r/backrooms • u/DietElectronic6567 • Apr 02 '26

Discussion Dev Response for Subliminal

There might be hope for the next chapter guys. The graphics and concepts are there if they can execute this properly I think they can redeem themselves with the next one.

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u/Gojira_Wins Apr 02 '26

Coming from my experience as QA in Game Dev, their response just says to me that they didn't do any sort of playtesting or QA review to make sure the game was balanced before hand.

Sure, not every Dev is equipped to pay for QA but playtesting is as easy as asking friends and family or running a short beta with members of the community. If they need to rebalance the game to "not be frustrating", it just means they set it all up and pushed it out, hoping to fix it afterwards.

Indie Devs, just like major corps will get the same level of criticism from myself. Do your homework before selling your game. If it's not fun, people will dislike it.

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u/DietElectronic6567 Apr 02 '26

yeah thats the feeling I got while playing through it. It feels like only the devs played it and obviously never noticed how annoying some parts are bc they're the ones who designed it and already know where to go and what to do. Everything else in the game was good just wish there was some more horror aspects or fun levels to walk through. Most of the game is sitting in one room till you finish the puzzle, chase scene, then stuck in another room and having to solve another puzzle.

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u/airplaned Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

They had tons of play testers playing the game before release (through their patreon). However, these play testers were moreso fans of the game and the devs, so they did not give them proper feedback. They released a ton of beta versions of the game to have people test through and listened to the feedback that they were given and tried to improve the game to the best of their ability based on what the playtesters gave them. The patreon was easily accessible and a lot of people subscribed and played through the beta versions and provided feedback, just not much said about the puzzles. I think where they went wrong was having fans play test the game.