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Wanted to talk a little bit about the playtest we’re currently having. The dynamic is very interesting to me. We have around 250 people who have joined for the playtest so far, which is much more than we expected. I personally thought even 20 people would be a great result.

As for the playtest data, there are also interesting moments: most people play around 20 minutes, which is expected, the test build is not that long.

But some people played it more than 200 minutes (and it’s not us, we checked), as well as people who played for 180, 150, 100, 90, and 80-70 minutes. Though the content of the game is about one hour long in that build, I think.

I am a little bit disappointed that we only got two pieces of feedback in the Steam community. It seems like people do not really prefer that channel of communication (I also noticed at the conferences our audience is much more introverted, and they probably don’t like making public posts).

Initially, the idea to ask people for public feedback was to cross-reference it with other players (and yes, excite the steam algorithms a little), but I am thinking about asking people for feedback in their favorite places of choice then.

The part about having around 250 people join the playtest but receiving only two public feedback posts stood out to me. I suspect this is not necessarily a sign that people were uninterested. Playing something is relatively easy, but writing useful criticism publicly requires much more effort and can also feel uncomfortable.

I am currently preparing a much smaller closed test for a narrative adventure, and this makes me think that relying on voluntary public feedback is probably not enough. My current plan is to combine direct observation with a short private questionnaire and a few follow-up conversations. Were you able to see where players stopped or how far they progressed? If the average session was around twenty minutes for a one-hour build, there may be a specific early point where people lost direction or motivation.