u/Valiant_Sugar

If an enemy can see you and you haven't done anything for a while, there's a small chance they'll start swaying to the music.
It has absolutely no gameplay purpose.
I regret nothing.
Now I'm tempted to give different enemies their own little idle behaviors.

What other items should we add to DepthLoot?

Two weeks ago, we launched a playtest for our game, DepthLoot.
Today we wrapped up the playtest, and I’d like to share my experience running it.
First, we launched a closed playtest, aiming to include about 10-20 people. We didn’t expect more than that because, at this stage, we had done almost no promotion or advertising about the playtest. However, within the first 10 minutes of launching the closed playtest, about 100 accounts requested access to the game - which was most likely a flood of bots - making it impossible to accurately select the 20 people we wanted to grant access to. As a result, we had to distribute keys almost manually to people who reached out directly through our Discord community. That’s how we gathered about 10 people, and over the course of 3 days, we received a lot of initial feedback that helped us quickly polish the first few minutes of the game and the overall UX.
Next, we opened the playtest to anyone interested, and I posted an ad on Reddit announcing that people could now participate in the playtest.
For $300 and four days of advertising, I got 335,210 ad impressions and 2,099 clicks, with a CTR of 0.626%.
I’m not sure exactly how many playtesters and whitelisted players joined, but I’d guess around 150 players and 200 whitelisted players.
Importantly, in addition to gathering feedback directly on Discord through live chat, we also posted a survey form about the game when it ended, which 49 people filled out!
This survey helped us gather a huge amount of valuable information from players about our game, including their overall perception of it and various aspects (such as visuals or music), as well as small details that are barely noticeable but can be very annoying to players.
I’d also like to point out that at least one-third of all reviews came in within a week after the ad campaign ended. This suggests that people who saw the ad likely weren’t able to play the game for a sufficient amount of time right away and only left a review a few days later. For this reason, it’s a good idea to keep the playtest or demo version available for a while after the ad campaign ends, or something along those lines.
All in all, in my opinion, the playtest was a success, partly thanks to the advertising - even though it turned out to be less effective than I’d expected and yielded virtually no results after it ended.

I want to do a postmortem once the playtest is over - next week
Sorry for not being very informative, but I'm just happy :)

A small selection of the gear available in DepthLoot
I like how varied it looks in the equipment slots, even though there isn't much shown here
What do you think?

Hey!
We're holding a playtest here - we'd love for you to join us :)

Game name is DepthLoot - it's a turn-based dungeon crawler, but with chill vibes
The playtest is open, so hop on over and send me your feedback - I love reading it (even the negative stuff, hahaha)

We’ve launched a playtest and want to gather as much feedback as possible to improve our game. If you have time, please join the playtest!

DepthLoot is a compact dungeon extraction game about greed, risk, and a backpack that’s always too small.

DepthLoot - is a compact, turn-based dungeon extraction roguelite.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve put a lot of work into polishing the game, conducted a closed beta test with a small group of friends, and finally managed to get the demo ready for a playtest.
We’re launching the playtest in the coming days, so sign up to participate in steam page!

It wasn't easy, but now, with such a wide variety of items, the game plays great.
By the way, we'll be holding a playtest soon - we'd love for you join to test, here :)

A few months ago, we started working on DepthLoot. At first, I put together a visual concept using free assets from the internet.

When I realized the game was shaping up to be interesting, I hired one artist to design the visuals for the dungeons and creatures, and another artist to design the item icons. After a while, the game started to develop its own atmosphere.

But now we’ve refined it even further by adding dynamic lighting and shadows, adjusting the colors, and adding additional props and details!
(In the bottom picture, the dungeon is darker because it's on a lower level.)

In DepthLoot, you are a treasure hunter ready to venture into dangerous places to find valuable items.
While in the dungeon, you open tile by tile in the hope of finding loot and avoiding anything that could kill you.

Each floor of the dungeon has several rooms to explore. As you descend deeper into the dungeon, be prepared to face stronger enemies - but also more valuable loot.
To escape the dungeon alive, you must find the portal that will send you back to the city.

I also spent $150 on artwork for the game, and finally got my Steam page looking right.

I'm really excited - we'll see how many wishlists it gets in another 2–3 weeks after the next playtest.

At least 5 people - definitely not my friends or acquaintances - which means there are a full 4 sign-ups from real people (or bots, I guess).
I want to thank my family for their tremendous support!
And we’re moving toward the playtest, so soon these 9 lucky people will get to try out the game!

Hi, everyone!

In DepthLoot, you are a treasure hunter ready to venture into dangerous places to find valuable items.
While in the dungeon, you open tile by tile in the hope of finding loot and avoiding anything that could kill you.

Each floor of the dungeon has several rooms to explore. As you descend deeper into the dungeon, be prepared to face stronger enemies - but also more valuable loot.
To escape the dungeon alive, you must find the portal that will send you back to the city.

Just finished a part of artwork for the items.
In my opinion, the atmosphere is getting more and more pleasant.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts!