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Playtesting 🎥

Playtesting is a major part of developing or improving a game. Sharing what you’ve made with players can help uncover bugs, gather feedback, and test if your design works as intended. It can highlight fun aspects of your game and pinpoint areas that might need improvement. For developer teams of all sizes, playtesting has proven to be the key to making a game a success story.

Poki Playtesting

Setting up playtests can be a difficult undertaking. Especially finding players who match your audience can be challenging. Friends and family may be easy to reach but might not give the feedback you need.

That’s where Poki Playtesting can help! With this tool, you can leave all the setup, providing players, devices, and tracking tools to us so you can focus on perfecting your game.

How Does it Work?

Poki Playtesting uses the Poki platform to gather playtest recordings. You can specify which devices you want to run playtests on and with which audience you want to test. You can specify this by category - so for example if you are making a platformer, it would be a good idea to test it with the Platformer Games audience.

When you send out your test, a small group of Poki players will receive a Mystery Tile on their page. Clicking on it will give them a one-time opportunity to playtest your game. If they agree to their session being recorded, they can try your game on their own devices and at their own pace.

Once the player is done, the recording of their gameplay is saved and added to your Poki for Developers dashboard, ready to be reviewed at any time! Each playtest gets you 10 video recordings, together with the button inputs the player made during the tests and the console output. Playtest recordings also include how long the gameplay lasted, the country where the test was done, and the type of device used by the player. No need to breathe down a tester’s neck to see what they’re doing!

With Poki’s huge player base from all over the world you can expect your first playtests from real players that fit your audience within minutes. This makes it simpler to include testing in your workflow and use the results for iteration and changes. With Poki Playtesting, you can create a new feature in the morning and have it tested and improved by the end of the day!

A Test For Every Situation

Knowing what you want to test helps you get the most value from a playtest. It’s important to have a clear goal, but also to limit the number of things you’re testing so the results are easy to understand.

The Poki Playtesting feature allows for tons of different tests to be done. Developers who have already used playtesting have found these types to be the most helpful:

  • Baseline Test: Especially important in the early stages of development, a baseline test is focussed on discovering if your targeted audience has fun with the game you’re making. By simply showing your audience your game and measuring the time players spend with it, you can get a good idea of how they like the game.

    • âť“ What to Look For: To see whether the core of your game is interesting for the Poki audience, look for the amount of time players spend with the game during your playtests. If players engage with your game for multiple minutes - that’s a good first sign! The more time players spend with your game during the playtests, the stronger the potential Poki fit is.

    Engagement Guide

    For some tips to help increase your Engagement times, have a look at our Engagement Guide. This can be further explored in more detail in the next submission stage (Level 3 - Player Fit Test).

  • Onboarding Experience Testing: No matter how good your game is, if players can’t quickly understand how it works, they’re more likely to quit before seeing the best parts. That’s why you should test your onboarding and tutorials very thoroughly. The easier it is for players to get through the beginning of the game, the more likely they are to keep playing.

    • âť“ What to Look For: For this test it’s important to look at where your players are getting frustrated. If they leave the game after playing for less than a minute, chances are your onboarding might need some tweaks. Have a look at those recordings to see where the player dropped off and what could be improved!

    Easy Access Guide

    If you need some inspiration to improve your onboarding, give our Easy Access guide a look!

  • Difficulty Balancing: Few things can spoil your fun with a game more than running into a sudden difficult part. At the same time, you don’t want the game to be so easy that your players get bored. That’s why it’s important to balance your game.

    • âť“ What to Look For: Playtests make it easy to see exactly where and in what part of the game players get frustrated or bored - allowing you to make difficulty tweaks more easily and precisely. If all players repeatedly lose in Level 3 - that level might be too hard. If players simply stop playing at Level 3 - they might be bored and in need of something exciting to keep them going!

  • Bug Testing: Important in every stage of development, a bug test is used to discover if there are any errors or bugs popping up in your game. To do this, you need a variety of people to play your game on different devices and browsers. This way, you can make sure everyone has a good experience, no matter what they are playing on.

    • âť“ What to Look For: Keep an eye on the console window when you’re watching your playtest recordings. See anything pop up that shouldn’t be there? Then it might be good to have a look at your code to see what might be causing the issue.

Test Often!

Once you get your playtest results back, make sure to give each recording a good look. The most important part of playtesting is iteration. When you have done your first test and have analyzed the results, find out what you want to test next and make a new plan. Even the smallest change made to your game can have an effect on the overall experience. That’s why it’s important to test as often as possible!