Hello, something that has been bothering me of late is how exactly to I know if a game idea is going to be good before making the full game or even the demo. In short I’ve released three games before and the last one of them was a comedy narrative game kind of like The Stanley Parable. I really like the genre and before moving on from it, I wanted to make another narrative game, but this time with a dark twist.
Reading random stuff on the internet, I stumbled upon one of the most controversial experiments in history - The Milgram Experiment (basically innocent people were asked to torture another person to see if they will obey). I’ve always been interested in ethics and moral choices in games and stuff like The Trolley Problem, so I decided to make a game out all of these themes where the psychological horror comes from the fact that you are the one that gets to face moral dilemmas and decide if and how you should kill a subject. All of your choices during testing have an impact on the ending and I have planned 8 different endings. At the start of the game it’s unclear who or why is making you do this, but over the course of the game you will get little bits of information that help you piece the story.
So that is kind of my elevator pitch of the game. First question is - does this sound compelling to you? Would you yourself play something like that or watch a streamer play it? Second question is how do I validate if this idea is good and worth pursuing? Currently around 20% of the game is complete and around 80% of the demo. I do have a Steam page of the game that has garnered around 800 wishlists and am holding off on official announcement trailer until I have more good footage. Do I talk to friends? Do I ask more people on forums? Do I need something playable that I need to put in front of people? How should I approach this?
Thank you for reading this, any comment or idea is appreciated!
I’ve come to the conclusion that you need to actually put something playable in front of a bunch of people who don’t know you, to properly gauge how compelling your game is. Ideally a vertical slice where with the necessary polish to convey the feel of the end product.
Let them play and watch. Listen to their feedback, but don’t put too much weight on it. Players usually can’t account for the limits of a prototype, even if it is a vertical slice. Also they usually can’t quite pinpoint what made them like or dislike something, but they will want to give you feedback. Just note what they say and try to figure out later what the underlying issues might have been. More importantly, you need to watch them play. Ideally you want a setup where there are a bunch of games, like at a gamedev gathering, or at least something else to do, where people can freely decide to play your game or not and don’t feel forced to do so. Seeing how they interact with the game on their own terms, seeing how long they play, whether they get their friends to play it as well, is the true litmus test.
To have a successful indie game, I believe, it needs to capture people on its own, just by it’s presentation and gameplay. And it needs to deliver such a memorable experience that people will recommend it to their friends and talk to each other about it.