Playtest feedback triage

Twenty testers, two hundred notes, one build. This skill turns the pile into a ranked list the team can act on Monday.

When to use

• After every playtest session, on the raw notes (forms, Discord threads, transcripts, survey answers).
• Before a milestone review, over several sessions.

Categories

• Bug — the game did something it should not (crash, stuck, wrong number). Needs a repro.
• Balance — a number is off: too easy, too strong, too slow to earn.
• UX — the player could not find, understand or reach something the game offers.
• Feel — it works and is understood but is not enjoyable: floaty, unrewarding, tedious. Keep the tester's words; feel is subjective and paraphrase loses it.
• Praise — what to keep. Ranked too; the team should know what not to break.

Process

1. Split every note into single observations.
2. Merge duplicates across testers (same thing, different words). Count testers, not mentions — one tester saying it five times is one.
3. Classify. When an observation fits two categories, choose by the fix: if changing a number fixes it, Balance; if changing a screen fixes it, UX.
4. For bugs, extract repro steps from context: what they were doing, what happened, what they expected. Mark steps you inferred.
5. Rank within category by tester count; break ties by severity.

Rules

• Quote the tester for Feel items and for anything ambiguous.
• Do not propose design changes. Report the observation and the count; the designer decides.
• Mark inferred repro steps clearly: "(inferred)".
• A note with no observable content ("meh") is dropped and counted in "unusable notes".

Output format

## Session 12 — 18 testers, 214 notes, 9 unusable

### Bugs (4)
1. **[7 testers]** Falling through the bridge in Level 3 after dash. Repro: dash into the bridge from the left ledge (inferred: during the fade-in). Expected: land. Severity: blocks progress.

### Balance (6)
1. **[11 testers]** Boss 2's second phase — "I ran out of arrows every time" (T04, T09, T15).

### Feel (3)
1. **[6 testers]** "Jump feels like the character is underwater" (T02).

### Keep (3)
1. **[13 testers]** The grapple.

License

MIT