This week, because of 1/4s, we had only one playtest.

Our goal:

-revisit multiplayer but in a divided way, with different goals for each player to participate

-test a puzzle mechanic where we give very little information

We built a wall out of paper inside the room and placed participants on either side of it (after warning them that it was fragile). Inside the room with them on both sides of the wall were various objects with cardboard tags on them, each with a three letter or number code, printed in the same way as our previous arctic algebraic equation test.

We told them that they would use all objects in the room including the translation wall and a code we would give them to find a new code to get out. The wall had numbers on one side and letters on the other, printed out in the same way as all the codes and stuck to the paper. The numbers and letters were lined up so that if one person touched, for example, the number 1, and the other touched their hand through the wall, the second person would realize that they had a corresponding letter on their side, and read it to find an H. That was the translation process we hoped people would figure out.

What they would ideally translate was the code that we handed the player on the number side of the wall on cardboard: 174. These numbers translated to HAT. That would then indicate which object’s code they would translate back through the wall to get the final code. The hat’s code was UMA, which translated to 957, which was the correct answer.

We found that this was, in fact, a very difficult task. This was the first time we had done a playtest where we wanted guests to make leaps in logic on their own, and it was not as carefully designed as it should have been. The wall itself caused some confusion as well, because the letters and numbers on it were harder to detect than they are on cardboard like we’d tested previously.

We will update this post soon with more findings, but our main takeaways here are:

-testing needs to be set up with more time and materials: the paper wall was a last minute decision and took away from what we were really trying to test

-design needs to be very mindful for people who cannot see and are not given a clear goal