4 Tips For Responding to Player Feedback
And the Steam release of our first community game, Reaplaced!
Happy Mystery Monday! In today's newsletter, you will learn about:
The Reaplaced release on Steam, available for FREE starting today!
4 tips for responding to player feedback for your mystery game
Upcoming bonus content for fans of Reaplaced and Mystery Gamedev!
It's an amateur mistake to think that work on your game ends on launch day.
The reality is that players expect post-game updates and customer support.
So even though we finished Reaplaced in time for the Spooktober game jam, we still had more work to do in preparation for its Steam release — launching today!
That’s right — as of RIGHT NOW, Reaplaced is free to play on Steam!
Upon releasing Reaplaced on itch.io, we were met with overwhelmingly positive comments and reviews:
But you can't let praise get to your head — there's always room for improvement.
After all, Reaplaced only scored 7/10 on VNDB, and I was really hoping for a 10!
We had all agreed that the game was officially "done" at this point, and that we wouldn't make any major changes, like adding choices or rewriting parts of the story.
You just have to let the finished game stand on its own and take those lessons learned with you to the next one (which is why I recommend to start small and fail fast).
But since we had to wait a few weeks before the Steam release, we took that time to address the feedback we received.
Here are 4 tips that you can also apply to feedback for your own game:
1. Ensure players can solve your mystery
The above commenter should be delighted to know that we had exactly zero playtesters before releasing it on itch.io.
(Or maybe those players on itch.io were the beta testers!)
We had to meet the game jam’s deadline, but ideally you should always get feedback from real players before launching your game.
Working in isolation never ends well. You get lost in the fine details and end up focusing on things that most players don't even think about.
And especially for mystery games, it's important to make sure that your mystery is both solvable and fair, since much of the fun comes from trying to work out the answer.
We received mixed feedback on Reaplaced’s solvability. Some thought there weren’t enough clues, others said everything was fair and well-hinted, and a handful of others actually managed to deduce the answer on their own.
Watching a couple of YouTube playthroughs also revealed so much, and it was incredibly thrilling to watch them go in circles accusing all the suspects, one by one.
Even though they weren't able to solve the mystery themselves, it was clear they had tremendous fun as the answer unraveled itself in front of their eyes, and we’re incredibly thankful they shared Reaplaced with their audiences.
Ultimately, for the Steam version we decided to modify a few sentences and add more clues to the in-game list of evidence. No major changes to the story itself, but just enough content to nudge more novice sleuths in the right direction.
These changes should address the above commenter’s concern about solving the mystery using evidence not directly labeled as such, making it feel more fair.
2. Improve quality of life features
You should also continue to improve quality of life features as players suggest them.
Take for instance this comment regarding the "Now Playing" notification:
The surface-level response to this comment is to point out that the option already exists — but there’s a deeper lesson to be learned here.
This comment actually revealed that we didn't label it clearly, and so we decided to rename the option to literally say “Now Playing” with a music note:
(The importance of clarity in game design can also be seen in the “yellow ladder” controversy)
Also, we took the time to implement support for game controllers, including Xbox, PlayStation, and the Steam controller, with appropriate button icons for each.
I don't know how many visual novel enthusiasts use a controller, but it can't hurt.
Oh, and by "we" I mean CyberSe7en — he worked like mad to program all of these post-game updates into the game himself.
I only handled the more administrative stuff on the Steam backend, and I was seriously short on time this month, so I greatly appreciate everything Cyber has done for the Steam release!
3. Double-check for missed mistakes
We repeatedly played the game from start to finish before releasing it on itch.io, thinking we had finally eliminated every single typo in the script.
However, as I watched a YouTuber play the game and listened to the text being read aloud, I noticed a glaring inconsistency:
One of the the trickiest typos to spot is a word being repeated twice in a row.
Neither word is spelled wrong, so your typical spell-checker would never catch it.
It’s also pretty mind-blowing that out of all 9 of us, and out of all the times we ran through the game to test it, we never caught this glaring mistake!
Who knows if there are still any mistakes hidden deep within the Steam release?
But if we find any, we’ll fix those, too!
4. Create bonus content
One of the biggest pieces of feedback we received was that people wanted more.
They loved the lore of the reapers and monsters, and were left wanting to see these characters going on more adventures in the future.
No promises yet, but I would truly love to see more games made in this universe, too.
Right now, it's more important that I continue building out the infrastructure of Mystery Gamedev — those “tools and resources” I keep talking about so much.
But we still want to satisfy our fans of Reaplaced, and so we managed to come up with a few pieces of bonus content!
Firstly, for the Steam release, we've implemented 14 achievements.
Secondly, on October 28th, we'll be doing a live developer commentary of the game in our Discord server. You must join the server to watch the playthrough live!
(Maybe you'll even get a chance to ask us questions as we play!)
Thirdly, on November 1st, you'll be able to purchase the Reaplaced soundtrack on Steam and itch.io for $4.99 USD.
Solo and LockedOn did an amazing job on the music, so I hope you enjoy listening to the full soundtrack!
And last but not least, we’re announcing an official Reaplaced Development Book!
(A sneak peek — and special thanks to Nayru for using her magic to bind this book together!)
During the month of October, each of us on the team has taken time to write about our experiences working on Reaplaced.
That's right — you'll gain valuable insight into the collective minds behind some of your favorite mystery games!
You'll learn how each of us approached our processes while making Reaplaced — including writing, art, music, programming, and managing the project itself.
With over 20,000 words and dozens of exclusive "behind the scenes" screenshots, the devbook is a whole project in its own right!
It’s truly a must-have companion book for any fan of Reaplaced, or anyone wanting to learn how mystery games are made!
The store page for the devbook will be revealed soon — we’ll let you know!
Until then, don’t forget to play Reaplaced on Steam, and leave an honest review!
Thank you for reading!
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