Why a demo ?

As a single developer it is obviously easy to get the famous "tunnel vision" problem. You know your game so well, you do not see the problems anymore. And you see the problems that are "your" problems, while other people may have other ways of playing and other difficulties. Putting a demo on the market and asking for feedback is a way of solving that problem. It is stressful, though, so you must be prepared for some harsh (and sometimes nasty) comments on the project you've spent so many days and nights to make.

Why itch.io ?

I found Itch to be fantastically easy to use. Creating a page and improving it on the run is very simple. Uploading .exe files or zip files for people to download is even simpler and done in one click. And the fact that you can just upload new builds of your project and make them instantly patch the old version is so useful. 

After discussing this with fellow gamedev, it also appeared that anything you put on Steam, as an early access download or a free demo, will be reviewed very harshly. Steam users seem to be much more unforgiving than Itch users, for some reason. And once you get those bad comments on your project on Steam, it is difficult to go backwards.

The feedback

After posting the demo on Itch I made a twitter post which generated some interest from the always friendly and helpful Godot community. Based on Itch analytics (which are pretty well made as they show you the source of referrals) this generated 70 downloads within a few days. Most downloads concerned the Windows version and approximately 20 the Linux version (hey, Godot is an open source engine!). 

I have provided players with a short feedback form accessible through the Itch post but also by pressing a button in the game. I got approximately 15 completed feedback forms out of the 70 downloads, which seems to be a rather good ratio. Good thing is that most of the reviews were rather positive but also pointed at several issues, which means I have motivation to go on with the project and it leaves me with a nice to-do list.

What now ?

A majority of the feedback I got said that the visual style and the music were the most positive aspect of the project. This is encouraging as concerns the artistic direction Kilirane (for the music) and myself (for the visuals and 3D assets) have taken. I am not an artist by trade (not at all), so this is pretty encouraging.

The most negative comments I received concerned the camera. This is a very tricky subject concerning 3D third person games, so it does not come as a big surprise. Comments concerned both bugs (careful with the joystick's deadzone !) and design choices. Also, my system is just based on a simple pivot -> springarm -> camera chain of nodes: it is quite basic and lacks a lot of subtleties. But well, a challenge is a good thing.

A lot of other comments concerned little things that are not so complicated to implement: make a splash sound when falling into the water, give some of the NPCs a distinctive feature such as a straw hat or glasses, provide more options in the options menu, etc. All of these things are now on my to do list, although I may not fulfill every wish (after all, game design is also about making choices).

I intend to improve the demo and put new versions on the Itch page. My plan is to freeze the development of the levels (which are already quite advanced) as long as the issues revealed by the feedback I received are not fixed. That way, I will also have something nice to show when people ask: I can see those funny blue rabbit GIFs on twitter, but can I actually play that game?

Thanks to all the people who downloaded the demo and to those whose who provided me with their precious feedback. If you have two minutes sometimes, check out latest versions and let me know if things have improved.