“It’s not the size of the demo that matters” jokes aside 
As the title says, about how many words/ what size would you say is a good first demo/test version to release for people to try?
Thanks ahead of time.
By demo do you mean something uploaded to the forum for people to play and test?
Or the part of the game that will be a demo when the game is released by Hosted Games?
Uploaded to the forum for people to test.
As long as you want it to be. Some people find it useful to write a substantial amount of their game, enough to give the players a good idea of what things are. Others will just offer a small snippet. It’s really up to you and what you find most useful for your own writing.
I’d say good is a few chapters. Enough that the story’s established and people have something to get their teeth into and provide feedback on. The less you provide, the less useful the initial feedback will be.
Random suggestion: 10K words.
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Ok at first this was going to be an off-handed silly post but it didn’t offer any suggestion or, as I would like, to support @FairyGodfeather suggestion.
So, as far as my opinion matters, which is very little mind you, a demo should be exactly the size it needs to be to intrigue an audience (anything more than that is whip cream).
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Not much opinion was given, but I think this topic is similar to your question. How long is too long
That link is from 2011 and a lot of things have changed since then. It’s also asking how long a game should be, not the demo itself.
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Oh? I assumed it basically means the same thing. Ahahaha, I guess to me it does. Ignore my previous post then
Introduce a small conflict, show how the stats work and throw in a character or two, while still giving the reader a chance to interact with them.
The size itself varies on the size of the game, since longer games often take more time to show everything i listed above. But, if you’re searching for an example… I think Choice of the Vampire does it well.
My suggestion either a single chapter, if your chapters are really long or else about a quarter to a third of the game as it has to be enough to suck us in, so to speak.
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id say the prologue and chapter one I’ve been playing a lot of WIPs lately and I get disappointed when it ends two quickly.
but otherwise play some of the WIPs (freak amidst the neon lights from ashes we rise ect) and judge from their size.
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