From quick usability checks to full playtests
What I do
I help indie and AA studios and publishers understand the player experience of their game, through everything from quick usability reviews to small- and large-scale external playtests with real players.
My work helps you catch player experience issues, understand player reactions, and focus improvements where they matter most so your team can deliver a great player experience while staying true to its vision.
Why get a Usability Review?
Quick, actionable feedback before your build lock deadline
Think of a Usability Review like an appetizer — quick, satisfying, and just enough to get what you need for now. Usability reviews are ideal if you want targeted feedback on how to make your game shine more but don’t have the budget or time for a playtest. They are especially useful when preparing a build for an event, pitch, or demo, so you can get fast insights on what to improve before showing it to players or potential funders.
They can also be great if you want to prepare your build for an internal or external playtest! That way, your playtest can go further: players spend less time stuck and more time showing you how they feel about the game — things like if they’re surprised, excited, intrigued, or engaged, and why. These are reactions only players can provide, and they’re much easier to capture once the avoidable frustrations are out of the way.
The kind of friction matters
Some kinds of friction make games fun — those that challenge and engage players. Other kinds of friction can be counterproductive. Whether accidental or intentionally included, these frictions actually detract from the player experience by discouraging players rather than keeping them engaged.
Common sources of counterproductive friction
This counterproductive friction often stems from usability issues — like confusing controls, unclear tutorials, or hidden systems — that frustrates players and stalls progression. Players don’t feel accomplished overcoming these; they feel relieved to get past them.
Its impact on your success
Unidentified usability friction in your game can lower the chance of positive first impressions, reduce retention, and as a result, dampen funding or sales potential.
How I help
A Usability Review helps you identify these issues and prioritize issues so you can focus on what matters most to fix, increasing the chance players and potential funders encounter only compelling and fun challenges. I use games UX and usability best practices to diagnose your build efficiently and effectively.
Everything You Get with a Usability Review
Usability Reviews are an efficient, affordable way to see what usability frictions and gaps are lurking that can derail or overly frustrate your players, creating a negative drain on their experience. Here’s what you get when you order one:
Kickoff and goals: Kickoff meeting to align on scope and areas of concern to make sure I cover what the team is interested in.
Usability Best Practices: I use established game UX design principles and usability heuristics, honed through research and evidence-based practice by UX leaders like Nielsen and Hodent, to guide my usability analysis.
2-phase Analysis: I start by playing the game naturally for the requested review length, recording myself while I play and think out loud. I use the footage and transcript to do a first-pass analysis to identify usability frictions and gaps. Then I spend more time going systematically back through the game seeking out usability frictions, using the aforementioned game UX design principles and usability heuristics to guide my process.
Synthesis & Prioritization: I prioritize all issues found by potential player impact, so you know where to focus your limited time to make the improvements that matter most.
Reporting: You receive a Usability Review Report focusing on the top 3/5/7/10* highest-impact issues with screenshots and context on what the issue is, why it’s an issue, and suggested next steps. You also receive a short and sweet Flash Summary slide deck that gives a brief overview of each issue and includes links to the full report for future easy reference - great for sharing with other stakeholders or for a quick refresher when you don’t want to dig through the full report.
Debrief: I lead a debrief meeting with your team where I walk you through the findings and answer your questions.
Bonus - Peer playthrough raw video & transcript: In addition to the main deliverables, you also receive a copy of my playthrough video and transcript. While no substitute for an external playtest — I’m in the industry and may or may not be in your target audience! — you might find it helpful to watch the footage to better understand the player experience through the eyes of someone outside your team.
Your team’s role is light — attend a kickoff meeting, share your build, give an occasional clarification, and attend the debrief meeting to go over what was learned. I’ll manage the rest, freeing you up to have more time and focus on creating your game.
*Number of top issues covered depends on the size of the review
4 Review Sizes to Match Desired Budget and Depth
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Tasty Breadstick - $550 ⭐
Includes:
• ~15 minutes gameplay covered
• Kickoff sync to ensure scope and length meet your needs
• 2-phase heuristic analysis to identify usability gaps or frictions
• Top 3 Issues Usability Report with highest impact findings and Flash Summary for quick reference
• 30-min debrief meeting to discuss findings and suggested next steps
Best for: Short demos, tutorials, or early prototypes that take 10-15 mins to finish that need fast, focused usability insights⭐1st Year New Client Rate (Standard rate: $675)
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Breadstick Basket - $1150⭐
Includes:
• ~30 minutes gameplay covered
• Kickoff sync to ensure scope and length meet your needs
• 2-phase heuristic analysis to identify usability gaps or frictions
• Top 5 Issues Usability Report with highest impact findings and Flash Summary for quick reference
• 45-minute debrief meeting to discuss findings and suggested next steps
Best for: Demos that take 15-30 mins to finish, or round-based games where playing 2-3 rounds is important for first impressions.
