The Past and Future of Beta Testing
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For those who don’t know, we ran a beta testing period for Ravenbound between September and October, 2022.
The number of participants was much higher than we expected, with over one thousand of you joining us!
A beta test is invaluable – when we have been developing a game for so long, developers can become a little oblivious to issues or aspects of the game that might not make sense to someone outside of the team. Since we are working on a game that aims to bring together a unique blend of genres – open world and roguelite – it was extra important to test if we are going in the right direction.
For many of the team at Systemic Reaction, it was the first time running a test with so many participants. Understandably, there was a little bit of anxiety and anticipation around talking to so many of you.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long before participants and devs alike were chatting and exchanging feedback in our testing group – members of the Sound team, Animation team, and of course, our Producer were all actively involved in talking to players, and helping solve the various bugs and questions that arose during the period of testing.
Thanks to our participants we gathered a lot – several spreadsheets worth – of feedback ranging from gameplay, to narrative and design. Our aim was to create this game with the community, and the beta was a great contribution to that mission!
Now for the burning question: will there be another beta test?
• Yes, our second closed beta test will run from January 11th to January 25th. Thank you to all who have signed up!
If you would like a more in depth look into how we're using player feedback to improve Ravenbound, watch the latest episode of our developer diary: Beta Test Insights
For more information join us on Discord or follow our social channels for all the latest updates!
