A Sneak Peek Into Our First External Build Mode Playtest!

Hello everyone! Chloé here for today’s Patreon post! 

Recently, we held our first external, in-person, playtest for people to try out our Build Mode. We also had an internal playtest with the team that same day! I will share what we learned from this first experience and the fun creations that our various players made. This Patreon post is for Patrons only, so please do not share it. Thank you kindly! 

The Takeaways From The Playtest

Collage of some pictures taken during the external playtest. Top left: Charlotte and playtester Eliot. Bottom left: Me (Chloe) and playtester Rachel. Right: Alice and playtester Fabien. 

Overall, we are very pleased with the feedback received during the playtest. Players enjoyed themselves and wished they had more time to build, even with the little hiccups encountered during play! We are happy that the players all had fun with the game’s Build Mode. Here are the few major points that we compiled through the feedback:

👍 Players had fun and wished they could have played longer

👍 Players found that there was a good diversity of items available in the catalogue

👍 Players found it easy to navigate our new item categories and menus (UI)

👍 Players liked the game’s music and thought it fit well with the Build Mode

👍 Players found it easy to use the camera to move in the Build Mode

👎 Players struggled with placing walls and floors because of different bugs and unclear functionalities

👎 Players struggled to find how to rotate an item and had a hard time using the rotation tools

👎 Players had a hard time placing the roofs and stairs and having them snap and resize properly

We are aiming to focus our efforts on fixing the most prevalent issues that were encountered by players, like the issues with the walls, in the next month in preparation for our next external playtest. We will also keep improving different features to improve the player experience for the Build Mode!

The Different Creations Made by The Team and Testers! 

Now, onto the exciting part; seeing what people created, with an afternoon available (for the team) and only an hour (for the testers)! It was fun seeing what people came up with, and seeing how testers were getting creative with the different objects and functionalities of the Build Mode.

Little disclosure: because of the limited time allotted, not every build was finished. For exterior builds, I have taken the liberty of adding some trees and foliage to the scenes.

Every player was given the same starting save that had a large terrain to build whatever they wanted.

The starting save every player had. We realised that the lot was quite huge, and therefore a lot of us ended up building houses that were wayyy too big to fill. It’s something we will take note of when creating the game’s base lots.

The house I built during my playtime. I ended up making it much larger than I thought- while it looks fine from the outside, it ended up giving large rooms.

I also recreated my living room while I was at it; I was curious if I could recreate something similar to my home. With the resizing tool, I was able to recreate something close enough to my redacted Swedish name of boxy shelf with one of the game’s box shelves!

Tester Rachel experimented with all types of roofs to create a unique architecture for her house!

Léa created a modern and spacious house exterior.

Meanwhile, the interior of Lea’s house looks quite retro and colourful! I like the choice of primary colours and the use of bold walls and floorings.

In a similar style to Lea’s build, but in a smaller format, her playtester PA created this tiny home during his playtest. The indoor space was maximised!

Richard decided to recreate a family home from his childhood during his playtime. I get the feel and type of house he went for thanks to the choice of tiles and overabundance of wood! We are able to create such a layout thanks to our split level tools :)

Charlotte made a cozy little country house. I particularly love the round stairs leading to the front door.

Anna went for quite a maximalist approach with her build, making it overflow with plants (which we LOVE). Also, hi Pippin the Cow!

And lastly, a creative build by tester Fabien, who decided to recreate Rapunzel’s tower. While Fabien was playing, he was using every possible tool and advanced tool to check out everything we could do, and it led to this original creation! 

I couldn’t feature every build as we had a lot (12 team members, and 12 testers!). It was fun going through what everyone created and noticing how objects were used differently, or similarly, in some cases!

We thank every tester who came to our office to try out the Build Mode! Their feedback is precious to us. We are looking forward to holding more of these in the future and collecting more feedback as we progress and improve the different Build Mode features.

With this, I wish you all a wonderful weekend!

Chloé