Treehouse Games’ Co-Founder Explains How Playtesting Helped Shape Voyagers of Nera

Voyagers of Nera is an upcoming survival crafting game from developer Treehouse Games. It tasks players to explore the vastness of the ocean as they aim to build settlements, scavenge resources, and fight monsters. The game is largely intended to invoke that feeling of awe and wonder that only the ocean can achieve, and gameplay will take place both above and below the waves to reflect this.

Game Rant recently caught up with Treehouse Games CEO Michael Chu to learn more about Voyagers of Nera. He explained that one of the main reasons the game has evolved into what it is today is due to extensive playtesting from genre experts. He discussed the power of playtesting and how it can work wonders for the relationship between developer and player.

Voyagers of Nera Underwent Extensive Playtesting

It wasn’t long after Treehouse Games began work on Voyagers of Nera that the studio realized bringing on external playtesters would be extremely beneficial. Building a survival crafting game set in the ocean presents some extensive challenges, ones that expert players are in a strong position to both point out and help developers overcome. Chu explained,

“We’ve tested the game with external players every two weeks since April 2024. When we started doing it, we were like, why did we decide to do it? This is so hard. It’s so much work! But we had so many players who were so excited to give us rich feedback. It really let us build real relationships and real deep communication and nuance.”

Genre Experts Provided Plenty of Feedback

While getting external playtesters midway through the development journey is all well and good, having the correct demographic on the task is crucial to ensuring feedback is relevant and actually useful. It would make little sense to have a group of FPS experts playtest a fighting game. When it came to Voyagers of Nera, Chu and his team ensured that playtesters were highly accustomed to survival crafting games, fully aware of the genre’s strengths and, perhaps more importantly, its trappings. He said,

“We specifically looked to get feedback from people who are survival crafting diehards for this system. They’d be like, I like this system because it’s more like my favorite game, but this other system I don’t like, it’s like this other system from this game, which really had these problems. That’s the kind of conversations we have on the team. It was such a game-changer. Multiply that over thousands of people, over a year and a half, and man, that felt like it opened up so many doors for improving the game.”

With Voyagers of Nera first releasing in early access, Treehouse Games having open lines of communication with its players will be key to ensuring the game improves and evolves as it works toward a full release. Chu and his team are counting on their players to help ensure the game isn’t just a drop in the ocean that is the survival crafting genre.