First Public Playtest of The Patchwork Ship
The first public playtest of The Patchwork Ship at the Summer 2026 Lake George Games Expo was a success with a massive amount of takeaways! All photos were taken with verbal consent.
There were over 400 tickets sold to the event and I was busy demoing all day. I ended up with five pages of handwritten notes as I watched people play and asked them about their perspectives. I’m really deeply appreciative of the time people spent playing and the depth of the feedback that I got!
My favorite bug was when you failed the stage boss conflict, you couldn’t start a new run because the boss yelled at you. The best exploit was an infinite energy glitch on the Evade card; it had a low cost to generate but a high recoup on recycle.
The biggest takeaway by far was the need for clarity. While I could verbally explain what was going on, the game had many mechanics that weren’t clear at first glance. There were visual issues, like element size and missing descriptions, and usability issues, like not knowing what the next thing to do was. Some of the game’s interfaces were too obtuse: “Converse” instead of “Chat” and “Depart” instead of “Exit.” A tutorial would be helpful, along with pacing mechanic introductions.
The banner was good, the stickers were taken, and the business cards were clear.However, the booth itself was underwhelming. I had brought a portable monitor, but it was too dim, so I had people play with a mouse and a Steam Deck. However, the screen on a Steam Deck works best as a handheld, not as a desktop. Stickers and business cards were loose, the black tablecloth didn’t stand out, and I didn’t have any type of looping trailer. I also didn’t have a one-sheet, but the expo kindly provided all tables with some.
Having a ton of people playing in different ways broke the game in refreshing new ways. The backend sends commands to the frontend, but there were times that things got out of sync or did unnecessary work. Enemies would be spawned and killed in the same phase, defeating their purpose.
Accessibility was a factor; I relied on colors to give meaning. I knew better than that, but due to the iterative development I moved on after some base mechanics like cards were implemented and never went back to it. Cards, devices, and the map all need clear icons.
The game’s balance and economy were picked apart. There was a nonlinear jump in difficulty when you got to the boss battle. You didn’t get enough rewards so you’d run out of resources pretty easily and purchasing (which did work) was hard to unlock.
I think of all of this as positive feedback. Yes, there are bugs, and a ton of work to do before I should publicly release the demo. But there were many, many happy people who played it through to completion, who laughed at the jokes, who wanted more, and pledged to wishlist it (and in some cases, did it in front of me). Someone who’d logged thousands of hours in Slay the Spire said they could see doing the same with my game.
This type of support is supremely humbling. I’ll continue to work on cleaning things up and putting the fit and finish on the volume of content that’s there before I start scaling further. There are some other in-person events in early Fall that I’m targeting, and we’ll see if I can make the cutoff for Steam Next Fest! When I’m done triaging the worst bugs, I’ll make an Itch build. I can’t wait!