Playtesting​

Playtesting is the process of evaluating your game before it is released to the market. The primary goals of playtesting include:

1. Validate Game Mechanics

• Ensure mechanics work as intended: Confirm that core systems (e.g., movement, combat, inventory) function correctly and are understandable to players.

• Check balance: Determine whether gameplay elements (e.g., weapons, abilities, enemies) are fair and well-balanced.

 2. Assess Player Experience

• Gauge player engagement: Measure how fun, exciting, or rewarding the game feels.

• Detect frustration points: Identify moments when players become confused, bored, or irritated, often due to unclear objectives, poor controls, or abrupt difficulty spikes.

 3. Evaluate Difficulty and Progression

• Test difficulty curve: Ensure that the game becomes gradually more challenging in a fair and motivating way.

• Check learning curve: Confirm that tutorials, tooltips, or level designs effectively teach players how to play.

 4. Identify Bugs and Technical Issues

• Detect glitches and crashes: Find and fix bugs that affect gameplay, visuals, audio, or system stability.

• Observe unintended behavior: Spot exploits, sequence breaks, or features that function in unexpected ways.

  5. Test Level Design

• Evaluate flow and pacing: Ensure that levels are neither too short nor too long, and that action and quiet moments are balanced.

• Check navigation and layout: Identify areas where players get lost, stuck, or bypass important content.

 6. Measure Clarity and Communication

• Assess UI/UX clarity: Make sure that menus, HUD elements, and controls are intuitive and visually clear.

• Verify objective understanding: Ensure players know what they are supposed to do at all times.

 7. Gather Player Feedback

• Collect subjective impressions: Learn how players feel about specific aspects of the game (e.g., story, visuals, controls).

• Identify improvement opportunities: Use qualitative and quantitative data to prioritize changes and refine design decisions.

 8. Check Replayability and Longevity

• Measure how long players stay engaged: Determine if the game sustains interest over time.

• Evaluate variety: Assess whether players feel encouraged to explore different strategies, characters, or paths.

The more extensively you playtest your game, the fewer significant changes you will need to make post-launch. You should not search for excuses to avoid playtesting, such as:

• Fear of negative feedback.

• Belief that the game is not ready.

• Time and resource constraints.

• Overconfidence in personal judgment.

• Fear of intellectual property theft.

• Lack of playtesting knowledge or experience.

• Assumption that quality assurance (QA) testing is enough.

• Fear that feedback will derail vision.

• Misconception that playtesting is only for late-stage development.

• Unwillingness to prioritize player-centric design.

If you require assistance with playtesting, consider consulting a professional in user research. If this option is financially unfeasible, explore available tools or templates online to help you develop a cost-effective playtesting process on your own.

At the beginning of the playtesting process, you will approach your game much like a novice player, discovering its mechanics and flow. However, the more you play, the more familiar you become, eventually losing the perspective of a first-time user. This makes it increasingly difficult to evaluate the game with fresh eyes. For this reason, it is essential to bring in someone new to the experience—someone who has never played the game—to gain valuable first impressions.

Frequent self-playtesting enables faster identification of issues. By addressing them promptly instead of postponing fixes, you ensure a playable version of the game with minimal hidden problems at all times. Otherwise, you risk becoming accustomed to existing issues, making them harder to detect later in development.

The following guidelines are outlined in this chapter: