House Cleaning Simulator

Live playtesting at gamescom

Gamescom is an annual conference held in Cologne, Germany, and it’s one of the largest gaming events in the world. At Gamescom 2024, Koffeecup presented our in-house game Hoomanz, offering the demo to be played externally for the first time. We took this opportunity to gather valuable insights.

Don’t let them catch you!

Shoo must navigate through the dark, otherwise she will get chased and squished with a hug!

What is Hoomanz?

Hoomanz is a light-hearted stealth-adventure game packed with cozy vibes and silly humour. You play as Shoo, the mythical guardian of Planet Erf, who changes forms based on the light. She's determined to scare away all the noisy, stupid and clueless invaders.

Scare them all away!

When a Hooman is scared they will be tossed off the planet! But it’s not as easy as it sounds – the Hooman must be stressed first! Use the environment to your advantage!

Gamescon in numbers

3.5k checked out Hoomanz website

453 demos played

763 wishlisted Hoomanz on Steam

220 completed responses (50% rate!)

29% newsletter subscribers

15 joined our new Discord

85 new IG followers

What does this mean?

Let’s get into how the numbers were crunched and generated insights for out next sprint in developing Hoomanz.

A survey was designed ( Here it is, if you're a fellow data nerd). It consists of a range of questions with quantitative fields generated through a Likert Scale, which were reverse coded during data analysis. We also recorded quantitive data through tracking in game. Using these methods the following insights were gleaned.

From 453 players who started the Gamescom build, the majority progressed smoothly through the demo:

88% completed Objective 1
87% advanced through Objective 2
74% reached Objective 3

An apparent drop at Objective 4 (25%) was due to that objective being removed after day one due to technical difficulties. When analyzing only players who had access to it, 72% completed Objective 4, indicating strong retention.

Completion time data shows:

Objective 1 took the longest, reflecting onboarding and mechanic learning
Objective 2 was the fastest, acting as a confidence-building moment
Objectives 3–4 increased in duration, aligning with intentional difficulty ramp-up

Despite the time-pressured, high-distraction environment of a live conference, players consistently understood the mechanics and progressed through goals—demonstrating effective onboarding, pacing, and engagement.

Player sentiment

While the game was originally designed for boys aged 8–15, the Gamescom audience was predominantly adult, with children being the exception rather than the norm. This context helps explain why the strongest sentiment scores came from players aged 18–34, who made up the majority of survey respondents.

Within this group, 25–34-year-olds showed the highest overall sentiment, indicating strong alignment between the game’s mechanics and adult player expectations in a live demo environment.

An especially interesting finding was that female players reported higher overall sentiment than male players. This suggests the game’s core experience resonates across genders and points to a clear opportunity for growth. Based on this insight, we identified ways to further support and engage our female audience—such as leaning more into narrative-driven elements, character moments, and world-building, which tested well with this group.

Overall, the data highlights that the game performs strongly with an adult audience and surfaces clear opportunities to expand its appeal through targeted narrative and experiential design, without undermining accessibility for younger players.

NPC Engagement

By tracking moments when NPCs transitioned out of idle or patrol states, we measured how often players actively engaged with each character. This allowed us to understand which NPCs players noticed, approached, or reacted to—rather than simply passing by.

Across the first three areas of the game, most NPCs were interacted with at fairly similar rates, suggesting that players were broadly curious and willing to engage with the world. Two NPCs stood out with significantly higher interaction volumes, indicating that either their placement, visual design, or behavior was especially successful at drawing player attention.

This highlights an opportunity to:

study what makes those NPCs compelling (proximity to paths, animations, audio cues),
and apply those learnings to lower-engagement NPCs to better balance attention across the space.

Final Research Conclusions

What we learned

The game resonates most strongly with adult players (18–34), especially women, despite being designed for a younger audience.
Younger players (8–15) can engage successfully but take longer to ramp up, particularly during onboarding.
NPC and object interaction data shows players are curious and expressive, but some mechanics (stealth hazards, early clarity) create unintentional friction.
Narrative and character elements appear to be a strong engagement lever, especially for female players.

What we did next

Strengthen early onboarding with clearer cues and faster “win” moments to support younger players.
Expand narrative touchpoints (NPC personality, light story beats, reactive dialogue) to capitalize on high engagement from women and adults.
Tune stealth and environmental penalties to reduce accidental failure without lowering challenge.
Prioritize polish on high-interaction NPCs and rebalance lower-engagement characters using proven design patterns.

Kaycie Chute