While I was working on Fracterebus I hit a bit of complicated coding that bogged me right down. When I switched gears to some other thing to code that wasn’t so confusing I quickly discovered that I was having trouble keeping track of things. As the project got larger this problem got larger too. I realized that keeping track of things wasn’t something I could do in my head anymore.
First it looked a bit like a scene out of “Indie Game the Movie” where taking notes on random pieces of paper was the winning approach. That worked for a little while, but it was hard to keep track of and doesn’t really support playtester feedback. Next, I tried a spreadsheet but that is clearly not what they are for and it ended up being sort of worse than the paper approach. Then it was time to see if other people made decent task tracking tools, but they all seemed to come with subscription fees or weren’t really made for game development. I tried several and ended up not wanting to use any of them. That’s when the idea to make the exact tool I wanted popped into my head.
It was time to make a tool and use it at the same time. I was making the tool for my actual needs, with the features I actually want. RefractTrack was made to do the those things, and to intentionally leave out all the things I didn’t care about. It’s for keeping track of things that need doing and which things are currently happening. It’s for keeping track of who is doing them and when they are due if you want. It’s NOT for managing sprints or team member vacations or ordering pizza or any of the other random things you see in other tools. It’s also for letting trusted playtesters give real bug reports and feature ideas without cluttering your board until you’ve ironed them out.
Then it occurred to me that a playtester might be a random person I met at a convention and that they probably have feedback they want to share. A game project doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. People playing it, talking about it, and telling the developer about what they thought is how a good game that never gets wishlists on Steam turns into a masterpiece that everyone wants to play. RefractSurvey is the tool I made for that. It’s a survey system with the capabilities you need for gathering the feedback you can leverage into improvements.
With both RefractTrack and RefractSurvey you can get feedback and turn it into actual things your developers understand and work on.
I even used RefractTrack for keeping track of everything while I was developing RefractTrack and RefractSurvey. Later, we’ll probably be using RefractSurvey to run surveys about both products too. It’s not just tools I made, I actually use them all the time.
Today is the release day for RefractTrack and RefractSurvey, and they are even on sale! Go buy them on itch.io using the links here just above.