Asking for Feedback at the Right Moment
A one-time "Do you like the game?" question that only appears after a genuinely good moment, a different follow-up per platform, anonymous feedback without a login – and an itch.io demo that sells nothing at all.
Reviews matter for a small game, and so does honest criticism. But the classic "Rate us 5 stars!" pop-up after three minutes of play is something I dislike as a player. So the feedback flow follows a few strict rules.
Only after a good moment
The question "Do you like Ski Resort Empire?" appears once, and only right after something good happened:
- a special project was completed;
- a region's last expansion opened;
- or another expansion opened, but only after at least 90 minutes of actual play and never before the first Alpine resort is finished.
Play time counts only while the game is in the foreground. And even then, the question waits a few seconds and only shows when no other dialog, staff moment or offline report is open. A good moment is a moment of calm satisfaction, not a moment of surprise.
Two answers, one follow-up each
The question has two answers: thumbs up or thumbs down.
Thumbs up leads to exactly one follow-up, depending on the platform:
- in the Android app, Google Play's native in-app review dialog (Google decides whether it actually shows);
- in the itch.io demo, a thank-you with a link to rate the game on itch.io;
- in the web version, a gentle pointer to the supporter pack, if the player does not own it yet.
Never several choices, never "rate us, then share, then follow".
Thumbs down opens a short text field: What could be better? The message is sent anonymously, without a login, together with the app version, the platform and where in the game the player is. No user id. I read these messages by hand. If sending fails (offline, for example), the text stays in the field so nothing typed is lost.
"Later" postpones the question for a few days. Answering it, either way, ends it for good.
An itch.io demo that sells nothing
itch.io is a great place to find players who enjoy small indie games, but I did not want to monetize there. So the game now has a third build: the itch.io demo. It contains:
- no ads and no purchases at all;
- the crystal pack shop replaced by a note and a link to the Android app;
- every ad reward granted directly, as if the player owned the supporter pack.
That last part is computed, never saved. A cloud save made in the demo cannot carry a "free supporter pack" into the Android app.
Separating the builds was a small refactoring: three output folders (dist for Android, dist-web for the website, dist-itch for itch.io) built from one code base with different environment flags.
Spacing out the dialogs
Testing the itch.io build showed something I had missed: the last two tutorial hints and the analytics consent question appeared one right after the other. Three dialogs in ten seconds right after finishing the tutorial feels like paperwork.
The first fix was a pause of a minute of normal play after the tutorial. Later the analytics question moved much further into the game, after the first story moments. It is a recurring theme in this devlog: every new dialog makes the existing ones a bit worse, unless you plan when each of them may appear.
Sepp, take two
Sepp's portrait was repainted. The original, with its white beard and red jacket, looked too much like Santa Claus. The new picture mainly changes the colours, so he reads as an old mountain man rather than a Christmas figure. He still has the beard.