Last time I said I'd stopped adding things to Legend of the Ultimate Dragon until somebody who isn't me had played it.
On October 19, somebody who isn't me started playing it. Then a few more.
It's a small playtest on purpose. A handful of people, each with their own key to a private page, playing the game's first month on their own computers. No deadline, no checklist, no right way to play. When they're ready, a button in the options menu asks them a few short questions and makes a report, which they send me themselves. Along with their answers, I get a record of how their month went: where they went, what they chose, every fight, what they bought, and where they stopped. I can read it like a diary.
Before anyone got a copy, I played the tester build myself, the exact file they'd download. I found a flash. Every time I won a fight in the woods, a bright line shot across the screen for a split second. All my checks passed, because they watched the version of the game I build with, and the flash only happened in the finished file. So I made a copy of the real game that played itself, won fights over and over, and watched every frame. Every win, a flash. The screen was drawing itself one frame before it was ready. Now it waits. Every win, no flash.
I fixed that and a handful of smaller things, sent the game out, and thought I'd caught the worst of it.
Then other people played it.
The first thing a tester told me was that the sound crackled. They liked the old-school feel of it, but it was hard to listen to, and they weren't sure if it was their computer. I'd played this game for hundreds of hours and never heard a crackle. So I measured it. The music on its own was going past the loudest sound a computer can play, and with combat sounds on top it went further. Anything past that line gets chopped off, and chopped-off sound crackles. My laptop speakers were too small to show it. Their speakers weren't. I turned everything down a little, put a safety ceiling on the loudest sounds, measured again until nothing crossed the line, and had a fixed copy out to every tester the same day. Their saves carried over.
That one was a plain bug. The next one wasn't, and it's the one I keep thinking about.
In this game, like the old door games it comes from, you don't level up automatically. When you've earned enough experience, you go to the Training Hall and beat your Master. Win, and you're stronger. I know that rule so well I forgot it needs saying. The game says it exactly once, in one line after the fight that gets you there, and then never again.
One tester missed that line. They played for days at Level 1 with more than enough experience to level, wondering why their character felt weak and why they kept meeting the same several creatures. They weren't doing anything wrong. New creatures show up as you level, not as the days pass, so the game was quietly holding everything back until they found a rule it never repeated. Once they found it, the fights changed, new creatures showed up, and they played all the way through the month in just a few days.
Once I saw that one, I saw it everywhere. One class builds up a resource that burns you if you hold it too long, and a tester was hoarding it and dying. A tester read "Nurse a drink" at the Tavern as a nurse, and asked whether having a drink with her restored your health. Another died in the woods and thought they had to wait until the real tomorrow to keep playing. None of those are bugs. They're all things the game knows and doesn't say.
I'm not fixing those during the playtest. Everyone in this wave stays on the same game, so their reports can be compared. But they're first on the list when it's over. If you want to know what playtesting is for, it's this. I could have played my own game for another year and never found a single one, because I already know all the rules.
There's good news in there too. One tester told me it already captures the feeling of the old BBS games, which is the whole reason it exists. Another doesn't usually play this kind of game at all, and is enjoying it anyway. Nobody has quit.
Everyone who sends a report becomes what I'm calling a Founding Playtester. Their name goes in the game's credits, the way they want to be credited, permanently. The people in this first wave get a little extra recognition on top of that, for taking a chance on an unfinished game.
This first wave is full now, and reports are due November 8. There will be a next one, with what this one taught me already in it. If you'd like a key for that, leave a comment on the game's itch.io page, or find me on Bluesky or Reddit, and I'll put your name on the list. I can't take everyone, but I'll answer everyone.
I'll tell you what they find. The good and the rest.
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