Our first playtest has come to an end, so it’s time to sum things up.
Over the week of testing, we achieved the following:
1,500+ applications received.
400 people played the build.
50+ players left detailed feedback.
For our small team, this was a huge boost in both gameplay understanding and morale. <3
During this test, we focused on core gameplay, including character movement, combat flow, and the overall game feel. We were happy that players enjoyed the “Dash” mechanic and the fast, fluid movement across the map with responsive controls — those were exactly what we were betting on. We were also pleasantly surprised by the praise for our visual style, as well as the enemy and weapon models. Big thanks to our artist for that!
That said, players sometimes behaved in ways we didn’t expect — for example, using explosive barrels as jump pads, or even mistaking the chandelier in the center of the map for an enemy and shooting at it.
Recently, we’ve mostly been busy analyzing feedback, reviewing stats, and watching stream recordings. During the playtest, we received 13 bug reports and quickly fixed most of them. Players didn’t encounter any critical bugs or crashes. Now we have a clearer understanding of what we want to change and improve:
Shooting mechanics and weapon variety.
Enemy AI.
UI/UX design.
On top of that, we’d like to give a special thanks to the active playtesters from our Discord server who helped us identify issues in real time and motivated us to release new builds every day! Based on their feedback, we added to the test build:
Prototype rocket launcher with rocket jump functionality.
Several jump pads.
“Death” vignette and slow-mo effect.
and much more!
This was a very important experience for us. And while the core of the game performed well, there’s still a lot of polishing, changes, and bug fixing ahead.
The next step is a full-fledged demo with a playable level and progression. In terms of scope, it’s about 4–5 times more content, which also means a lot more work for us — but we’ll do our best not to keep you waiting too long.
Thanks to everyone who was with us at this milestone!
Lots of hugs.
— Depra Team