⭐1st Year New Client Rate (Standard rate: $1350) -
Apps Quartet - $2050⭐
Includes:
• ~60 minutes gameplay covered
• Kickoff sync to ensure scope and length meet your needs
• 2-phase heuristic analysis to identify usability gaps or frictions
• Brief mid-project video update highlighting 3 early issues discovered, so you can start learning and planning ASAP (Quartet & Platter only)
• Top 7 Issues Usability Report with highest impact findings with Flash Summary for quick reference
• 60-minute debrief meeting to discuss findings and suggested next steps
Best for: Games with deeper systems and content that appear only after playing more than a half hour. Good for demos that take 30-60 minutes to finish.⭐1st Year New Client Rate (Standard rate: $2400)
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XL Party Platter - $4000⭐
Includes:
• ~120 minutes gameplay covered
• Kickoff sync to ensure scope and length meet your needs
• 2-phase heuristic analysis to identify usability gaps or frictions
• Brief mid-project video update highlighting 3 early issues discovered, so you can start learning and planning ASAP (Quartet & Platter only)
• Top 10 Issues Usability Report with highest impact findings with Flash Summary for quick reference
• 90-minute debrief meeting to discuss findings and recommendations
Best for: Games with layered systems that need more time for players to really get familiar with them. Great for demos or in-progress builds that take 1.5 to 2 hours to experience.⭐1st Year New Client Rate (Standard rate: $4700)
External Playtesting:
Go Beyond Testing with Friends, Family, and Peers
Why is External Playtesting important?
External playtesting with players from your target audience reveals behaviors, misunderstandings, and emotional reactions that usability reviews or internal playtests with friends, family, or peers can’t capture. While those methods are still valuable, they often come with bias that can accidentally lead you astray: colleagues and people you’re close with may know too much about your project, hold back criticism to be polite, or play differently than your true audience would. External playtesting helps strip away those distortions, showing you how real players naturally approach your game — what confuses them, what excites them, and where they might drop off or disengage in ways you never anticipated.
Enter Mini & Full Playtests
I design and run affordable external playtests from start to finish, designed to close gaps in your knowledge of the player experience. Both Mini and Full Playtest offerings are unmoderated — players play your game from home and complete a post-test survey without a facilitator. This reduces observer bias and gives you a more natural window into how your players really engage. (In some cases, moderated research may be a better fit — I can help you decide after an initial look at your build.)
You can choose between two levels of depth:
Mini Playtests (3 players by genre match, surface level findings per playtester only): Focused small tests with players who enjoy games in your genre(s). You’ll get a “First Look” summary with the highest-impact surface level findings per playtester, with screenshots, 1-3 video clips per player, and suggested next steps.
Full Playtests (5 players that even more closely match your target audience due to additional screening, adds in-game tasks, full report with additional findings and themes seen across players): Deeper sessions with players recruited via a custom-designed screener survey to even more closely match your target audience than a Mini Playtest recruit does. Players may additionally complete custom-designed in-game tasks to test comprehension or ability in specific areas of interest. You’ll also receive not just the “First Look” summary, but a clean, thorough “Full Playtest Report” upon a deeper analysis of the data — going beyond surface-level findings to identify additional useful findings and highlight player patterns that only emerge when analyzing data across players. Counterproductive frictions that detract from the player experience — for example, usability issues — are all prioritized by scale of player impact so you know what’s most important to focus on.
Work Together to Save Time, Avoid Pitfalls, & Learn Faster
Working with me can save you time and money compared to running playtests on your own:
I recruit and run playtests with real, everyday players — so you uncover insights and issues that friends, family, or peers might miss or be biased about
I take on the design, management, and analysis of the playtest — I handle the process start to finish with only brief check-ins with you to make sure the playtest answers what you need, leaving you free to focus on developing your game while the playtesting happens
I synthesize the pile of raw data into clear, actionable findings — including summaries, screenshots, short highlight clips, and key takeaways, so you don’t spend hours wading through footage or surveys (or set aside the data entirely due to lack of time).
I prioritize findings by player impact — highlighting which issues are most critical to address first so you can focus on improvements that matter most.
I can help you iterate quickly and more effectively — running small, iterative playtests can catch problems early, reducing the risk of costly late-stage rework and helping your game engage players or potential funders.
Everything You Get with a Mini Playtest
Mini Playtests are a fast, affordable way to get a taste of how a few real players experience your game while you get to focus on development. Here’s what you get when you order one:
Kickoff and Goals: Kickoff meeting to align on learning goals, ensuring the playtest addresses the most important and highest impact questions.
Top-notch Prep: Review of your build to check that playtest readiness and desired length matches your needs.
