I’m at the point with my project where my game has a fair bit of content, and it’s hard to find people to playtest through all of it. I think there are some services I could find to pay people to test my game. But I figured that if I’m need of play-testers, other devs must be as well. Maybe we could test each others’ games?
The basic idea is that two devs agree to play each others’ games for a set amount of time, agreed upon beforehand. Screen recording should be used, and feedback should be provided. I’m not sure if this will come to anything, but I know it would help me.
Speaking of which, I’m looking for play-testers for Gravia.
If you have put out a lot of marketing material and are getting no returns, I’d take a look at that first. Whether the game is good or not won’t matter if the marketing material doesn’t get people interested enough to play it.
As to trading time for time with other devs, I’d be hesitant. Advice from other developers, especially those with lots of experience, can be extremely useful, but it’s not the same as feedback from the target audience. Personally I take any feedback I can get, but making a time obligation is another story.
But Gravia does look pretty cool. If you post a build in the feedback friday I’ll give it a couple hours play and write thoughts there.
Feedback Friday (in the Game Design forum section on Fridays) is a great way to get an initial round of feedback from several people, which will help gauge the stickiness of the initial experience of your game.
I see a discord icon on your site, but it’s not clickable. Have you set up a discord server yet? You can provide it as a place for people who are interested in your game to come together. You can also set up an invite-only channel for playtesters. When people are engaged in a game as a community, such as on discord, they seem to be more willing to dedicate time to help test it.
Thanks. So far I’ve been mainly tapping friends and friends-of-friends, rather than making a more formal effort to attract playtesters. But if I had some good marketing marketing material, I’m not sure I’d know where to send it. I’ve started pinging random streamers, as a place to start, but I’m not sure many are interested in playing unreleased/unfinished games.
I agree with your point on other game devs not necessarily being the target audience. On the other hand, I’ve gotten some really insightful advice from other devs before, because of their familiarity with conventions. So, it’s a mixed bag. I’ll definitely keep looking for feedback from other gamers, but I think the impressions of a handful of devs would definitely be useful to me.
I don’t have a public build, but I do have a private alpha on Steam. I’ll make a post for Feedback Friday, and I’ll @ mention you on it. If anyone shows some interest in that post, I can provide them Alpha keys to try it out.
Regarding Discord, the link on my site seems to work when I try it. Is this the link you clicked?
It should lead here: https://discordapp.com/channels/567446015725142036/567512832669646917 I’ve set up a public “General” chat about the game, as well as a private channel just for the alpha testing, to which I send invites to testers. So now I just need to convince a bunch of people to join my server. Sounds like a chicken/egg issue.
They’re doing a great job with Dwerve, posting regularly on Instagram and Twitter, and they’ve built up a sizable community on discord. They’re a good example of how to build a community for an indie game.
I’ve had good luck posting on subreddits where my target audience is. In my case it’s a pretty focused niche, so that makes things a little easier compared to posting in “indie game” subreddits.
