The making of a demo

[Eiliya]

As some of you might know, I'm making a game that's supposed to be a mix between a visual novel and a dungeon crawler rpg. For my demo, I plan to have the opening of the game and include all the way up to the end of the first dungeon. Since the game starts in the middle of this dungeon, there's just a short scene showing how the characters got there before the actual dungeon delve begins.

All in all, my demo currently has somewhere around 1000 words (descriptions of the actions in the dungeon not included) and I'm seriously thinking that it's way to little for a demo. What do you people thing? Should I increase the length of the demo, making it cover a longer part of the game, or should I try to flesh out the descriptive text and get it longer that way?

[Steamgirl]

I think it depends on how much the game focuses on gameplay vs story. If it's 95% dungeon crawler and 5% visual novel, then 1000 words is probably ok for a demo?

Have you timed how long it takes to play through? For a demo, depending on the length of the full game, I'd expect it to be about 30-60 minutes. Obviously if the full game is 60 minutes then that would be too long for a demo, but anything less than 10 minutes is probably too short.

[Eiliya]

That idea of timing the play-through sounds like a thing. I'll give that a go. I do read quite fast though, so I'll try to take it easy

[Eiliya]

Well, I played slowly and including the dungeon, it took me only 20 minutes to complete. Of course, the dungeon doesn't have any monster encounters in it yet, so once they are put in, I'm guessing things might take a little while more, but I still feel it's a bit short.

The game features the main character uniting four settlements and founding the base of a new kingdom. All in all, there's one dungeon for each settlement, plus the starting dungeon, but the vast majority of the game play will be plot-based (focusing mainly on how the MC convinces the inhabitants of the various villages to join him in founding a new kingdom). I would guess that the dungeon art of the game might cover 20~25% of it?

With this in mind, I'm thinking that 1000 words might really be too little, and am considdering including up to the first village as well. That should hopefully double the word-count, if not tripple it, and make the playtime increase significantly. What do you think, people? Seems like an idea?

[Kinjo]

Personally, my recommendation would be, rather than focusing on the number of words, is to play your own demo as if it was someone else's game, and ask yourself: based on this experience alone, would you want to see more of this particular game? A game demo needs to capture the player's interest right from the start. You can do that with or without 1,000 words, especially since you're throwing in some RPG mechanics. Just like a book or movie, you should deliver a hook at the beginning to catch the player and reel them into your game, wanting more.

If the answer to that question is "yes, I enjoyed this game and want to continue playing", then it seems solid. If the answer is "no, I was left unimpressed for a number of reasons", then list out each reason and brainstorm ways to fix and improve each of them until the answer is "yes". The average person playing your demo will not be nearly as attached to your project as you are, and are typically much less forgiving of "lack of polish" so if you're going for a good demo, I think there is a standard you should hold yourself up to, and I think the best judge of that is yourself.