Survey creation: Creation of a post-test survey tailored to your learning goals.
Recruitment: Recruitment of 3 real players who enjoy games of a similar genre via Go Testify or Antidote.gg playtester panels — avoiding biased results from friends, family, or peers.
Playtest Execution: Players play independently from home in a more natural environment, describing their thoughts and feelings aloud, producing ~1–1 hours of raw footage plus answers to the post-test survey.
Data Analysis & Synthesis: I synthesize all raw video and survey data into clear, actionable findings.
Reporting: You receive a First Look Summary boils everything down to 3 easy-to-skim Playtester Session Briefings so you can quickly learn from the playtest while you’re busy with other things.
Playtester Session Briefings are skimmable and include: a little about each playtester, their session highlights — what went well or what they loved — and summaries of top priority negative frictions they encountered, including a brief description, screenshot, relevant video clip, why the issue matters, and suggested next steps.
Short summaries of any other high-priority issues encountered, including both usability frictions and bugs, are also included. Low and moderate priority issues are not included to keep the focus on what matters most.
Debrief meeting: I lead a debrief meeting where I walk you through findings and answer your questions.
Your team’s time commitment is significantly reduced compared to running everything yourselves — just attend a kickoff meeting, share your build and keys, give an occasional clarification, and attend the debrief meeting. I’ll manage the rest, freeing you up to have more time and focus on creating your game.
2 Mini Playtest Sizes to Match Your Build
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🍕Small Slice - $1950⭐
Includes:
• ~15 minute portion of gameplay
• ~45+ total minutes of gameplay footage (3 players play for 15+ minutes each)
• 6 post-test survey questions to be answered by each player to better understand their experience
• 45-minute debrief meeting
• All sizes include: Kickoff meeting, build review, recruitment of 3 players who enjoy games in similar genres, playtesters playing at home while they think out loud, analysis of all raw video and survey responses, First Look Summary with 3 skimmable Playtester Session Briefings. (More details described above this section on Services page.)
Great for:
• Preparing short demos for when you want to make a top-notch first impression but players (or potential funders) won’t have much time with your game, such as at events like PAX, Day of the Devs, or GDC
• Also great for in-progress internal builds covering short sections of gameplay, such as when you want to make sure players get what you’re teaching in tutorials or to make sure an early-game system is as easy to use as hoped
⭐1st Year New Client Rate (Standard rate: $2250) -
🍕➕Half Pie - $2950⭐
Includes:
• ~30 minute portion of gameplay
• ~90+ total minutes of gameplay footage (3 players play for 30+ minutes each)
• 10 post-test survey questions to be answered by each player to better understand their experience
• 60-minute debrief meeting
• All sizes include: Kickoff meeting, build review, recruitment of 3 players who enjoy games in similar genres, playtesters playing at home while they think out loud, analysis of all raw video and survey responses, First Look Summary with 3 skimmable Playtester Session Briefings. (More details described above this section on Services page.)
Great for:
• Preparing demos about a half hour in length for when you want to make a top-notch first impression and players will have a bit more time to spend with your game, such as via Steam Next Fest or a Kickstarter campaign
• Also great for in-progress internal builds covering a few tutorials or early game systems, so you can get helpful player-centered data to inform your next iterations and make sure they are a solid foundation for what comes next
⭐1st Year New Client Rate (Standard rate: $3400)
Mini Playtests keep costs and time down
Mini Playtests are capped at 3 players by design — it keeps costs and turnaround down, while still giving you a look at how real players respond to your game and highlighting the kinds of usability and engagement issues that tend to show up early.
(For more robust testing, a Full Playtest expands to 5 players who are recruited with even more precision, and you also receive a Full Playtest Report, a clean, comprehensive slide deck that covers all issues from the First Look doc, plus more findings that can only be found with further analysis, such as findings related to themes seen across players — which you don’t get with Mini Playtests.)
Worried your build will be buggy or not ready to test?
Good news - buggy builds can be great for playtesting! Playtesting is all about learning, not impressing players. The only builds I’d definitely recommend against playtesting are ones that crash constantly, or builds that won’t allow players to experience the part you most need them to see for useful insights. I can design the test to warn playtesters about known bugs and guide them to focus on just the areas we care about.
Even a buggy build can reveal what’s confusing, what’s working, and what’s missing. I’d actually caution against polishing a build beyond what’s absolutely necessary for the playtest — it’s better to catch a design issue early in a buggy or rough build because you may end up needing to do rework to make changes to the game based on what you learned!
When to reach out for a playtest
A good rule of thumb is the same week your work on a milestone* starts — not ends. I want you to have time to act on the results! But if you’re somewhere else in the process, please still reach out to see if I can help.
* This assumes “milestones” are 1-4 months long, and that the build or part of the game you want to test is what is locking at the end of the milestone.