Getting Early Feedback To Improve Your Indie Game
Testing Your Indie Game Early and Often
Playtest with friends and family
Getting feedback from friends and family is a key first step in playtesting your indie game. Schedule play sessions where 3-5 friends or family members play your game for 30-60 minutes while you observe. Take notes on where they struggle, what they enjoy, and ask questions afterward to understand their experience. Prioritize fixes that address consistent issues raised by multiple testers early on.
Get feedback from gaming communities
Online gaming communities like Reddit, Discord, and game development forums can provide valuable feedback once you have an early playable build. Post a gameplay video or demo and ask specific questions about the enjoyability of core mechanics, clarity of tutorial, and interest in the concept. Use constructive feedback to validate you are on the right track or pivot based on consistent suggestions.
Run an open beta test
An open beta with a larger test group can gather feedback on overall enjoyment and help catch bugs. Build a simple landing page to sign people up by email to get download access for a limited open beta. Leverage online communities and your personal networks to find passionate gamers willing to take an early look and complete surveys. Target at least 100 beta testers to get a sufficient volume of subjective impressions and bug reports.
Use analytics to understand player behavior
Embed analytics tools like Unity Analytics early in development to see how real players interact with your game. Study analytics dashboards for patterns around retention, progression, feature usage, completion rates and trouble spots. Apply learnings to rebalance difficulty curves, improve tutorials and optimize mechanics for replayability.
Prioritize issues based on severity and feasibility
Triage feedback and analytics data to create a master list of issues, suggestions, and potential improvements for your game, labeling them by severity level and feasibility given remaining resources. Quickly resolve bugs tagged as critical. For design and content enhancements, determine what is achievable within scope and backlog lower priorities for consideration after launch.
Fix critical bugs first
Squash bugs marked as critical immediately – these issues significantly hinder playability. If crashes or blocking progression issues slip into the live product, they will cripple the user experience. Other bugs should get tagged as major or minor and investigated in order of priority once critical bugs are fixed.
Improve tutorial/onboarding experience
An confusing tutorial or hard to grasp onboarding flow results in players churning out early. Improve explanatory text instructions and tooltips based on beta tester feedback. Consider adding an interactive tutorial level to guide new players step-by-step in a no risk environment prior to normal gameplay. Iterate here up until launch.
Refine core gameplay loops
The addictive core gameplay loop is the heart of a successful game. Analyze beta tester feedback and usage analytics on elements of your core mechanics to assess engagement, challenge level, and repetition. Refine repetitive loops to increase variability, skip frustrations and boost rewards until these fundamental interactions achieve strong retention benchmarks.
Polish visuals/audio that detract from enjoyment
Beta feedback and playtesting should illuminate any elements of visuals, animations, effects and audio that feel rougher, inconsistent with other elements or distracting. Identify problem areas and selectively improve assets and refine effects that could undermine overall enjoyment. Balancing polish across core areas builds an inviting, professional look and feel.
Plan content/features for future updates
Inevitably some great ideas or content suggestions will arise too late to make it into the initial release build given your timeline and budget constraints. Catalog these items in a backlog to refine and potentially include in DLC expansions after launch. Seeking future add-on ideas is another benefit of early feedback.
When and How to Invite External Feedback
Start small and test often
From the very beginning of concepting your game, routinely ask for candid input from unbiased observers. Early, informal feedback rounds with just a few players, before major work gets locked in, allows fundamental issues to be caught early with lower change effort.
Focus early feedback on core mechanics
In prototyping phases, test frequently with 5 to 8 players to validate if your core gameplay hook, controls, and rules feel enjoyable and intuitive. Positive reactions from a sample of players to early versions indicates you have promising foundations to develop upon.
Later feedback on overall gameplay flow
As more assets, characters, levels get built out, structure playtests to get responses on pacing, progression flow, and duration. Balancing engagement across all key interactions leading players through multiple hours of adventures is crucial to maximize retention.
Beta feedback on polish and completion
In late stage development, beta tests with a diverse player base assess final enjoyment across access points, starting challenge, content breadth, visual/audio fit and finish and appeal to intended audiences. Granular beta feedback is critical to perfecting the end-to-end experience.
Set clear guidelines for useful feedback
Provide playtesters and beta communities specific questions tied to current priorities as well as open-ended impressions. Set expectations like minimum play duration, using comment fields, rating aspects from 1-5 etc to increase actionable responses.
Compensate testers for their time if possible
Offering incentives via gift cards, game keys or merchandise helps motivate engaged participation and quality responses from selected feedback groups. Even nominal rewards make volunteers feel their contributions matter.
Fix issues quickly to maintain engagement
Let beta testers know you appreciate constructive criticisms by visibly addressing common complaints promptly. Sign off emails with your latest changes driven by tester input. Fixing issues raised builds rapport with your external feedback channels.
