The Board Game Design Course

If you’ve been following along with me over the past several weeks, you should have at least one game of yours on Tabletop Simulator (TTS), Screentop.gg or another online platform and ready to playtest.

If you’re not ready yet, check out this article to get you started fast.

But how do you find other game designers and playtesters to play your game?

Rather than thinking about what others can do for me, I like to flip this idea on its head and think about what I can do for someone else. So, I start by asking if anyone else has a game online they need to playtest.

When you start by offering to help others first, you’ll often find that these other designers will be more than happy to playtest your game as well.

It’s part of the law of reciprocity. If you do something nice for someone else, they most likely will want to return the favor. And quite often, someone will do even more for you than you have done for them. Nobody wants to feel like they are in debt to another person, so many of us want to offer the same or even more help in return.

But this leads us to a similar question: Where do we find other designers who need their game playtested?

Join the Board Game Designer’s Online Playtesting Group

I’ve been coordinating playtests among game designers who want to playtest online. In fact, our next event is happening this Sunday, July 28th, 2024! No matter where in the world you live, you’re welcome to join us.

I schedule regular events here once a month.

There’s a Discord channel that will allow you to communicate with other designers and break out into individual rooms to create a playtest group. Then you can pick a game that someone has loaded up and join each other on your chosen platform to playtest.

Click here to join the Discord channel and join future events.

Regular Online Playtesting Groups

There are also plenty of online playtesting groups. So many in fact that you could playtest your game every day!

Check out this great listing here from Cardboard Edison. They list tons of online playtest groups, as well as groups you can meet up with in various regions of the world.

Also, my favourite online playtesting group is Protospiel Online. They host 3 events every year, each lasting from Friday to Sunday, which allows you to pack in a lot of playtesting with a very inclusive, welcoming group of designers and playtesters. Their next event is coming up in August. If you haven’t attended a Protospiel Online event, I highly recommend it. I hope to see you there!

Invite friends and family

Do you have any friends or family who are into board games? Do any of them have Tabletop Simulator?

Even if they don’t, you might be able to convince them to join. Yes, there is a cost, but it’s fairly low when you consider the thousands of free board game mods that are available to upload (not to mention lots of awesome prototypes of yours they can playtest!). Licenses for TTS occasionally go on sale for up to 50% off as well.

You could even gift this to other people. Birthday coming up? It’s a great gift idea.

You can also buy a four-pack of licenses for the price of three. And when this goes on sale, it’s like buying four licenses for the price of one and a half. What a deal!

Getting other people you know set up with Tabletop Simulator accounts can also make for lots of great game nights. If other people are stuck at home and have nothing to do, invite them online to play a game. It’s such a great way to spend an evening.

Alternatively, Screentop.gg and some other browser-based platforms are completely free! So, if you get your game loaded up there, you can just send a link and anyone can play for free.

How to set up an online playtest on Tabletop Simulator

If you’ve never run a playtest of your game with others on Tabletop Simulator or set up a table to host any game for that matter, I’ll show you how to do this in four simple steps:

1. From the main menu, select Create and choose “multi-player”

2. Name your server and give it a password. The server name should be something easy, perhaps the name of your game.

3. Ask others to select Join from the main menu and type in your server name to find you and your game. Give them the password and get them to join. Or, if you are friends with them on Steam, you can invite them directly to your table by clicking on the “invite” button.

4. Enjoy your game!

Are you facing any challenges with getting playtesters for your game online? Just comment below and I’ll see if I can help.

Thanks for reading!