What a week!
As stressful as it was, putting Lizard State for everyone to try worked so well, considering the game is early in development.
All the feedback received, the nice conversations and the support has been incredible to say the least!

Some stats

The playtest had well over 2.000 unique players and more than 800 feedback forms were submitted!
What's cool is that you spent on average 45 minutes playing the demo, and over 100 people spent more than 2 hours playing the game! It's wild considering it contained a single, shorter, level.

Watching streams and speedruns was incredibly useful to track down mean bugs and to see how people approach the game (some in full stealth, others very, very lethally). It also felt surreal seeing people being fully immersed in this little game I've been making in my room for the past year.

Survey

Here are some remarks about the overall game:
- the game is slightly too easy, which I absolutely agree with. I think the enemies are not reactive enough in some areas and the player has slightly too much power at the moment. It's a constant fight to keep the needle between 'Frustrating' and 'Boring', and having to support various playstyles makes that pretty hard to balance!
- Guards need a bit of life and attitude to them, which I also agree with :)
- I was surprised so little people noticed that the suit lights up when you're visible! It's a great way to know if you're hidden or not without having to look at the corner of the screen
- Shortcuts seemed to work really well and they show promise. A nuance some didn't catch up on is that, if an enemy opens the door instead of you, the door won't stay unlocked! So if you go in guns blazing, it's likely you won't be the one opening that shortcut.

Here are some numbers

Additional features I'm still not done going through every survey but these seem to be the most requested so far. This list is non-exhaustive and I won't go through every bug and little enhancements (but they're written down).

- Carrying bodies: I do realize omitting this feature might have been a mistake, since this is by far the most requested. I thought maybe not having it would push the player to avoid guards instead of taking them out, but ultimately, it doesn't feel good to leave some trace behind
- Noise meter: Planned! Another thing is that the footstep sounds do not convey the noise information well enough. That will need balancing.
- More movement speeds: Already implemented in the last version of the playtest!
- More gadgets and stuff
- Hang from ledge / Other climbing mechanics: More verticality and movement options are good!
- Different visions / Revamp of the night vision: Yeah the night vision can be a bit dull, there should be ways to patch it up
- a way to see through doors
- whistle
- Hold to roll: Have the roll be on Hold instead of Double Tap. I'll add a toggle for this
- Types of guards need to stand out more: Yeah this one is very fair. It is hard to see at the beginning that the heavy guards cannot take headshots and it's hard to tell them apart from normal guards
- Aim from cover

Now, I wanna emphasize the fact that I am the sole developer of the game, so I hope you understand if I can't implement every feature. Keeping the scope in check is important to get the game done one day.

Plans for development
I am not sure when another playtest will come. I need to fix a ton of bugs and implement a ton of features that will bring a ton of bugs so there's work to do first.

Thanks for reading and for participating in the playtest, I hope it was interesting!

I'll get back to working on the game now.
See you around :)
- Benjamin