I'm heading to my first Protospiel event in Milwaukee in March and I'm in need of a little advice. I have tons of game projects that I'm working on right now, but 3 that I'm most focused on and I'm trying to figure out which one would gain the most from the Protospiel environment. Please read the descriptions below and let me know which one you think I should focus on most for Protospiel (though I will definitely have all 3 there).
(1) Divine Intervention -- This game is good enough that at this point I actually think the main thing it needs is lots of playtests (hopefully with repeat players) to see if there is a strategy that would "break" the game or if any of the costs to play the Divine Power cards are way too high or low. Otherwise, recent playtests show that the game mechanics are basically sound.
(2) Biosphere -- This game has an odd scoring mechanic that I can't quite get right: I'm trying to motivate people to care about the outcome of a secret bid more than they currently do. Otherwise, the game is working fairly well, but that central dynamic that should be interesting isn't quite as gripping as it ought to be. (And, once it is fixed I'll need to consider re-balancing the scoring of other aspects of the game...)
(3) Children of Frankenstein -- I recently cut all the math in half, which is good and makes the game much easier for people to follow (and makes decisions easier and faster). Without art this game will continue to lack the "wow" factor it ought to have, but mostly it's pretty solid. I've stripped so many aspects of the game out of it that I can't tell if it's interesting anymore. But people seem to enjoy it well enough. So, the main question with this is: is it ready or do I need to majorly rethink parts of it?
...I wrote about the stage of development for each of those three games because I'm trying to figure out what kind of feedback I can expect to get at a Protospiel event.
I guess the problem is that Divine Intervention is the game I'm most excited about, but I think the type of feedback I would get from other game designers is not actually what it needs right now. So, do I focus on trying to get feedback on that one (which really needs lots of repeated plays) or do I focus on Biosphere or Children of Frankenstein (which might need more "shaking up" to reach a presentable stage)?