Day 5: Playtesting from Day 3 (Scrabble)

The final game we played yesterday was Scrabble. The reason for the choice was this time down purely to the timespan of the other games (with Risk and Monopoly known for their long gameplay) and the fact that 'Who wants to be a Millionaire?' was essentially a similar genre as The Worst Case Scenario Survival Game. In a way this was good as it pointed out two key deterrents for players; Long gameplay time and duplicate gameplay styles.

Scrabble was easily the quickest to set up as it was made of few actual pieces when it comes to the setting up stage:
The Board
The bag of Letter tiles (within the bag there was 100 tiles containing each letter of the alphabet at least once)
And 4 Letter Stands

The rules of gameplay were similarly simple. Each player would have to have 7 tiles on their letter stands. Using those letters they would have to construct the best scoring words (by the points per each different letter (i.e.: E = 1 point, J = 8 points)). Once one word is down, players would then have to build their words off those words. In this way the player constructs the area of play. The winner is the player to have the most points when everyone runs out of tiles.

This game didn't play well and revealed the critical fault of building your own map as players. You can build an 'Unplayable' map by accident. Many times during play, players would have to lend each other letters so words could be made and play could continue. This is a big fault and led to another. The game ran on for one and a half hours - by which point players had grown tired of the game.

This was interesting and pointed out the flaw with relying on the player too much to make the game. They can accidently create faults and complicate the game to the point of losing the important enjoyment factor.
factor.