Playtesting: Curators by Worldshapers Games
Many positive words are said and written about the creative openness of the game design community. My personal experiences and endeavors support this sentiment. In general, people in this industry are helpful and supportive of one another, which contributes to the pleasure of working in it. Even in this friendly social circle, I am especially pleased to encounter truly fantastic people. Pablo and Tove of Worldshapers Board Games are just such people.
Worldshapers is a very small game development company in Sweden. Their first game, Zoomaka, was a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2017. Successful = over-funded and delivered on schedule. They learned much in Zoomaka’s development and distribution and are growing their company and expectations from that light card game to a more component-driven board game with their current project, Curators.
Curators is a medium-light, tile placement game for 1-4 players designed by Jacob Westerlund. There is a great preview of the game by Jonathan Nelson here: Gaming Bits: Preview Review of Curators. In Curators, you play the chief curator of a museum; funding and acquiring artifacts, hosting exhibitions, and attracting visitors. The actions you take and the tableau you build are well-suited to the theme. As a solo game, it is a fun series of challenging and attractive puzzles, and for 2-4 players, it is perfect as a family or next-step game. The museum theme and attractive components make it very accessible to a wide audience. As with Zoomaka, and so many games from small publishers, Worldshapers is looking to Kickstarter to fund Curators.
As an example of what we do at Opie Games and how our experiences may help guide your own exploration into the game industry, here’s a quick look at how this project originated and has progressed: Worldshapers contacted us through Twitter, having noticed that we do playtesting. They had reached the blind testing phase of development. We did some playtesting and provided feedback on that experience and the rules more generally. As their project has progressed, we have provided additional testing, feedback, and statistics (particularly related to solo play). They have received our feedback graciously and with genuine interest. Ultimately, Curators is their game and needs to meet their objectives, so our feedback may be more or less helpful depending on how well we understand their objectives. But, in all cases, it is given and received with the best intentions and appreciation.
As native English speakers, we at Opie Games are continually reminded of how fortunate we are as we work with others in this industry. We are can converse and work with designers and publishers worldwide because so many people learn English. (Our French is just adequate to get by on vacation). We are truly spoiled and want to give back to those who have troubled to learn to speak our language. The best way we can do this is contributing our expertise with English to their projects.
We hope to continue to provide feedback and rules editing as Worldshapers approach their Kickstarter launch for Curators. Follow Worldshapers on Facebook and watch for their Kickstarter announcement in April 2019 to get your copy of Curators.