A First for Blindflug Studios: Playtesting Session in Ukraine

Yuriy is one of the newest Blindflug team members which means he gets a picture on our VIP Blindflug wall.

In December, a special playtesting session for our nuclear war RTS mobile game First Strike took place. But this session did not take place in Switzerland, nor in Poland, nor in our online community spaces for First Strike players. Instead, this testing round happened in Rivne, Ukraine.

We were working on a game mode that introduces new players to the concept of the game and quickly teaches them how to play it. Naturally, this meant it needed to be tested by players who were not familiar with the game yet to see if the mode is properly introducing the mechanics to “newbies”.

Thankfully, one of our newest team members knew how to organize a group of playtesters despite challenging conditions.

Yuriy started as a Data Analyst at Blindflug Studios and worked remotely from Rivne. He has now become the Product Owner for First Strike and he had a big hand in developing the new onboarding mode called «First War Training» that gives fresh players a faster paced and quicker introduction into the gameplay of our strategy game. We have done closed playtestings with members of the First Strike fan community before, but to test an onboarding experience, we needed to conduct it live and with complete newcomers to the game. For this, Yuriy had the idea to ask Alex, the owner of the local board game club named «Rivne Gray», if he allows and could help with organizing a playtesting event.

One evening, Yuriy managed to gather people at the club who got to try out the new mode. He observed their behaviour, recorded the screens and documented their feedback. With these new insights, we have managed to make adjustments to the user interface, adjust game parameters to improve the flow of the experience.

We want to thank Yuriy, and every playtest participant for standing for us on both real and virtual war fronts, bringing their enthusiasm, as well as unique perspective despite the difficult circumstances that he and all Ukrainians are currently living in due to the constant attacks and ongoing invasion of Russia.

As we said in our First Strike blog entry about our donation of our Ukraine superpower revenue, Blindflug Studios remains strongly in support of Ukraine, and we sincerely hope that we will have peace and a fully free Ukraine again.

A playtester trying out the new onboarding mode of First Strike.