Garden Sabotage! Play Test Notes

Play Test #1

• What questions did your players have? Which cards were which? How pesticide worked? Where is the pesticide card? How many cards can be in each garden?
• How quickly did they learn to play? At least 20 minutes. Quite longer than I expected. 
• What kinds of interactions did the players have? Players planted cards in each other’s gardens. Players also helped each other make the best moves on their turn since everyone was learning the game for the first time. 
• What confused players? The first player rule—whoever has the most houseplants goes first. The players thought that this was determined by the cards that you were dealt. They also didn’t understand at first that you couldn’t plant multiple plants in your garden at once and that each plant you planted is a separate action. They were also confused by the fact that pesticide isn’t a physical card; it is just an action that you declare you are doing. Players also did not form a discard pile for the used plants, bugs, and garden objective cards. 
• What made players excited? The players enjoyed the gameplay and the card art. The most exciting part would have been when players played bugs on each other’s gardens. 
• What did your players enjoy doing? They enjoyed the fact that the bugs make the game more difficult and add value to the game. They enjoyed the size of the bug cards and appreciated that the end of the game isn’t totally obvious because players count their points after someone reaches 7 cards. 
• Did any aspect of the game frustrate players? The objective cards were frustrating and confusing to players. The fact that you have to play the objective card after you completed the card wasn’t totally obvious.

Play Test #2

• What questions did your players have? If you just declare that you are using pesticide? Do you draw at the beginning of your turn? Do you lay the objective card down first?
• How quickly did they learn to play? Pretty quickly. 
• What kinds of interactions did the players have? Players helped each other to understand the game at first and then sabotaged each other with bugs. 
• What confused players? They were confused about discarding plant objectives for another being 1 turn. They were also confused about what they would do if they ran out of plant cards because there was no hand limit. 
• What made players excited? They really enjoyed the gameplay and the card art. 
• What did your players enjoy doing? I could tell that they enjoyed eating others’ plants with bugs. 
• Did any aspect of the game frustrate players? The fact that it is pretty luck based on what cards you draw frustrated some of the players. 

• Other comments:
  • This group accumulated a lot of plant cards in their hands, so a hand limit might be necessary. 
  • This group ran into the issue where they planted plants in the garden that they didn’t want to plant and had no way to remove it. 

Potential Changes to Make

• Simplify garden objective cards rules
• Maybe make good bug cards worth more because they are so rare in the deck?
• Reminder cards that show the different actions that you can take on your turn
• Clarify that objective cards are met automatically and you don’t lay them down until the objective is met
• Clarify that you can only plant ONE plant in your garden
• Make pesticide a physical card or object or otherwise clarify it 
• Potentially make it harder to obtain pesticide
• Design a board to have specified places for the cards to make the face-up cards and discard piles make sense
• Design the garden boards so that there are spaces for the bugs
• Clarify how it is determined which plant is eaten by a bug 
• Clarify what bugs do on the cards themselves
• Add the option to remove a plant from your garden as an action (or you have to get rid of all the plants on that plot)
• Make it 5 cards to trigger the last round
• Could add a fence that protects your garden from bugs for a turn
• Add an incentive to be the first person to finish 
• Add a hand limit so that you don’t run out of plant cards. 
• Clarify that only 3 plant cards can be placed on 1 plot
• Clarify rules regarding discarding cards you don’t want
• Potentially add color to the plant cards
• Maybe rename the plant cards to be flower cards?