Playtest Toolkit – Games and Learning Group

About the toolkit

The Playtest Planning and Reporting Toolkit is a set of materials developed with a dual purpose:

To help game designers plan and structure their playtests
To provide a structured yet flexible format to report playtest results

The toolkit is primarily intended for use in academic contexts, from higher education courses to research and development projects that involve the creation of digital or non-digital games. The aim is to help make playtesting practices more rigorous and consistent and to improve the recoverability of the development process by practitioners and researchers.

Research paper

The toolkit development process and the underlying conceptual considerations are discussed in the following conference paper (full text available here):

Fiadotau, M., Callaghan, P., Sorrentino, L., DeCarli, L., Sillaots, M., Hõ, A., & Shin, J. (2026). Playtest planning and reporting toolkit for game design in academic contexts. In S. Göbel & C. Hoppe (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Games Based Learning (Vol. 1, pp. 248–257). ACPI. https://doi.org/10.34190/ecgbl.20.1.5118

The toolkit was initially developed for a game design course at the IT University of Copenhagen and has since been deployed at Tallinn University. The materials have been improved based on data from a workshop with game educators and focus groups with game design students and alumni. More information can be found in the paper.

Materials

The Playtest Planning and Reporting Toolkit consists of three parts, as outlined below. All of the materials listed below can be downloaded together as a ZIP folder.

1. Playtest type outline

This is an information sheet outlining different types of playtests based on:

scope (holistic vs. focused)
level of structure (informal, semi-formal, and formal)
participant type (internal, friends and family, fellow game developers, target audience, project stakeholders and subject matter experts)
data used (observation, think-aloud, interviews, post-play questionnaire, embedded analytics, biometrics, experimental design)

This is intended to help the game development team articulate what type of playtest aligns with their current needs and goals.

The outline includes considerations relevant to different types of playtesting.

2. Playtest plan template

This is a template for planning an upcoming playtest, covering the following key aspects:

goals and guiding questions
methods and format
participant recruitment and logistics

The aim is to encourage game designers to explicate the main goal of the playtest and translate it into key questions and observation items to keep track of during it.

In addition to the blank template, the toolkit includes a filled-out example that can be used as a reference; that document also includes an example introduction script and post-interview questions.

3. Playtest report template

This template has two uses: for structured observation and note-taking during the playtest and for summative playtest reports folllowing an individual playtest session or a series of playtests. In addition to observation data, the template accommodates revision ideas that may occur to the designer during the playtest.

The template is available in two versions: the base version and a version that pairs issues observed during the playtest with revision ideas (particularly useful for playtesting later in the development process, when the design is locked-in and the focus is on identifying and eliminating issues rather than adding new features).

Depending on the needs of the specific project and the focus of the playtesting session, the template may be customized. As an example, the toolkit includes a report template for a difficulty-curve focused playtest of a linear game.

Usage

The Playtest Planning and Reporting Toolkit is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. No attribution is required when using the materials internally for game creation. The materials may be freely modified and customized.

When using the toolkit or its parts in publications , or when redistributing it or materials based on it, we suggest referencing the research paper cited above:

Alternatively, this page may be cited directly:

Fiadotau, M., Callaghan, P., Sorrentino, L., De Carli, L., Sillaots, M., Hõ, A., & Shin, J. (2026). Playtest planning and reporting toolkit. Available at https://glg.tlu.ee/playtest-kit/

Authors and contact

The toolkit was developed by Mikhail Fiadotau, Peadar Callaghan, Leonardo Sorrentino, Laura De Carli, Martin Sillaots, Anni Hõ, and Juhyung Shin.

Feedback, suggestions for improvement, accounts of using the toolkit, and ideas for collaboration are all very welcome at .