tested the digital prototype with P02 and P03. For P02, I collected a gameplay log, written feedback from within the game, and a recorded feedback conversation. For P03, I documented a separate recorded feedback conversation, but I did not have an equivalent gameplay log.

P02 completed all three chapters in 9 minutes and 57 seconds of recorded active playtime and rated the game’s clarity 4/5. P02 understood the competing needs in the story. For example, they could explain why someone might prioritize completing a customer’s order while another person might feel responsible for keeping a promise to teach a lesson.

However, understanding the choices did not necessarily mean that they felt important. P02 explained that the decisions often seemed to involve choosing between something urgent and something that could wait. They wanted more background about the relationships between the characters: who they were to each other, what they had promised, and why letting someone down would matter.

P03 raised a similar concern, saying, “I didn’t feel connected to the main character.” They wanted to know more about his desires, worries, and background. P03 was also unsure what the game was trying to achieve and why the choices mattered.

These comments made me look more closely at Saithan’s role in the story. He had a task to complete, which was preparing the exhibition, but I had not given players enough reason to care about him or what he was doing. I had focused more on what players needed to accomplish than on what made the experience personally meaningful.

Pacing was another issue. P02 marked all three chapters as “Too long,” even though the recorded active playtime was less than ten minutes. Their written feedback described the experience as “distant and repetitive.” P03 also found the story repetitive.

At first, I thought adding more conversations and personal accounts would make the experience better. But these responses helped me see that adding more text was not necessarily the answer. Each chapter followed a similar pattern: read a situation, choose between competing needs, and produce an exhibition label. Even with different objects, the experience could still feel the same.

I also realized that changing the label text was not enough to make the consequences feel meaningful. Although the game responded to players’ decisions, the results did not have enough impact for these participants. I want players to experience the consequences through what characters say, what information becomes available, and what they can or cannot do later.

There were also limitations in how I evaluated the prototype. P02 did not understand two questions about the “journeys” and “labels.” During the feedback discussions, I explained what I intended when participants asked questions. This may have influenced their later responses. For my next playtest, I need to ask clearer questions and let players explain their understanding before I provide my interpretation.

Figure 2: The second playtest on October 20, 2026 (P03).

Changing Direction: The Road Beyond the Village

After these two rounds, I decided to make a bigger change rather than continue adding material to What We Carry Forward. My new game, The Road Beyond the Village, follows Niran, a sixteen-year-old fox pursuing an educational opportunity while discovering a family secret. Instead of focusing mainly on community history through objects, I want players to think about the pressures, relationships, and personal reasons behind a young person’s decisions.

I made several changes in the first chapter.

• Giving the main character a clearer goal. Niran wants to catch the last bus so he can attend an educational programme and a visiting designer’s workshop. This gives the player a more immediate reason to follow his journey.
• Building relationships through ordinary conversations. I added conversations that reveal Niran’s interests, his friendship with Mali, and his relationship with his mother. I want players to learn about these relationships through the story rather than relying on background explanations.
• Making choices matter beyond the current screen. Earlier decisions can affect later dialogue, available information, unfinished work, and the actions players can take. Different endings also provide different experiences of the story.
• Keeping the scope manageable. I focused on one complete chapter and combined some of the shorter reading screens. The current prototype uses text without pictures or sound, allowing me to focus on the story, choices, and consequences first.
• Improving the evaluation questions. I want players to explain what they think the story is about and identify the effects of their choices before I explain what I intended.

These changes connect with our class discussions about goals, motivation, and conflict, as well as meaningful choices and narration that responds to player actions. They also reflect what I learned from the playtests: players need more than a series of decisions. They need enough context to understand why those decisions might matter to the people involved.

What I Want to Learn Next

I have built the first chapter of The Road Beyond the Village, but I have not yet tested it with outside players. I cannot say whether the new version creates a stronger connection with the characters until I see how people actually experience it.

In the next playtest, I want to find out:

• Can players explain Niran’s goal and why it matters without my help?
• Can they identify a specific consequence of a choice they made?
• Do the relationships help them understand why someone might reasonably make a different decision?
• Does the family mystery support the empathy goal, or does it distract players from understanding the characters?

Looking back, my biggest lesson from these two rounds is that more story does not automatically mean a stronger connection. I tried to make the original game more meaningful by adding conversations and personal accounts, but the feedback showed me that I needed to rethink the experience itself.

I now want to focus on giving players understandable reasons to care about the characters and letting them see how their decisions affect what happens next. I still need to find out whether this new direction works, and that is what I hope to learn from the next playtest.

AI disclosure: The pictures used in the digital prototype were created by generative AI (ChatGPT). The content of the blog post and the written explanation are my own work.