This week we had our very first round of playtesting! Realizing the mercurial nature of these prototypes, we decided to use our blank pages with squares as our "board." We were able to label each of the squares and could make adjustments as they came along. We had made around 40 or so exam cards, enough for about one game. We also made some of our T&T cards and began with the idea of starting with loans of $25,000 for each year.

As we played we noticed a few key issues. The game was running very slowly! We had about 16 squares for each grade. This number was far too high to keep the game fun and exciting. We decided to cut the spaces down to only 10 per year, leaving us with 24 less. A second issue we noticed was that the money aspect of the game wasn't working out as well as we were expecting it to. Money came in really quickly and the low numbers we were using took away the drama and hard decisions we were hoping to achieve. To solve this problem we raised the prices of everything! Tuition will be more expensive. Rewards will be extremely helpful and deductions will mean a lot more now.

The rest of our issues were more technical. Our cards were all different sizes and we certainly need a lot more of the exam and T&T cards! Overall though, our first play went really well. We didn't get a chance to put some of our new ideas into effect during class, so we're excited for more playtesting to see how our changes liven up the game!