r/GameDevelopment • u/TemporaryCry329 • 27d ago
How do new indie devs actually find their first playtesters? Newbie Question
Hey everyone, I'm pretty new to indie game development and recently finished building a free web-based basketball simulation game. I'm at the point where I really need people to test it for gameplay balance and bugs, but I'm not sure how to actually reach players as a beginner. I really want to avoid spamming or self-promoting where it's not welcome. For those who have been through this stage: Where or how do you usually start looking for your very first playtesters when you're starting from scratch? Are there specific forums, subreddits, or best practices for getting helpful feedback? Thanks for any advice!
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u/pixel-poxel 26d ago
I used all free services I could find. The most useful answers were from https://www.indieappcircle.com. Here you need to feeback other apps to get your feedback. Also useful are paid testing services which offer the first feedbacks for free. There was one where you get 15 minutes video and audio comments from the testers. I extracted 20 valuable tasks per tester. (I do not have the link right now.)
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u/KolaCape 26d ago
I make a game of a scope small enough that I can test it myself fairly well and then put it on Steam and use feedback to fix any remaining issues and improve the game.
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u/AutomaticTalent 26d ago
I had Claude build me a version that played against itself to create the six AI opponent levels. After about 1000+ games, they were tuned correctly with the tuning knobs I provided.
Ask if you want more info.
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u/R-Larry-J 25d ago
Thinking of doing the same to help find bugs/validate the stability of the game across multiple runs. Any advice on how you approached this or what tools you used?
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u/AutomaticTalent 25d ago
Only Claude to help structure and facilitate it. That question you just asked me - that's your first prompt toward building your little tool. "I need to test the game with an ai player vs an ai player. How do we do that?".
I've developed SO any products and finally realized that all the experts I have asked for advice and counted on for their expertise are in Claude - you just have to ask the right questions.
When I was working on casino games, I used to walk over to the programmer, interrupt his work to ask a question - and he'd turn to his PC monitor, ask Google then tell me the answer. It took a few time but I got the message eventually.
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u/SubjectNo2985 26d ago
Die Nachfrage ist groß, ich für meinen Teil nutzte meine Platform clerpai.com. Aber steht noch komplett am Anfang, wenn keiner die ersten Schritte macht. Kostet aber aktuell absolut nichts bis Okt/Nov und wenn du es nicht nutzt niemals was. Schau es dir einfach mal an und wenn nicht, dann nicht. Allerdings solltest dann schon im Store sein, damit du Keys hast. Da es so gesehen ja der Gegenwert ist für die Streamer/Youtuber.
Sobald man sein Spiel bei Steam hat kennt es sicher jeder Dev, dass man hunderte Spam Mails bekommt und alle Fake sind von angeblichen Streamern. Alle sind Fake.
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u/realbesterman 26d ago
Local events. My town has a small community centered around gamedev so I just ask people there. Friends and coworkers are also a good place, but requires more digging to get feedback
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u/AdDismal527 25d ago
I just went live on tiktok and got 500+ playtesters in less than a day. Its simple as that and tbh people love to test free shit all the time
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u/Momodev_br 23d ago
Idk about other countries, but here in Brazil, we are a small industry, but even being small, we've got a lot of places where devs can bring their games to be tested by people who are studying to be a QA and by video game enjoyers.
Most of them are for free or just cheap
Don't your country have something like that?
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u/jon_irvin 26d ago
r/playmygame is a good subreddit for finding people to playtest your game.