[HN Gopher] The Power of Playtesting in the Classroom
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       The Power of Playtesting in the Classroom
        
       Author : LandenLove
       Score  : 8 points
       Date   : 2026-03-17 04:16 UTC (2 days ago)
        
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 (TXT) w3m dump (landenlove.com)
        
       | vunderba wrote:
       | Former ESL teacher with a background in computer science, who
       | bounced around a few countries and has also created ESL apps to
       | help students with their English skills. It's a great feeling to
       | be able to combine those two areas to help your students.
       | 
       | That being said, you hold (whether you realize it or not) a
       | rather elevated position above the people from whom you might be
       | trying to solicit objective feedback. Nothing inherently wrong
       | with that, as long as you're aware that it's in their best
       | interest to heap praise on the game considering you hold their
       | grades in your hands.
        
         | LandenLove wrote:
         | >That being said, you hold (whether you realize it or not) a
         | rather elevated position above the people from whom you might
         | be trying to solicit objective feedback. Nothing inherently
         | wrong with that, as long as you're aware that it's in their
         | best interest to heap praise on the game considering you hold
         | their grades in your hands.
         | 
         | This is true! This is why I never ask for feedback. I am
         | completely silent whenever observing a playtest. Every change
         | that I make is purely based on the problems I see my students
         | and co-workers experiencing.
         | 
         | It is hard to do this when asking the question, "Was that fun?"
         | But I try to answer this question by seeing player reactions.
         | For example, many students think it's funny when all the
         | bananas fall out of the sky on level 2. The original design
         | goal for this level was trying to dig physics objects out of a
         | pile of other physics objects. But the absurdity of that visual
         | usually gets a couple laughs.
        
           | vunderba wrote:
           | Nice~ related but if you want to look at what is perhaps the
           | quintessential physics puzzle game series, I highly recommend
           | checking out _The Incredible Machine_ for inspiration.
           | 
           | It's an older MS-DOS game, but its charm and personality
           | still hold up today.
           | 
           | Playable online too:
           | 
           | https://classicreload.com/dosx-the-incredible-machine.html
        
       | rcoveson wrote:
       | > You see a crow fly into the tongue of a headcrab and die. You
       | now know everything you need to know about this enemy.
       | 
       | But not everything you don't need to know, like it's name. That's
       | a barnacle. But I still love the point your making here. :)
        
       | ramesh31 wrote:
       | Now hook it up to Claude Code in voice mode and let them add new
       | features and change things in real time
        
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       (page generated 2026-03-19 23:01 UTC)