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10.1d — 2-Button Jam: Playtest

Freeze the build; test the humans. Today is data (9.5's methods on your own game) — deaths per minute, where testers stall, what they say — and the one-fix discipline that turns two hours of testing into two hours of improvement.

Playtest Day ~50 min

Rotation (three rounds):

Round 1 — strangers play (15 min). Swap stations with another team. Silent watching (2.4). Record on the beat table: stall point, death point, the exact QUOTE ("wait, what does that do?"), and the moment of first smile. That smile is your game working.
Round 2 — the one fix (15 min). Each team picks ONE thing from Round 1 data. Apply it. Ship the fix, commit: "10.1d: playtest fix #1".
Round 3 — verify (10 min). New tester (or the same one). Did THAT moment change? If yes: pick fix #2. If no: the fix failed — revert it and write why. One-variable testing (3.4 tuning, jam-scale).

What to watch for in a two-input game specifically:

Input confusion: the tester presses the WRONG verb under pressure. That is not tester error — your two verbs are too similar (fix with feel, 6.3: sharper timing or clearer consequence)
Button mashing: both verbs at once, always. Your game has one verb wearing two costumes
The stall: tester stops playing and asks a question out loud — write the QUESTION down; it is your tutorial, spoken by the void

Close of Day ~5 min

Socratic: Two Hours of Testing, One Fix

You watched silently instead of helping. Name one moment a tester got stuck where the fix was obvious to you and invisible to them — what made it invisible?Your answer
You collected deaths per minute and stall points. Which number changed your mind about your own game, and which just confirmed what you already thought?Your answer
The discipline was to fix one thing. What did you choose, and what did you deliberately leave broken?Your answer

Checkpoint — before moving on, you must be able to:

Run three silent playtest rounds and record quotes + numbers
Apply one fix, verify it, revert it if it failed
Diagnose verb-confusion vs mashing vs stalls and prescribe fixes
Ship a playtest.csv into your repo

Reference Docs

Need a deeper explanation? These pages cover the same concepts:

Playtest dataset (CSV) — the format you mimic
Unit 10: Jam Season — the playtest ritual

Next: 10.1e — 2-Button Jam: Polish

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