Longitudinal
Playtests
See what keeps players coming back and what quietly pushes them out as real play unfolds over days, not just a single session.
Watch retention form across real days of play
See why players return, hesitate, or quietly drop
Test progression, pacing, and motivation over time
Diagnose Day 3, Day 5, and Day 7 churn moments
Retention Isn't a Metric. It's the Player Journey.
A game can feel great in the first session yet fail in the long term. Longitudinal Playtests show how behaviour evolves once novelty fades, systems unlock, and habits form, uncovering what dashboards alone can't explain.
The exact session where players lose momentum
How motivation shifts after repeated sessions
Which systems feel rewarding versus exhausting over time
What players expect to unlock next and whether the game delivers
Test the First-Session Moments That Set Retention
Progression curves & XP pacing
Mid-game content unlocks
Meta loops and long-term goals
Narrative pull across sessions
Multiplayer balance & social hooks
Monetization timing & friction
Event cadence and reward fatigue
Designed to Understand Player Experience, Not Just Sessions
Longitudinal Playtests by Lysto let you observe the same players across days without manual follow-ups, reminders, or fragmented data.
Define the focus
Choose how long players should return and which retention moments matter most.
Share your build
Upload live builds, test builds, or evolving prototypes. No extra setup required.
Watch players play
Players record multiple sessions, thinking aloud as strategies, expectations, and frustrations shift.
Shape the next move
See how early signals turn into later churn, disengagement, or long term motivation.
Run playtests on your schedule, with players around the world, 24 x 7
Clear, Actionable View of How
Players Navigate Your Game
Lysto converts scattered gameplay reactions into an organized model of how players think, feel, and behave. And when needed, our game user research experts can help you interpret complex patterns with genre specific insight.
Key Moments Identified
Confusion, hesitation, friction, delight, clarity shifts.
AI Annotated Gameplay
Timestamped clips showing exactly where players get blocked or excited.
Emotional Signals
Tone, sentiment, and reaction cues aligned with gameplay events.
Player Commentary
Layered audio insights revealing expectations and mental models.
Cross-Player Patterns
AI automates clustering of recurring issues and shared experiences.
Survey Integration
Attitudinal signals combined with behavioural data.
Secure Player Access
NDA-bound, strictly qualified players ensure early concepts and builds stay protected.
Frequently Asked Questions
A longitudinal playtest also known as diary study or retention study is a type of playtest conducted over an extended period of time, where the same players interact with the game across multiple days or weeks. This approach helps teams understand how player behaviour and experience evolve beyond the initial learning phase.
Longitudinal playtests are used to evaluate longer-term progression, engagement patterns and retention levels, habit formation, and how features, systems, or updates perform over time. They are especially useful when teams need insight into sustained player behaviour rather than first impressions or short-term learning.
Longitudinal playtests are best suited for metrics that reflect player behaviour and experience evolution over time.
Studios should conduct a Longitudinal Playtest when they want to observe engagement trends, progression over multiple days, retention curves or churn rates, feature adoption, drop-off points, return behaviour, and changes in play patterns across sessions. These tests also help assess how well systems such as game economy, difficulty scaling, game mechanics introduction, or live features hold up with repeated play.
Because data is collected across an extended period, longitudinal playtests are especially effective for understanding sustained interaction and player experience changes, rather than initial impressions alone.
A multi-session playtest involves the same players completing multiple gameplay sessions over a short timeframe, typically within one to two days. It is designed to understand short-term learning like tutorial and game mechanic recall, re-entry experience and confidence, and how players adapt across consecutive sessions.
A longitudinal playtest, in contrast, runs over a longer period, often spanning several days or weeks. It is used to study longer-term player behaviour, such as engagement patterns, retention levels, progression over time, feature adoption, and how the experience holds up beyond initial learning.
Depending on your playtesting goals, a multi-session or a longitudinal playtest can help studios figure out how their games land with their target audience.
A longitudinal playtest typically runs for 5 to up to 21 days, depending on the goals of the study and the systems being evaluated.
Shorter durations are suitable for testing early progression or feature adoption, while longer studies are used to understand retention rates, economy balance, or longer-term experience stability and evolution.
Longitudinal playtests usually involve 10–30 players, as tracking behaviour over time requires a larger group to account for variability.
The ideal number depends on the scope of the study, the duration, and the complexity of the systems being tested. Our Expert User Researcher team can help determine the appropriate number of players for your goals.
Retention in a longitudinal playtest is understood through player feedback across scheduled sessions and any experience changes players go through.
At Lysto, we recommend adding post-playtest surveys to capture this context. Teams can choose to deploy the same survey after each gameplay session, use different surveys across sessions, and include a final survey at the end of the study.
These surveys help assess player sentiment, willingness to continue playing, perceived engagement, and how the experience evolves over time.
Additional signals to measure retention include time spent per session, progression continuity, and engagement with features over time. These metrics help teams understand sustained player interaction rather than short-term behaviour.
With our Player Experience (Px) running a remote Longitudinal test is simple and easy.
Log in to your dashboard and create a New Playtest Request. Select 'Longitudinal Playtest' as the form of study. Define the playtest goals, game details and post gameplay session surveys. Decide player recruitment criteria and any additional targeting requirement.
Sit back and let us do the heavy lifting. Gameplay, player feedback, and session data are captured, structured, and analyzed over the entire study, making it easy to track how player behaviour and experience evolve over time.
Depending on how the study is structured, longitudinal playtests provide gameplay recordings across sessions, player commentary, audio transcripts, session-wise completion data, AI-generated real player insights and post-session or periodic survey responses.
Data collected over time allows teams to track changes in behaviour, engagement, progression, and feature usage. If included, research reports help synthesize findings into actionable recommendations.