Board Game Playtesting

    During my initial play testing of my board game, I discovered some fairly interesting mechanics that emerged from dice rolls and branch positioning. In essence, I think the most interesting part about the core mechanic (branch placement) is rotating branches to either benefit the path that you are taking, or reroute the path that your opponent is taking. With later play testing, I found that this mechanic tended to disappear when the players traveled on the same branch. I started to try finding ways to minimize this action, but with my latest play test, I'm thinking that the game is getting a bit too convoluted. All of the different branches and connections seems to be too overwhelming, and I think I need to find some way to tone it all down and make things more intuitive while retaining and reinforcing the branch-placing mechanic. I also think that I need to rethink the way that branches and tiles are selected, because at the moment the player needs to select tiles out from a big pile, which is too overwhelming. The game board also doesn't tend to look very much like a bonsai tree after placing tiles, so I need to find some way to influence the tile placement so it forms a more naturalistic shape.

The board doesn't form into a natural bonsai shape and there are a lot of extra unused branches that don't contribute to the player's paths

   I think that the next step is to lessen the amount of variables that the player has to deal with, possibly by lowering the amount of branch colors used. I also need to find some way to make the board look more like a bonsai tree so that the game is easier to connect to. Maybe the board could be initially shaped like a more fully grown bonsai tree and the new branches could build off that. I will also find a way to make the tiles easier to use. With these ideas in mind, I will continue to experiment with the design.