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Playtesting with people unfamiliar with simulation games can show whether your game explains its goals and systems on its own. Give them only the information needed to operate the build, then watch what they think the goal is, what they try, and whether they can explain what their actions changed. Don’t treat unfamiliarity as a flaw in the tester: it is a way to find out whether your game relies on genre conventions that new players may not know.
For the clearest results, choose one question for each session, observe behavior before asking for opinions, and separate confusion with the interface from confusion about the simulation itself. Then test whether players can apply what they learned in a new situation—not just repeat a tutorial instruction.
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How do I playtest a simulation game if I don’t know the genre?
You do not need to be a simulation-game expert to run a useful playtest. Your job is to create a fair first encounter, notice what the game communicates, and ask neutral questions about what the player expected. A player who has never managed a city, farm, factory, or virtual household may be especially useful for testing whether your game explains its own purpose and rules.
Start by choosing one main question for the session. For example: can a new player identify the goal, find a useful first action, understand what changed after that action, or recover when the result is unexpected? You can record other observations, but keep the central question in control of the build, session plan, and interpretation. “Is the whole game good?” is too broad to give you a clear next step.
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That focus is consistent with the broader purpose of playtesting. Carnegie Mellon University describes it as inviting people to play unfinished games or experiences to see whether they work as expected, including finding gameplay and level-design problems, bugs, vague points, boredom, and balance issues. As its CMU Playtesting resource puts it, “Playtesting is an integral part of game design.”
A 2021 survey by Cristiano Politowski, Fabio Petrillo, and Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc also emphasizes that game testing depends on game type and tester expertise; there is no single process that fits every game. The survey found that developers relied heavily on manual playtesting and testers’ intrinsic knowledge. For your session, that is a reason to be deliberate about who is playing and what knowledge you are asking them to bring—not a reason to demand genre knowledge from every participant.
Should I test with people who have never played simulation games?
Yes, if you want to know whether your game communicates without relying on inherited conventions. But don’t make unfamiliar players your only source of evidence: they can reveal first-contact problems, while comparable-game players and your intended audience can answer different questions about depth, balance, pacing, and appeal.
| Player profile | What their session can help reveal | What not to assume |
|---|---|---|
| Genre-unfamiliar players | Whether goals, actions, feedback, and basic systems make sense without prior genre knowledge. | That every hesitation is a design problem; a participant may simply need a moment to explore. |
| Players familiar with comparable games | Whether the rules, pacing, terminology, balance, and decisions make sense within the design space. | That their existing habits are the only sensible way to play. |
| Target-audience players | Whether the game delivers its intended fantasy, depth, and reason to keep playing. | That enthusiasm for the premise proves the onboarding or systems are clear. |
When practical, include more than one profile across your testing, and keep the results distinguishable. If experienced players breeze through a mechanic while newcomers miss what it does, you have learned something about the assumptions in your design. If both groups misunderstand the same feedback, the issue is less likely to be limited to genre unfamiliarity.
There is no universal sample size established for playtesting a simulation game with genre-unfamiliar players. The right number depends on the question, the build, and whether you are looking for recurring patterns or comparing variants. Don’t present a convenient headcount as a scientific threshold. Instead, note who took part, what they did, and how often a particular obstacle appeared in the sessions you actually ran.
Do I tell playtesters what genre the game is?
For a test of first impressions or onboarding clarity, usually don’t name the genre or explain the intended strategy beforehand. That information can give players a mental model the game itself has not yet earned. Give only the minimum technical guidance needed to launch the build, use its controls, or get past an unrelated setup issue.
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During the first encounter, watch what happens before asking for a verdict:
- What draws the player’s attention first?
- What do they think they are trying to accomplish?
- Which action do they choose first, and what do they expect it to do?
- Which result or piece of feedback do they notice—or miss?
- Do they connect the action to the result?
- When do they ask for help, change strategy, or stop?
- After an error, can they recover without being told how?
These observations are a practical application of general playtesting and onboarding principles, not a published simulation-specific protocol. The purpose is to capture the player’s own expectations before explanations from the facilitator reshape them.
How do I know whether players understand the simulation?
Look for evidence in both what players do and what they can explain. A player need not use your terminology or name the genre; they should be able to make a decision, interpret its consequence, and apply a useful principle again.
