Lysto vs Poki Playtesting

Lysto is a Player Experience Platform that turns feedback from real players into insights for game studios. Its research covers concept validation, first-time user experience, retention, gameplay, go-to-market, monetization, usability, publisher readiness, player archetypes, competitive studies, and funding or investment research. Gameplay Experience Evaluation looks for enjoyment and frustration moments, challenge balance, and features linked to replayability and longer-term engagement. Studios can run concept tests, single-session or multi-session playtests, and longitudinal studies. Lysto AI summarizes comprehension, friction, flow, and challenge, then tags confusion, hesitation, frustration, and delight with timestamps. The company says its global panel contains over 1 million verified gamers filterable by demographics, genre, and experience. Pricing is on request, with project-based studies or 12–18 month enterprise research plans. Android builds can be uploaded without SDK or code changes, while iOS testing uses live App Store builds. PC playtests use cloud streaming so players do not download builds. The platform itself is limited to laptop or desktop devices and must remain full-screen.

Poki Playtesting is a free web service for game developer teams that want player feedback, bug findings, and design checks. Poki supplies players, devices, and tracking tools, while developers choose test devices and audience categories. Uploaded web builds or prototypes can come from any development stage, subject to content moderation; Poki recommends builds that work on desktop, mobile, and tablet. Each playtest returns 10 recordings containing button inputs, console output, session duration, country, and device type. Players join through a Mystery Tile and must consent to recording. After 10 recordings are watched, a player fit test can measure playtime with 500 players, usually in about five hours and up to twice daily. A web fit test presents the game on Poki category pages to around 10,000 players and measures click-through rate, average time on page, and conversion to play over roughly seven days. Poki for Developers provides upload, analysis, updating, and recording review tools. Supported workflows cover engines including Unity, Godot, Phaser, GameMaker, and others. Tests are free and repeatable, but uploading does not guarantee testing or platform placement.