Now that Primrows has been out for a few months, I’d like to share with you some lessons we’ve learned from watching players post-launch, how those lessons are shaping our ongoing updates, and what we (and other indie developers) can carry forward to the next project.
We put a lot of hours into playtesting. There was a mix of one-on-one sessions, self-guided play, and interacting with attendees at Midwest Gaming Classic and GDEX as they tried out Primrows. Playtests were focused on two things: onboarding (tutorials, etc.) and challenge balance. We may not have gotten either of those things perfect, but they wouldn’t have been anywhere close if not for the contributions from our playtesters.
Occasionally a playtester would get super lucky on a difficult challenge and throw our whole spreadsheet off. Hopefully the “Through the Pavement” challenge didn’t end up too frustratingly difficult to 3-star!
One big thing we missed, in part because it can be hard to conduct, was longitudinal playtesting: self-guided playtests that last for a couple weeks or more. These can be useful to see what’s drawing people back to the game, and how they’re interacting with the game in general. Without having run those kinds of tests, we were just guessing at what would keep long-term engagement up.
Some of our guesses were right — weekly and monthly challenges have been a hit with everyone who has talked to us about the game — but other guesses were way off. Perhaps our biggest fumble was the lack of online leaderboard support at launch. Without a proper leaderboard to use to compete, we noticed many players took to sharing screenshots of their final score screen. While we’re happy that people are sharing, the current score screen doesn’t do a great job of showing new players what kind of game Primrows is. That’s why we’re adding a snapshot feature in our upcoming 1.2 update- to hopefully pique the interests of people who haven’t tried the game yet
Before 
After
In addition to adding a snapshot feature, we’ll have full leaderboard support so you can measure your score up against other players around the world and see just how far you can take the game. Many players considered the game ‘beaten’ after getting 3-star scores in quickplay and journal, rather than being prompted to push their scores to new heights and really dive down into the deeper levels of strategy. Also, you’ll have achievements to strive for to guide you towards higher-level play.
“Beat Dad by 5 points -- YAY! Love, Mom”
Cathy’s parents clearly intend to be threats on the leaderboards.ːsteammockingː