Reacting to the past has emerged as a high-impact pedagogy that is attracting a growing following of academic practitioners. An expanding body of academic research explains why Reacting works and shows that students who take Reacting courses perform better in various assessment measures. Still, academic literature on Reacting lacks resources about the practical challenges of designing games, which involves repeated cycles of play testing in the classroom, revising, and play testing again. This paper is an effort to fill that void by discussing lessons learned in the early stages of designing a Reacting game. In this article the author will discuss some of the challenges and difficulties encountered in designing a Reacting game with the hope that this experience can help others as they cut a path through the thicket of game design choices.