Feedback Roundup 🤠 Gildebeest Hunter Survey Results

3 weeks ago I released a demo for my game Gildebeest Hunter and asked you all for some feedback. THANK YOU to everyone who played!! Today, we’re going to roundup the results and talk about the future of the game!

But first, please consider subscribing! I’ve been enjoying sharing my thoughts and projects with you and I hope to continue! Please let me know if you have any questions or if there’s something you’d like me to discuss.

I’m also somewhat active on mastodon where I post monster hunter and game development stuff. My Meowscular Minute Monster Hunter blog is here: https://meowscular.substack.com. Finally, I try to cross post everything to my website https://nuzcraft.com and you can send me an email me[at]nuzcraft[dot]com if you like.

Since releasing the demo on 2024.07.03, the game has been seen 199 times with 76 plays in the browser. We can see from the graph below that most of those views and plays were from the first couple days.

itch.io analytics for Gildebeest Hunter Demo

In addition to posting on substack, I also posted a release notice on mastodon, in a game dev discord server that I frequent, and finally the r/roguelikes subreddit on reddit. By far the most traffic the game got was from reddit.

Playtester Survey Results

The game and itch page both ask for feedback via a dedicated playtester survey. The survey is still up and accepting responses, so please feel free to play the game and let me know how to make it better!

In total, I have gotten 11 responses and lots of great ideas, feedback, and bug reports. One roguelike player even sent me a video recording of their play session, which was super helpful! I would share the video with you if I could! 🤠

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from general feedback:

Most people had fun!
There is a lack of information about enemies.
Equipment is confusing.
There is little incentive to engage the enemies when evasion/dodging is very effective.
The game looks very good!
Some players didn’t engage with understanding enemy attack patterns.

I have various ideas for ways to address these opinions and improve the game. A significant number of issues, concerns, and bugs were due to my own closeness to what I wanted the game to be as well as a blindness to how other people would engage with the game. The playtest was a great success for how well I feel it has opened me up to these new ideas!

Words and Similarities

There are two questions on the playtester survey that I think provided some significant insight into how players restrospectively saw the game.

What 3 words might you use to describe this game to others?
Name the game you have played that is most similar to this one.

These questions provided a lot of opportunities for me to learn new things about other adjacent or simlar games, as well as get a sense for what people might see as the draw from my game.

Words (non-exhaustive list)

Puzzle
Tactical
Chess-like
Strategic
Nostalgic

Games (non-exhaustive list)

screenshot from crypt of the necrodancer

screenshot from into the breach

screenshot from dungeon drafters

Next Up?

WELP. All those games listed as similar to my game? I haven’t played any of them. I don’t think I have enough experience playing games like mine to make decent, informed decisions about my game!

Therefore, I’m going to put development of Gildebeest Hunter on a bit of a hiatus. I have a lot of feedback to work through if I want to, as well as a nice catalogue of games to try before I pick it back up again.

In the meantime, I’ll probably mess around making some new prototypes or join some game jams. I need to think about the types of games I DO play, and see if there’s anything in that space I can make.

Please let me know if you disagree with me! I’d love to hear your thoughts.

nuzcraft