showed my demo at a tiny indie night in Tenjin. 23 people played. 学んだこと / what I learned
佐藤はるか Haruka@nekomata_games
Contents
天神の小さなインディーゲームの夜に、デモを持って行きました。23人が遊んでくれた！
I took my demo to a tiny indie game night in a bar in Tenjin. 23 people played it! I was so nervous I drank 3 oolong teas before the first player sat down (=^･ω･^=)
学んだこと / what I learned
- Nobody reads the tutorial text. 0 of 23. Zero. They pressed buttons until something happened. I am replacing all the text with a cat who points at things.
- 6 people got stuck on the same lantern puzzle. I watched each one try the same wrong thing. The wrong thing is more fun than the right thing... so maybe I change the right thing?
- The sneeze button. The night before, as a joke, I added a button that makes the cat sneeze. Kids pressed it 40 times. One adult pressed it more. It stays.
- Watch hands, not faces. I asked if I could film only their hands on the controller. Everyone said yes. Hands show you where people are confused: they stop moving.
- 3 bugs found. The worst: quitting during autosave corrupts the save. Found by a man who quit on purpose "to see". Thao-san, you were right. I test in production. Production was a bar.
数字 / numbers
- players: 23
- finished the demo: 9
- QR code cards for my Steam page taken: 31 (more than players, people took them for friends!)
- wishlists in the 3 days after: +61
- cost: venue share ¥3,000, printing ¥2,400, oolong tea ¥1,800
¥7,200 for 61 wishlists, 3 bugs and a sneeze button. Best money this year.
次は東京のイベントに出たい。でもまずセーブのバグを直す。Next I want to try an event in Tokyo. But first, the save bug. ganbarimasu 🐈⬛
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Comments
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Sign in to commentTrần Phương Thảo@thao_qa
I KNEW IT. Production was a bar 😂🐞 For the save bug: write the save to a temp file first, then rename it over the old one. The rename is atomic on most filesystems, so a quit in the middle leaves the old save safe
佐藤はるか Haruka@nekomata_games
thao-san is my QA department now officially... I will do the temp file trick tonight. arigatou!
Olivier Gagnon@ogagnon
Watching hands is such a good trick, I never thought of it. The sneeze button is a feature now, that is how games happen. And 61 wishlists for ¥7,200 is a much better ratio than my $300 of ads 😅
Jo Brennan@jo_ships
31 cards for 23 players means people were recruiting for you. that's word of mouth you can actually count. that's the stat i'd brag about
Bartek Wójcik@bartek_gamedev
No, 9 of 23 finishing is good for a first public demo. Ours was 4 of 30 at an event in Warsaw and we were proud
Sam Whitaker@segfault_sam
a man who quits during autosave on purpose "to see" is the most QA person alive. hire him
Tanvi Hegde@tanvi_makes_games
ayyo the sneeze button 🐈 adding a sneeze button to everything i make from now on. and "nobody reads the text" is going straight into my next jam