Game Testing | Tour Graphics

Hello! Do you enjoy the challenge and comradery of board games with friends? Are you intrigued by the process of how a board game is invented? Perhaps you are a student who needs a little resume material?

If so, I’d like to meet you!

My name is Adam Ritchey and I am the President and Creative Director of Interra Design Studios, an established website design firm based here in Fayetteville.

As a side career/hobby, I founded Universified Games to design, prototype and test board games. (We don’t publish games ourselves. We just invent them.) Some of my past games have been licensed and sold around the world.

I am currently looking for people in the Fayetteville / Northwest Arkansas area who love board games and would be interested in testing new games before anyone else in the world ever sees them.

Full disclosure: this is NOT a job offer for a paid position. If you are a student, I would be more than happy for you to include Universified Games on your resume. Your job title could be something like “Game Design Intern” or “Board Game Quality Assurance Team Member” or something like that and I can definitely include a letter of rec.

Okay, so now we’ve got that out of the way…

How does “game testing” work? Here are the basics…

1: We play games, of course.

You’ll meet up with me or another member of the Universified team, as well as other game testers.

(We usually meet at a coffee shop or the library or somewhere public so everyone feels comfortable.)

Then we play games. These are new games, created right here in Fayetteville, which don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Some of them already have fully-formed prototypes with nice printed boards and components. Other games are a little rough around the edges. But that’s what’s cool about game design — there is a process to creating, testing and improving each game.

2: Report your experience.

After each game, there is a very short questionnaire in which you answer a few questions (i.e. Were the rules easy to understand? Did the point system seem fair? If you were losing, did you feel you still had a chance to win at the end?)

This only takes a minute or two, then we play again!

We might play the same game multiple times and vary the rules each time, testing to see what makes it the most interesting.

Or we might play several different games just once each. Often the game testers get to decide what direction we go it.

3: Tell us your ideas.

One of the most important aspects of game testing is helping us evolve the games with new ideas. If you have an idea while playing one of our games, please include it on your game report!

If your ideas help us fix a small detail of the game, we will include your changes in the final design and rules.

If your ideas are revolutionary and take the game onto an entirely new level, we will give you credit as one of the game designers (which could potentially earn you royalties if the game sells.)

So… what types of games are we testing?



Abstract Strategy

Abstract strategy games are usually smaller, 2-player games which don’t have a theme. If you think of games like Chess or Checkers, you’re on the right track. But unlike those dusty old classics, there is a large world of really innovative, themeless games for 2-players. My personal all-time favorite game is Quarto.

Some games have “light” themes, like Azul or Santorini, which are still basically abstract strategy games.

We are currently testing 6-8 games in this category.



Euro Games

In general, Euro-style games are a bigger production, with more interesting themes, colorful boards and lots of components. Some of the more popular Euro games are Settlers of Catan, Carcassone, Terraforming Mars and Ticket to Ride.

We have several Euro-style games which need to be fully tested and “point-balanced.”



Card Games

When I think of modern card games, I always think of Exploding Kittens. The theme is hilarious, the art is cool and the game is simple. And of course there are people getting blown up every few minutes. So what’s not to love?

(Pro Tip: Publishers love card games because they are way cheaper to produce and take up less space in inventory.)

We have several new card games at various stages of development that need testing and polishing. (We are also interested in meeting potential illustrators to help us improve the look of these games!)



Party Games

There are two main facets of contemporary party games — they have to be super easy to learn (no one wants to spend half the night learning complicated rules) and the theme/gameplay has to be fun for larger groups of people.

In practice, the most common form of party games are the so-called “hidden identity” games — with popular titles like Ultimate Werewolf, Two Rooms & a Boom, Coup and A Fake Artist Goes to New York.

Generally, different people have different roles to play. No one knows who the others are. And there is some defined goal. We are currently testing three different games in this category.



Micro Games

There is an interesting contemporary trend towards little tiny teeny-weenie games. It started several years ago as more of a challenge for game designers — If you were restricted to only 12 cards, how deep of a game could you make? These days mirco games are anything with 18 or fewer cards (that’s how many can be printed and cut out of a single piece of playing-card paper at the printer) and some of them have minimal components. There’s even a game out there that uses JUST ONE CARD, if you can believe that.

There’s not a super high demand for these games, but we have 3-4 designed and ready for testing.



Dexterity Games

You’ve all heard of Jenga. Jenga is the most common title in the “dexterity” category. These games have fewer rules, don’t rely on strategy, and puts the focus more on the physical abilities of your hands to complete a task.

Like micro games, there’s not a giant market for dexterity games at the moment. But if the game is fun and has an innovative twist, it will sell.

We’ve got 1-2 ideas which are in need of testing to see if they are worth the effort or not.

BENEFITS of Game Testing with Universified

Besides the novelty of playing and testing games that don’t exist anywhere else in the world, there are other benefits to hanging out with us from time to time.

Great resume material!

If you are a student, we would be more than happy for you to include us on your resume. Your job title could be something like “Game Design Intern” or “Board Game Quality Assurance Team Member” or something like that. In general, showing up to one game night won’t merit a resume entry. But if you stick around and come to a few (or a lot) of game testings over a few weeks or months, you can definitely include us on your resume and we’ll even give you a letter of rec.

See behind the scenes!

If you are a creative-type, perhaps you’d like to see a little bit of how things like this are created and tested and sent to market. There is a big giant industry of game publishers, agents, designers, writers and printers which are involved in bringing games to market. I am always talking about the industry behind the board games and more than happy to share all my knowledge and contacts. (I even have a game agent. Yes, that’s a thing. And she’s always looking to meet new game designers!)

Prototype & Test your own game!

This is a big deal. If you have already designed your own game (or if you make one while hanging out with us) I’d be happy to let you test it with our Universified game testers. (You keep all the rights to your game.) If you need help designing cards or a board or logo, I’d be happy to help you with that as well.

Meet new people!

You will definitely meet some new and interesting characters. Everyone we work with is friendly and laid-back. (If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be invited back.)

MEETUPS

In general, I try to hold 2-3 game testing nights per month. Sometimes more frequently, if more people are available. You are not expected to come to every single event, but the more you come, the better our games will be and the more you’ll learn about the industry.