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- Goal: Can the player tell what progress or success looks like?
- Loop: Can they identify the recurring sequence of decisions and consequences that structures play?
- Resources: Do they understand what can be gained, spent, depleted, or traded?
- Constraints: Do they see why not every option is equally good or available?
- Feedback: Can they tell whether an action helped, hurt, or had no apparent effect?
- Time: Do they recognize which consequences are immediate, delayed, reversible, or irreversible?
- Transfer: Can they use a principle they discovered when the situation changes?
Don’t confuse a successful click with comprehension. A player might follow an instruction without understanding why it works, or happen on a good outcome by chance. Ask what they expected before the action, then compare that prediction with the result and their explanation afterward. If the prediction is consistently wrong, the game may not be making an important rule legible. If the prediction is reasonable but the outcome appears arbitrary, inspect the feedback and causal link.
What should I watch for in a simulation-game playtest?
Keep usability, comprehension, engagement, fun, balance, and technical quality separate. They can affect one another, but they are different findings and often require different fixes.
| Area | Question to answer | Example evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Usability | Can the player operate the interface and controls? | They cannot find a control, misread a button, or struggle to inspect a system. |
| Comprehension | Can the player explain the goal, rule, or consequence? | They expect an action to have a different effect or cannot identify why a resource changed. |
| Engagement | Do they choose to continue or explore? | They pursue another objective, investigate a system, or disengage. |
| Fun or satisfaction | Does the experience create the emotional response you intend? | The player describes a decision as satisfying, stressful, tedious, or rewarding. |
| Balance | Do choices and outcomes feel meaningful rather than predetermined or arbitrary? | They see a viable trade-off, or believe one option is obviously dominant. |
| Technical quality | Are bugs or glitches interfering with judgment? | A crash, performance problem, or broken interaction blocks the intended decision. |
For example, a player who understands a resource trade-off but calls it tedious is not necessarily confused by the tutorial. A player who enjoys expanding a settlement but cannot say what makes the expansion useful has an engagement signal, not proof of system comprehension. A bug that prevents a consequence from appearing makes it hard to judge whether the feedback design works at all.
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The 2021 survey’s finding that 50 of 1,035 analyzed video-game development postmortem problems—4% of that dataset—concerned testing is context about those surveyed postmortems, not an estimate of all development failures. It is a useful reminder that testing is one part of development, but it does not establish a benchmark for your game or a formula for how many sessions to run.
What questions should I ask after a playtest?
Ask about specific moments and expectations, rather than starting with a leading question such as “Did you understand the economy?” Let the player describe what they thought was happening before you supply labels for the systems.
Useful prompts include:
- “What were you trying to do at that point?”
- “What did you expect to happen when you chose that?”
- “Why did you pick that action?”
- “What information did you use to decide?”
- “What would you try next?”
- “Which part, if any, felt unclear?”
- “What would make that result easier to understand?”
- “At what point, if any, did you feel in control?”
Compare the answer with what the player actually did. Someone may say a system was clear after they have learned it, even though their first action showed a different expectation. Someone may call a mechanic confusing when the real obstacle was a hard-to-find interface element. The sequence matters: record behavior first, then use the interview to understand the player’s reasoning.
Avoid defending the design or correcting the player during the observed moment. If you need to clarify a technical issue, do so neutrally and mark the point in your notes. The session is most useful when the player’s decisions remain their own, not when they successfully follow the facilitator’s preferred route.
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How should I test the tutorial or onboarding?
Run a blind first encounter before showing the intended onboarding, then test the onboarding as a separate segment. This lets you distinguish what the game communicates unaided from what its teaching experience adds.
Apple’s onboarding guidance favors interactive experiences that let players safely try an action, discover a feature, or test a mechanic. It also advises keeping prerequisite onboarding brief rather than asking players to memorize too much at once. Applied to a simulation, a useful short sequence is to let the player make a consequential choice, see an immediate or delayed result, inspect feedback about it, adjust the plan, and apply the idea again in a slightly different situation.
The final step is important. If a player can repeat an instruction but cannot use its principle when the circumstances change, the tutorial may have taught a sequence rather than a system. Make the transfer test small and fair: change one relevant condition, then see whether the player adapts or can explain why the earlier choice may no longer work.
