Pamela Gutman
Learning Experience Designer
← Field Notes

Field Note · The Backup League · 2026

When the puzzle isn't the problem.

A first playtest of a superhero micro escape experience reminded me that a difficult decision can be productive, while a difficult instruction usually isn't.

This is a formative design reflection from one early playtest, not a formal usability study or a claim of measured learning impact.

The setup

I was prototyping The Backup League, a tabletop rescue challenge designed for a conference session about escape-room-style learning tied to real performance tasks. Small groups need to prioritize incident reports, calibrate a generator, and interpret a safety warning before activating a final rescue console.

The three chapters use different mechanics, but all are meant to support real-world decisions. That made the initial playtest valuable: I needed to learn whether the experience asked players to think about the intended problems, not whether they could guess what I meant.

What I saw

Dispatch: too many decisions at once

The eight-card classification task was overwhelming. Numbered priority levels carried an unintended interpretation for someone familiar with IT support tiers, and a vital dependency between rescue systems was not obvious.

Generator: the challenge worked

The physical calibration wheel was engaging and solvable without hints. The feedback here was wonderfully specific: enlarge the viewing notch, but leave the core mechanic alone.

Academy: good discoveries, unclear transitions

Word-picture riddles and the hidden UV reveal were fun once their purpose was clear. What slowed progress was unfamiliar terminology, uncertainty about which sheet to use next, and an overly elaborate decision sequence.

What changed in the next prototype

  1. Less sorting, more judgment. Dispatch went from eight classified reports to six reports with three meaningful emergencies to identify and order.
  2. Keep the tactile win. The generator wheel stayed intact apart from a larger notch.
  3. Show how to begin. Academy word-picture riddles received an example and more readable visual clues.
  4. Leave discovery in the puzzle. The UV clue remains a discovery; once the code is found, the next action is explicit.
  5. Tell one coherent story. A short opening briefing now explains why dispatch, generator power, and safety clearance all contribute to the remote rescue.
Make the puzzle challenging. Make the interaction intuitive.

The bigger design lesson

I don't want to remove struggle from a learning experience. I want to locate it intentionally. Compare evidence. Notice a dependency. Make a choice with consequences. Those are worthwhile challenges. Hunting for an unexplained term or an unlabeled next step consumes energy without supporting the objective.

For my next playtest, I'll watch for moments when people stop because they need to think and moments when they stop because they can't tell what to do. Those look similar on a stopwatch, but call for very different fixes.

That's also a reminder that positive feedback deserves as much attention as negative feedback. When a mechanic works, preserve it.