Devlog #15 📚 Playtesters

Hiiiiii devlog time

In case you just stumbled upon this devlog, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I am the creator of timeloop RPG In Stars and Time, and now am working on my next game, memory visual novel Truth Scrapper. It’s gonna be a good one.

For this month, I’m gonna talk about playtesters, what they are, how I use ‘em, what are they for!

Playtesters are people who test the game. They can be fans who play a beta version of the game, they can be friends, they can be complete strangers! Personally, I like to get friends to playtest my game :) Either online friends, and I ask them to livepost to me as they go so I get The Live Experience, or I invite some irl friends over to play while I look at them like this -> 👁👁. I also take a lot of notes while they play, on their reactions, questions, and typos I inevitably missed.

For more gameplay heavy games, they help with knowing how to balance the game so it’s not too easy or not too hard, pinpoint specific problems, notice bugs so you can fix them, etc. But that's not what I'm doing so WHO CARES!!!!!

For Truth Scrapper, which is mostly a narrative game, my lovely playtesters help me answer some questions:

-Is the story Understandable?

-Is the story Good?

-Are the playtesters feeling what I want them to feel?

-do they understand how to play the game I GUESS.

-Bonus round: can they help me make the game BETTER?

Come with me as I go point by point.

text id: "So excited for the vibes to get rancid"

IS THE STORY UNDERSTANDABLE?

Do they Get What’s Happening. I look at my testers while they play and if I get even a glimpse of confusion then I go ok what’s happening. Are you lost. Are you confused. Why. Sometimes they can pinpoint the problem, and sometimes they can’t, which is when I ask “please walk me through what just happened, as best you can!". Some passages of course are meant to be confusing, so I try to make sure the player knows this is the Intent.

This is probably the thing I keep the closest eye on– I’m confident in my ability to tell a Good story, but a bit less (but still confident heheh) in my ability to tell an Understandable one. 

This is also where I keep an eye out for plot holes. I try to write down everything in-game, but sometimes I do inevitably get a moment where the testers are like “wait, how did we get here” and I’m like uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh ok this is how but youre right i didnt actually write it. Thanks for noticing

IS THE STORY GOOD?

Are they having a fun* time 🙂

* i decide if they are having a fun time or not

ARE THEY FEELING IT?

Sometimes the testers play an emotional scene and they get emotional. YOU WIN

Sometimes the testers play an emotional scene and they start laughing. DEVASTATING. BUT MAYBE THAT’S FINE? Are they still enjoying their time? Are they feeling the schadenfreude? Was the scene too cheesy and they can’t handle the cheese? Are they maybe just the type of person who laughs when they feel uncomfortable? A tester not reacting how you expect them to isn’t necessarily bad. I always try to ask why they react in a certain way, just to see. And sometimes the scene is just bad and I gotta rewrite it. THATS HOW IT GOES

Sometimes the testers play what you think is a normal scene and they get WAY MORE EMOTIONAL THAN PLANNED. UH OH! I THOUGHT THIS WAS A NORMAL SCENE! SORRY!!!! I DIDN’T REALIZE THAT WAS A BAD SUBJECT!!! I HAVE A BLESSED LIFE!!!! Usually in that case I keep the scene like it is and I make a note to revise the game’s content warnings <3

DO THEY UNDERSTAND HOW TO PLAY THE GAME?

uuuuuugrghh i guess i AM making a game fuuuuuuuuck. Ok. Do they understand how to play the game? Do they understand what buttons to press, or do I need to make it clearer? They keep pressing SPACE to continue the dialogue– should SPACE also be the confirm button? They never interact with this important menu– am I not reminding them enough that it exists? They have trouble reading a specific screen– do I need to change how the text appears?

Observe your testers so you can figure out the pain points. They might not even realize there ARE pain points and they’ll just frown minutely, which is why you need to look like this at all times -> 👁👁

BONUS ROUND: I GUESS TESTERS ARE PEOPLE TOO

I currently have a handful of playtesters. They all are different people with different life experiences, genders, sexualities, interests. Which means!!! They all know different stuff!!! Isn’t that crazy!!!! Which MEANS!!! They all have different ways of interacting and understanding the story!!!!!

Here are some examples of what I mean.

Truth Scrapper is a pronouns game. Which means that many of the characters have multiple pronouns, change pronouns every so often, and/or use neopronouns. Some of my testers have taken Gender 101. Some are somewhat aware “they” is a pronoun. Which means that while playing, with two playtesters, we had a lovely discussion about pronouns, how people use them, what they might mean, which made me go “Wow! This was a really fun discussion. I feel like we really taught my friend something new. Let’s add that to the game!”, which is how the “Gender” glossary page was born!

At some point, there's a scene that is supposed to make the player uncomfortable. It successfully made a playtester uncomfortable. But, crucially: /I/ got uncomfortable. There are moments that are supposed to make the player uncomfortable and they make me go "heheheheeeee i won i succeeded >:)" but here all i could think about was "oh. oh no. this is bad. this is gross. and this is a friend playing next to me. if i have to watch STREAMERS go through this i will die. i will straight up die", so I toned the scene down. Now it's "heeheeee" levels of uncomfortable and I feel happy 👍 Better to realize something is bad while playing with a playtester than while a cool streamer is going through it

At some point, the girls go out drinking. I am not a drinker. I hate alcohol. But I really wanted the girls to have a good time drinking good drinks. So I asked one of my playtesters, who happens to be a bartender, to figure out what each of the girls’ favorite drinks are. And now the game is better.

(Also she made all of them for me so I could take pictures <3)

At some point, Sosotte finds a journal written in a special script she has to decode, which is described as having “a multitude of ciphers”. But really is just rot13 (you replace each letter with the one 13 letters ahead. A is N etc) because I couldn’t be bothered.

One of my playtesters is a computer science major. So, obviously, stopped and went “what are the ciphers?” and I went “uuuh rot13” and he was like “that’s not many ciphers. That’s not even one” and I got humbled I guess. I didn’t change anything I just got humbled. also this same playtester took a look at a specific menu and went "this looks bad. ill send you some notes". he is a UI designer he can save me (and my menus)

All of this to say. I love my playtesters a lot. Without them, the game would be much worse. Thanks playtesters <3

And if you ever happen to be a playtester for any kinda game. YES you should send the developer ALL YOUR THOUGHTS NO MATTER WHAT. WE NEED THOSE TO MAKE THE GAME GOOD. DO NOT HOLD BACK. IT’S BETTER WE CATCH THE MISTAKES AND PLOTHOLES AND CONFUSING THINGS NOW THAN WHEN THE GAME IS OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway 

DON'T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THATS THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!

Links!
📚 Official Website
📚 Join the Discord
📚 Sign up for my mailing list
📚 Follow Truth Scrapper on Bluesky
📚 Follow ME on Bluesky