Phase 1 Playtesting: What 25 Strangers Taught Me About My Own Game

We just wrapped Phase 1 of playtesting for Septurian Might. Twenty-five testers from across the world, focused entirely on combat. The data came back roughly where I’d hoped — visual style at 4.59/5, enemy design at 4.31/5, combat at 3.70/5 — but the real value of playtesting isn’t in the numbers. It’s in the moments you realize you’ve been wrong for months.

The Blindspot

When you’ve built something in isolation for a long time, you stop seeing it clearly. Mechanics that feel intuitive to you because you designed them baffle a stranger. An ability you were proud of turns out to be broken, or worse — boring. A boss fight you tuned for “challenge” is just frustrating.

I went into Phase 1 thinking I had a pretty good sense of what worked. Some of that held up. A lot didn’t. One ability I considered solid was so undertuned in the first build that nearly every tester listed it as the worst in the game. After a single patch, it became the most-loved ability in the same playtest pool — and then two of the highest-quality testers flagged it as potentially overpowered.

That whole arc — broken, fixed, beloved, now possibly too strong — happened in three patch cycles across one month. None of it would have surfaced without people who weren’t me playing the game.

What the Data Said

Some surprises were good. The “would you play more?” question landed at 70% yes, 22% maybe, 8% no. The 78% recognition rate on the game’s core combat hook told me the central mechanic is communicating clearly. And the visual style consistently scored highest — even with quality-weighting, it actually went up, meaning the testers I trusted most were the ones most impressed by the art.

Some surprises were humbling. Both “no” responses came from the two highest-quality testers in the cohort. The bug count actually went up between patch cycles — fixes introduced new problems faster than they resolved old ones. Several mechanics I thought were working revealed themselves as broken in ways I couldn’t have caught alone.

Why Phase 1 Is Just Phase 1

Septurian Might is an action RPG, which means there are two halves to test: the action and the RPG. Combat encounters, ability design, enemy behavior, platforming feel — those are the action. Story branches, choice consequences, character relationships, world reactivity — those are the RPG. You can’t reasonably test the full game loop until both halves work in isolation first.

Phase 1 was the action half. Phase 1.1 — coming soon with the highest-quality testers from this cohort — continues that work, building on what we learned. Subsequent phases will layer in the RPG systems. The final phases will give a smaller, focused group the whole experience in coherence.

It’s a slower, less glamorous path than throwing the full demo at people and seeing what sticks. But it’s the only way I trust to ship something that actually works.

To the testers who gave their time, their criticism, and in some cases their gentle disappointment — thank you. The game is meaningfully better for it.