Finally, my first dev diary - it's only 4 years late!

IT ALL STARTED WITH AN IDEA...

Back in 2018, I had an idea for a party game. I'd loved playing Jackbox party pack games like Quiplash and thought the 'use your phone as the controller' model was perfect for quick-fire games with your friends.

It was then I had an idea - how about creating a caption-response party game similar to Quiplash and Cards Against Humanity, where players compete to submit the funniest answer to a text prompt - but players can answer with any GIF they can find!

My friends and I were constantly responding with GIFs in our WhatsApp groups - it seemed like a great idea. The only problem was I didn't know how to code - in fact I literally had zero knowledge of game development.

WHERE TO BEGIN?

The first thing I wanted to do was get some initial thoughts about the game concept - it could've been a stupid idea for all I knew.

I googled 'How to make an app prototype' and stumbled across InVision. To make a click-through prototype, all you needed to do was create some basic screen designs (I made mine in Google Slides) and map out how the user would navigate between each screen. I called the game 'Late Night GIF Fight', which would stick around for months before settling on a final title.

Here's a short clip of the prototype in action...

I showed the prototype with my friends (not a great test audience as they're likely to be biased towards being 'nice' to you - but I didn't know that at the time). Anyway, they immediately understood the concept and said they'd been keen to try it!

WILL IT BE FUN?

I'd been listening to the audiobook for 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries (which I would 100% recommend - his startup was a games studio). In the book it said to list out the most critical, riskiest assumptions to your idea. The ones that - if they aren't true - would cause the whole idea to fail.

At the start of the project, my number one was - 'The game is enjoyable enough to play more than once'. I wasn't going to have much luck with a party game that people don't actually enjoy playing, especially when you think about introducing it in a party setting. If the game sucks, you've killed the mood and... well... you look like an idiot!

I needed some way of 'playing' the game to see if it got any laughs, and to see if it'd get boring beyond a few rounds. What we needed was

• a way to send a caption to the players
• a way for players to be able to respond with a GIF
• a way for players to see what other GIFs had been submitted
• a way for the "judge" to vote on which GIF was the funniest

I looked for the quickest, easiest way to do this. The solution - a WhatsApp group!

I wrote a short list of captions and kept them in a Google Sheet. When I was with friends at a party, I created a WhatsApp group and added the players to it. I picked a judge to start us off, and pasted one of the captions in the group. Everyone had two minutes to send a funny GIF as a response, and quickly people were laughing away at what was being submitted!

Here's a snippet from that first playtest...

We ended up playing several rounds over about an hour. It was an amazing feeling seeing people having a great time enjoying something that had just been an idea floating around in my head, and I was 100% sold on pursuing things further (a little premature given I'd tested with one audience made up of friends, but hey - can't fault the enthusiasm!).

LOOKING BACK

Fast forward four years and I'm now way more experienced with building digital products, but still look back at those early tests with a lot of pride. Knowing what I know now, I'd still go about things the same way (albeit with a bit more rigour).

I'd love to know the ways you guys have tested your game ideas. If you have any similar experiences then please do share!

I'll keep posting dev diaries to bring you all up to speed (don't worry I start to make some big mistakes soon! XD)