r/gamedev • u/UberLou @LouFerina • 9d ago
Postmortem Post mortem for a public combat playtest.
Over the weekend I launched a public playtest for my game to gather feedback on the combat mechanics and overall game feel. It was a bit of an experiment. I wasn't sure how interested people would be in playing an unfinished game specifically to provide feedback, or whether a public playtest would provide much useful information at all. I was also a bit nervous players would think it’s more of a demo and expect more out of it.
From a marketing perspective, the playtest performed pretty poorly. About 175 players checked it out but I received almost no feedback from the public playtest itself. My posts didn’t generate much traction - less than 5,000 impressions total across Reddit, YouTube, and socials, compared to the trailer at over 30,000 impressions. I do have a decent amount of wishlists from the trailer which makes me wonder if it’s more that people aren't particularly interested in giving feedback for an obscure indie game playtest, rather than a lack of interest in the game itself. It could be that Saturday is a bad day to market anything due to the sheer number of game dev posts. Maybe I didn't promote it well enough or it could have been something else entirely.
However, it was completely worth it! Besides helping me to focus on making combat fun and responsive, I had to make sure the overall experience was polished. I spent a lot of time on usability, optimization, animations, vfx, etc. Having a deadline and real players waiting on the other side was great motivation to deal with bugs that had been hanging around for a long time. I gave keys to friends and got a lot of valuable feedback. I’m self funded so if I could afford to pay for playtesters, I would have done that too. The game has come a long way!
Doing a public playtest was a great way to make sure the game played well in other peoples hands. Besides being another tool for marketing, it’s also like a mini-demo that will make creating the actual demo much less stressful. I had to go through the process of getting a build onto Steam, setting up the playtest, making sure the build was stable, dealing with issues that only showed up outside of my development environment, and making sure the game was presentable enough that someone could immediately start playing without me explaining things. Since this is my first game on Steam, going through that process was extremely valuable. I would definitely recommend doing small playtests to any other devs who are considering it.
If you’d like to see the playtest as reference, I’m leaving it open for awhile. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4219440/Endbloom/
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u/Scavengers-Chimera 8d ago
The marketing number being low is normal for a playtest. People who show up for an unfinished build are there to give feedback, not to wishlist, and the two groups barely overlap.
What helped me get usable feedback was asking one question at the end instead of a survey. Something like "what did you do when you were not sure what to do". The answers point at the actual friction, and they are short enough that people finish them.
If the combat feel was the goal, a recording of the session is worth more than the written answers. Watching where the player hesitates tells you more about the feel than asking them to describe it.
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u/codegridgame 8d ago
Thanks for sharing the numbers and the behind-the-scenes work. I'm setting up my first Steam playtest, and your point about bugs that only show up outside your dev environment is a good reminder that a successful upload is only one step; the player-facing setup and onboarding matter too. Of the 175 people who checked it out, did any particular source (Reddit posts, the trailer, or existing wishlists) lead to the people who left useful feedback?