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Don’t judge onboarding only by completion or speed. A shorter flow might get players to the next screen sooner while leaving them less able to predict outcomes. Likewise, a longer explanation is not automatically better if players can learn by trying a safe action and reading its consequences.
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Use a few behavior measures that connect directly to your primary question, and treat them as evidence to interpret—not as automatic explanations. For a first-session clarity test, useful measures could include time to first meaningful action, unprompted help requests, wrong turns, abandoned actions, recovery after failure, and the player’s post-session explanation of the core loop.
These are practical suggestions, not universal standards. Define what counts before the session: for example, decide what you consider a “meaningful action” in the build. Otherwise, two observers may record the same behavior differently. A note such as “asked for help after the second attempt to spend a resource” is more useful than “seemed confused.”
When comparing two onboarding, control, or hint variants, set a goal metric and planned duration in advance. Roblox’s official experimentation documentation describes comparing onboarding experiences across players and measuring outcomes such as playtime, retention, and other KPIs. Its documented planned experiment duration is 14–60 days; that is a Roblox-specific range, not a recommended duration for every independent playtest or a universal rule for simulation games.
Roblox also warns against acting on early anomalous results or results without statistical significance. It recommends balancing quantitative results with qualitative player feedback and the game’s overall vision. That matters because a metric can show that a variant changed behavior without telling you whether players understood the system or whether the change supports the game you are trying to make. Do not declare a winner from one number alone.
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There is no evidence-backed universal number for this particular kind of playtest. The research cited here does not establish a minimum sample size, standard session length, or pass/fail threshold for simulation games tested with unfamiliar players.
Plan around the decision you need to make. A small set of exploratory sessions can help expose where a first-time player gets stuck, but it cannot establish that every player will encounter the same issue. If you are comparing variants or making a quantitative claim, you need an experiment designed for that comparison, with a defined metric and an appropriate basis for interpreting the result. Don’t reuse Roblox’s 14–60-day platform guidance as a sample-size rule or as a duration target for a moderated session.
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Keep a simple session log: participant experience profile, build version, scenario, primary question, observed behavior, player expectation, technical interruptions, and follow-up explanation. This makes it easier to distinguish a recurring communication problem from a one-off stumble or a build-specific glitch.
How do I decide what to fix first?
Prioritize misunderstandings that recur, block progress, contribute to abandonment, stem from the game’s communication rather than missing genre knowledge, or become expensive to recover from later. Give special attention to confusion around the central loop or the reason the game is worth continuing.
Look for the smallest design element that could plausibly explain the observed problem: a goal statement, a feedback cue, a resource label, a missing consequence preview, or an onboarding interaction. Treat that as a hypothesis, not a proven cause. Change the relevant element, then retest the same moment with fresh players. A participant who learned a workaround in an earlier session cannot show whether the updated design explains itself to a newcomer.
If you have two real alternatives, compare them on more than speed or completion. Consider goal discoverability, time to meaningful action, accuracy of outcome predictions, ability to explain cause and effect, recovery after an error, transfer to a new scenario, perceived agency, willingness to continue, and technical stability. A faster tutorial may still leave players with a weaker mental model; a longer one may be worthwhile if it helps them make informed decisions. Let the evidence answer the question you set, without asking any single measure to stand in for the entire experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I run a simulation-game playtest remotely?
Yes, if the build and session setup let you observe the decisions that matter. Before inviting a participant, make sure they can access the right build and that you have a reliable way to capture their actions and comments; a technical setup failure should not be mistaken for a design problem.
Should I record a game playtest?
Recording can help you revisit the order of actions and the player’s explanations, but ask permission first and explain what will be captured and how it will be used. If a participant does not want to be recorded, written observation can still support a useful session.
What if a playtester stays quiet while playing?
Don’t fill the silence with hints. You can remind them once that you are interested in what they are thinking, then use behavior-based follow-up questions after the moment has passed so you do not steer their choices.
Can friends and family be useful playtesters?
They can help find obvious friction, especially early in development, but their familiarity with you or the project may affect what they say. Include people outside that circle when you need to learn whether a new player can understand the game without prior explanation.
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