Wildmender Demo Report

Greetings Wildmenders!

Thank you so much for playing the demo and being a part of the Wildmender Discord! After a month of collecting feedback and data, we’re finally ready to share some delicious stats and updates. Here we go!

Player Feedback:

First off, thanks everyone for the amount of feedback and suggestions! We were able to get through all of them so far. Yep, it took us a while 😅 The feedback range from improving composting, tutorialization, available wet/cultivation areas, spoilage and germination mechanics, inventory system, repository of narratives in journal, night aesthetics and brightness of the garden, key binds, various UI and HUD elements, to ideas on new quests, structures, creatures, cosmetic rewards, as well as features such as inventory sorting, and more. A number of the feedback are actually quite similar, and point to the same issues. This is great because it means that there are clear and consistent areas for us to tackle and improve upon.

We will continue to go over everyone’s feedback and suggestions daily, so please keep them coming!

Play Time Stats:

The play time stats are encouraging and incredibly inspiring to us. Despite all the pain points and issues that everyone reported to us, people were still able to complete the basic tutorial 85% of the time, and the majority of the people were willing to spend over an hour in the demo. Nearly ⅓ of all the people who ever opened the demo completed the entire quest line through the Naia temple. This just motivates us to work harder to improve.

Total Resource Collected:

Here are totals of all the resources people collected in the game. While the large totals for primary resources are to be expected, we were pleasantly surprised by the number of festival cakes found. And people managed to find the feathers and knotwoods after all. They were not meant for the demo, and were only spawning sporadically at the edge of the play area, but people managed to find them regardless.

Total Plant Seeds Collected:

For everyone who reported about the amaranth and sunburst seed drops and germination rates, we hear you! And stats in-game don’t lie. It’s great to be able to combine both qualitative feedback and the in-game data to get a clear picture of the issue. We’ll be auditing and improving seed drop rates, seed burying behavior, and the germination plus spoilage mechanics as some of our top priorities.

Items Crafted:

With the items crafted, the most surprising to us is the number of Trickster’s Treats. People love the pangolin, and you’ll be seeing more of it in the future! It’s great to see how much people are composting as well, and improving and reforming the way composting works is also something we’ll be working diligently on.

Survey Results:

For everyone who filled out the survey, thank you! It’s incredibly useful and insightful for us. And congrats to the winners of the plushies!

We are excited to see that most people found Wildmender through social media, coverage, and word of mouth. We’ll continue to improve the game to give everyone a reason to share it with friends and family.

Seeing this was incredibly motivating. It just inspires us to keep pushing, listening, and work hard to improve the game!

There are a number of ease of issues that people raised, such as prompts not being clear, confusion about where to go, lacking information on the map, ease of planting, etc. We will definitely be looking to address them to make the tutorial clearer, easier, and more engaging.

With gardening, some of the more pertinent issues that you’ve raised and that we’ll be looking at are germination, seed drops, rate of spoilage, and wider irrigable areas. We’ll also be aiming to improve and introduce new items for irrigation.

For some of the players, the combat experience in the demo build is introductory and on the easier and more rudimentary side. As we build out the Salt Flats, Canyons, and the rest of the zones, we’ll be working on more dynamic and intense engagements, as well as more tools and items that would aid in combat. For some other players, combat is currently too difficult. Going forward, we aim to add some difficulty options to better tailor the combat experience for everyone. We’re looking forward to having you test the upcoming zones and give us more feedback.

In terms of crafting, we will be introducing more variety of crafitable and upgradable items and structures. Please stay tuned!

We want to thank the brave souls for helping us test multiplayer in the demo build. The experience is far from optimized, and with your help, we collected invaluable data and insights on how to improve performance. Thanks again for all your help!

Closing:

Thanks to everyone’s incredible help, we’ve gotten invaluable feedback, suggestions, and data over the last month. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are inspired by all your support. We’ll be trying to organize test sessions for new contents and improvements, and we’d love for you to join us. Stay tuned in Discord for more news and updates.

Join the Wildmender Discord: https://discord.gg/rRRvhJCmyA

- Team Muse