Just some ramblings of a game dev

Hello, so I started working (nights and weekends) on my wacky comedy narrative game around two years ago. Last November I released a demo. Some of the players have been kind of enough to leave answers in the demo’s feedback form on how I can improve the game and also to let me know if it is even good. I want to share these responses, my analysis and answer any questions that you may have.

The game is inspired by narrative walking sims like The Stanley Parable, Firewatch, Title_Pending, Portal, and some obscure Half-Life 2 mods. It relies heavily on narrative and humor to entertain players. This is a tough balancing act, so I’ve been eager for feedback. Thankfully, I now have enough responses to draw statistically significant conclusions. Let's go over the questions and see what insights we can uncover, and what you might adapt for your own game:

Q1: Rate the demo

5 - 36%

4 - 31%

3 - 20%

2 - 8%

1 - 5%

Comment:I’m very happy with these results as most people rate the demo with 5/5 stars and almost 70% rate it 4 or 5. I should mention that the demo serves as a prologue, giving players a sense of the game’s style and theme. It might be a standalone level, or I may feature it as an prologue for extra content in the full game. Essentially, if you like the demo, you’ll likely enjoy the rest of the game.

Q2: Rate the humor on a scale of 1 (not funny) to 5 (really funny):

5 - 33%

4 - 31%

3 - 14%

2 - 16%

1 - 6%

Comment: This is another important one, and I’m happy to see that 64% of players found the demo funny. Humor is a core element of the game, so if it doesn’t land, the game doesn’t work. Thankfully, most players seem to appreciate the humor.

Q3: Did you or will you replay the demo?

Yes - 65.6 %

No - 34.4 %

Comment: This is a key metric, and I’m glad to see that most players would replay the demo. It’s somewhat linear, but there are different outcomes based on your actions, which likely encourages players to try different approaches and see what happens.

Q4: What did you like about the demo?

Q5: What did you NOT like about the demo?

Q6: Did you encounter any problems during gameplay?

Of course I will skip these because they are lengthy, but I’m glad I’ve gotten responses to each from most players which tells me that they are engaged with the game and genuinely want to see it improved. At first, most players disliked the original voice of the narrator. I had been using a basic text-to-speech program, since the narrator is an A.I. and it seemed logical for him to sound robotic. However, a flat response didn’t work for a game where the player actively provokes the narrator. You want to hear their frustration, even anger, not a monotone voice. So a month or two after the initial launch of the demo I found someone to voice the game and we re-recorded every single line in the game and the demo. It was a lot of work, but what can you do.

Q7: Based on this demo, would you buy the full game?

Yes - 46%

Maybe: during sales and deals - 33%

No - 21%

Comment: This is a very important question, and I’m happy to see that almost 80% of players are interested in buying the full game.

Q8: What price would you recommend for the game?

Price Percentage

$0 (Free) - 2.2%

$1-$5 - 8.8%

$6-$10 - 19.8%

$11-$15 - 16.5%

$16-$20 - 15.4%

$21-$30 - 11.0%

$31-$50 - 0.0%

$51+ - 1.1%

Comment:So this is a tricky one. I always have doubts about my pricing. Some devs just say screw it and price their games at like 3 bucks and you see them sell millions of copies. Other go for $20-24 and also sell good. From what I can see here I can say that 32% of players consider between $10 and $20 to be a fair price. And 19.8% are willing to pay between $6-$10. What do you think? What price would you recommend?

Q9: Where are you from?

Comment:The Google Form doesn’t allow me to extract this data as a table, but from what I’ve seen, most players are from the USA, which is expected since the game is in English. Other countries include Spain, Finland, Netherlands, Brazil, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and China. Interestingly, someone claimed they’re from "The Dystopian Hellscape"—I'll leave it to you to speculate where that might be!

Q10: Will you press the button?

Yes - 86.4%

No - 13.6%

Comment:Forms can be fun too! Here I decided to ask this and see what happens. It might be concerning that 86% of players would like to delete the Universe. Should we be worried?

Q11. Leave extra comments.

Comment:Here I let players write suggestions and some did write full on essays on what they want in the game, and even encouraged them to leave an e-mail so I can respond and have a discussion.

Overall it was great reading trough all of them and try to understand what players want out of the game and hopefully I can provide it. I started tinkering with game dev around 4 years ago and do it as second job basically.