🎮 Playtests, Prototypes, and Permission Games

I'm feeling chatty which means – it's time for a new podcast! In this new episode of Make the Game, we're talking about:

• Playtesting (how I used gametester.gg to get valuable feedback)
• Prototypes (how much prototype time = how much production time?)
• Permission games (a concept of thinking about a game as "proving" that there's an audience for a particularly limited art style or mechanic)

🎧 Listen to the episode

Make the Game is published via Spotify for Podcasters; it's instantly available there and propagates out to (almost) all major podcast platforms (Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, etc.).

My plan was to also cover 9 things I learned pitching my game to publishers, but I'll talk about that in a future episode. Instead, I brought up permission games, which are games that make you feel comfortable cutting corners in certain ways. Mine include Undertale, Kingdom of Loathing, and now PowerWash Simulator.

Do you have any of your own?

Show Notes

• 📙 How to Make a Video Game All By Yourself (Gumroad, Itch, signed copies)
• Pixel Washer
• How to make a good Steam page
• Pixel Washer: 3-day devlog
• Lost Decade Games
• Steam Hardware & Software Survey
• Game Tester
• 💰 The Money Episode
• The illusion of skill: how to make a better game in less time
• Production Point
• Indie Game Sim
• Making an Indie Game About Indie Game Making
• How has web dev changed in the last decade?
• 💀 How to handle the death of a platform (for example: Twitter)
• Game Dev Comics by Matt Hackett
• @richtaur.bsky.social
• Making Big Indie Games (Gumroad, Itch)
• Join the Valadria Discord
• 60 minute video coaching/consulting

Thanks for listening. Now it's time for you to go make the game!