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Let's talk about how we attempted to do an unconventional demo and accidentally ended up creating a weird, but highly effective, early access hybrid for our game.
Thread time! (1/11)
Thread time! (1/11)
First, some context: We're currently working on a 3D Platformer called Demon Turf, releasing later this year.
We noticed a trend on Steam for demo's to be released as separate titles on Steam, often called "Prologues", as a method to gain more visibility. (2/11)
We noticed a trend on Steam for demo's to be released as separate titles on Steam, often called "Prologues", as a method to gain more visibility. (2/11)
We wanted to do something similar but thought just releasing a demo separately might feel a bit odd. So we came up with an idea: What if it includes the regular demo AND every week it automatically releases a new "trial" for people to compete in via leaderboards? (3/11)
The additional incentive: The winner each week gets a personalized portrait of theirs in-game.
Upon release the effect of this unconventional demo became immediately apparent: Huge increase in people & activity on our Discord. People were LOVING the trials. (4/11)
Upon release the effect of this unconventional demo became immediately apparent: Huge increase in people & activity on our Discord. People were LOVING the trials. (4/11)
A very dedicated core fan of players evolved sharing videos, discussing techs/tactics and generally encouraging each other to improve times by milliseconds at a time. They absolutely PUSHED our gameplay to its limits. Runs like THESE!! (5/11)
These incredible people started putting in 20, 30, 50, 100+ hours into the demo. (A demo with only three main levels and one weekly trials, mind you!) And started uncovering bugs! Or managed to abuse gameplay combo's in a game breaking way! (6/11)
So we started pushing out patches. Then we got more involved with our community and discussed balancing changes. What's fun to keep, what values can we tweak? What features are missing? With every patch the game & gameplay improved by a metric ton! (7/11)
Because these are dedicated speedrunners the feedback was also DEEP. The kind of feedback you're lucky to ever get in a regular beta. But it also constantly took away development time for the main release. Tough balance act, it was like working on an Early Access game! (8/11)
But at the end of the day this unconventional demo did everything we wanted it to and then some!
Thousands got to enjoy a standard demo & happily wishlisted the main game. While hundreds slowly became highly engaged community members that helped polish the gameplay up! (9/11)
Thousands got to enjoy a standard demo & happily wishlisted the main game. While hundreds slowly became highly engaged community members that helped polish the gameplay up! (9/11)
In a way this will tremendously lower the time needed for a beta! The core loop got its stress test & polish, missing features have been added, now it's "just" a matter of testing all the level design!
And this community's enthusiasm is giving our dev team pure energy! (10/11)
And this community's enthusiasm is giving our dev team pure energy! (10/11)
If you want to check it out yourself, here's our unconventional demo called Demon Turf Trials:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1451650/Demon_Turf_Trials/
And our Discord if you want to join in on the fun:
https://discord.gg/fabraz
(11/11)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1451650/Demon_Turf_Trials/
And our Discord if you want to join in on the fun:
https://discord.gg/fabraz
(11/11)
