What 15 playtest reports taught three indie studios

In October 2026 Bounty Board paid for playtests of three indie games: a real estate strategy tutorial, a story driven platformer demo and a Metroidvania. Five testers each, $10 a report, 15 reports and 4,696 words of answers.

We paid for the rounds and we run the platform, so read the numbers with that in mind. The full case study has every figure, round by round.

Four lessons, briefly

• Ask "Where did you first get confused or stuck?" first, and ask for the exact step.
• Test the controls on the device you ship, on every screen, not only in play.
• Have players who read English check your English before launch.
• Plan for a no-show: give the round a week, not a weekend.

Ask where they got stuck, and ask it first

GriffinBuilds Studio asked six questions about the tutorial of Bricks & Bribes, its turn based real estate strategy game. "Where did you first get confused or stuck? What were you trying to do at that moment?" came third, after a question about how often the tester plays strategy games and one about what the tutorial taught.

That third question carried the round. 3 of 5 testers named the auction step: the base price looked faded, the auction screen would not close, or the bid math was unclear. One tester found something worse. HaouAnubis kept getting sent back to turn 1 in the mortgage step, and wrote that "it gets stuck on a loop not letting you do more than 1 turn despite saying you can go up to 6" (report). The studio shipped three updates to its itch.io demo during the round, and the mortgage fix is in progress.

Looking back, GriffinBuilds Studio said the useful part of every report was the answer to that question, and that next time it would put the question first and ask for the exact step. A wording that does both:

Where did you first get confused or stuck? Name the exact step or screen.

The campaign builder's first starter question is already "Where did you get stuck?" Keep it first, and sharpen it so the answer points at a screen you can open.

Test the controls on the device you ship

Umisonia, a Metroidvania action RPG from ZhinestarK, asked how its gamepad felt. The answers were about everything around the fighting. 5 of 5 testers needed the mouse for menus, dialogue or the pause screen, and 4 of 5 could not hide the touch buttons meant for phones while playing on PC, even with the HUD off. Undoubtedlylink put it plainly: "The controller only works in combat. Changing menu tabs, picking dialogue options or navigating all requires mouse usage instead of the controller." (report)

AETHRA : Echoes Of The Forgotten had the same gap from the other side: 2 of 5 testers found no controller mapping at all.

Before a round, list every screen a player touches (menus, dialogue, pause, shop, settings) and get through each one with only the device you claim to support. Then ask testers which device they used, so a keyboard player's "controls felt fine" is not read as a gamepad verdict.

Have English readers check your English

AnaryxSof's demo of AETHRA opened in Indonesian. Testers could switch to English in the settings, but 4 of 5 flagged text that stayed untranslated or did not read naturally. SoloRaven wrote: "Some dialogue captions and interface text remain in another language despite English being selected." (report)

Default to the player's system language or to English, and give the text one question of its own in the round.

On Bounty Board, testers confirm the country they play from and the languages they play in when they join, so both show on every application, and you can name the countries and languages you prefer. In these rounds, 11 of the 31 people who applied were based in the United States, Canada or the United Kingdom.

Plan for a no-show

2 of the 17 testers approved across the three rounds never sent a report. On Bounty Board a claimed spot with no report after 72 hours becomes free for someone else, so the round keeps going, but it loses days.

In the Bricks & Bribes round, the spot opened again on day 4, a new tester took it the same day, and the fifth report was accepted on day 7. The other two rounds finished in 4.5 and 4.8 days. If you need answers by a date, start the round a week before it.

What five testers will not tell you

Five testers find the problems several players share, like the auction step or the controller in menus. They can also turn up the worst problem through one person: only one tester hit the mortgage loop. Read the single reports as carefully as the patterns.

Some limits of these rounds are worth knowing before you copy them:

• All three games were downloads, so play time was stated by each tester. On a game in the Arcade, play time comes from the tester's own play sessions.
• Two testers took part in all three rounds and wrote 6 of the 15 reports. If you run a second round of your own game, pick people who have not seen it; the playtesters guide explains why.
• Two rounds were open to gamers as well as creators, and no gamer applied. Every report came from a creator account.
• Five reports say nothing about retention or sales.

What a round like this costs

Each round paid five reports at $10, which is $50 in rewards. Bounty Board charges a standard 10% platform fee on each side of completed work, and only on completed work: the studio pays the reward total plus 10%, and the tester receives the reward minus 10%. That made $55 per round, charged at publish, since every campaign is funded up front through Stripe when it is published. On a $10 report the tester receives $9. Any unused budget is refunded to the studio with its share of the platform fee, less Stripe's processing fee on the refund, when the campaign closes.

The playtests page has the full pricing and the button that starts a round.

Sources

• Bricks & Bribes playtest and its five reports
• AETHRA : Echoes Of The Forgotten playtest and its five reports
• Umisonia playtest and its five reports