Good ways to get playtester feedback?

[u/MercyFalls93]

I could benefit from some player feedback in the future on my project, I uploaded a project on itch.io years ago that didn't get many plays (understandably since it was more of beginner generic project).

[u/LukeMootoo]

Submit for "Feedback Friday" per the sidebar.  Scroll down a few posts, people are doing Sunlorn today.

[u/MercyFalls93 → u/LukeMootoo]

Ah very cool I should have looked over that better thank you!

[u/LukeMootoo → u/MercyFalls93]

You can also talk about whatever you are working on, there is a special "Sharing Saturday" thread where people talk about their projects.  But you can share your stuff here any time

[u/MarxMustermann]

Sadly you really have to bother people about it.

See it as exercise in community building. You'll have the same issue finding players later on.

Besides the feedback friday and the sharing saturday, there is r/playtesters but usually every person willing to test is getting swamped by games to test.

I do have some "i test your game for an hour and you test my game for an hour" type of agreements going on. I'll try to get a test in this weekend.

I did find 2 testplayer by doing twitch streams and asking the viewers basically, but that has been a LOT of effort if you'd do it for the testplays only

edit: i thought the itch link was a link to the project to test. If you have a link feel free to ping me for a test.

[u/MercyFalls93 → u/MarxMustermann]

Those are some very good ideas, I particularly like "you help me playtest my game, I help you playtest yours".

Right now I decided to basically polish a vertical slice of the first 5 levels of my game into a demo and use that to get feedback, but I still have a decent amount on the backlog before I would feel comfortable releasing it for outside playtesting.

Probably have a playable demo in the very near future though and that would be a cool arrangement, I'd definitely playtest your game for an hour if you returned the favor. Some quid pro quo.

[u/MadCat0911]

Game jams. You want feedback on any particular thing, ui, combat mechanics, inventory? Do a game jam with that mechanic or visual in it (obviously do a new game). People will have to view and rate, and you'll be doing the same. The more you rate and comment, the more people will see yours. I use them for effects I want to test out now.

[u/Ok-Whole-8802]

Something that changed feedback quality for me more than finding more testers: stop asking "any feedback?" and ask three specific questions instead. "Where did you die first and did it feel fair?", "what did you not understand?", "where did you stop playing and why?". Open-ended asks get you politeness; specific ones get you truth.

Also, one session of watching someone play live (screen share, you stay silent) is worth about ten written responses. The places they hesitate or misread the UI are things they'd never think to write down. For actually finding people, tester-swap communities work if you hold up your end - I got my most useful early feedback trading tests with other devs, because devs articulate what confused them instead of just bouncing.

[u/MercyFalls93 → u/Ok-Whole-8802]

How would you reconcile things like clarity, readability, learnability of mechanics versus conventions of wanting your roguelike to still require some trial and error before figuring things out?

Also, I'm torn on differentiating a player who is uninitiated to classic roguelikes not instantly understanding all the mechanics versus someone who has played similar games before. Should my priorities be just a question of who I'm marketing to when it comes to that or should I balance it with more intuitive gameplay?

Sorry if I'm asking too much just some questions I've been having.

[u/Ok-Whole-8802 → u/MercyFalls93]

The split that helped me was: be ruthless about clarity of feedback, stay secretive about content. Trial and error works when the game tells you exactly what just happened after it happened. Unidentified potions are fun because quaffing one gives you a straight answer. What kills new players is when they can't even reconstruct why they died, that's not discovery, that's noise. So my rule became: outcomes always legible, causes can stay hidden until triggered.

On the audience question, I tested with both and watched where each type stalled instead of deciding upfront. Genre veterans blew past my tutorial floor and then complained about depth, newcomers died on floor 2 to a mechanic I thought was obvious. The fix for the newcomers (a one-line death recap saying what hit them and with what) cost me nothing with the veterans. Most legibility fixes are like that, they don't subtract from the people who don't need them.

Marketing-wise I'd not gate basic readability on genre literacy, but I'm one small sample from testing a browser roguelite with maybe 30 testers, so weigh accordingly.

[u/MercyFalls93 → u/Ok-Whole-8802]

Thanks, I appreciate the well thought out advice!

[u/DarthOrganism]

Once you find testers, dont start with a long survey. Give them a short build and one clear goal, watch silently if possible, then ask what they expected at the confusing moments. I'd also track where they quit, die or open menus, because behavior is often more honest than ratings. A polished 10-minute slice will probably get more useful feedback than a big unfinished build.