The First 72 Hours

Silent Hill: Townfall went on sale two days early for players who bought its Digital Deluxe edition. Those early-access buyers recommended it 72% of the time. On launch day, when everyone else could buy it, 60% of reviews recommended it.^2,7 The gap matters to any studio selling an early-access edition, because its first reviews come from its most committed players.

The Blood of Dawnwalker launched to everyone at once, three weeks earlier. 76% of its first day’s reviews recommended it, and 85% of its third day’s.¹

Everything here comes from players, from how many recommend each game each day to what 11,671 English-language reviews of Dawnwalker and 653 of Townfall say.

Positive reviews, day by day

Share of each day’s reviews

The Blood of Dawnwalker Silent Hill: Townfall

100%90%80%70%60%50%

Dawnwalker · 89%Townfall · 60%

Day 171422

Show the numbers

Share of positive reviews posted each day, with the number of reviews

Day	Dawnwalker	Townfall
Day 1	76% of 3,902 2 Sept–3 Sept	76% of 346 22 Sept
Day 2	83% of 1,903 4 Sept	68% of 302 23 Sept
Day 3	85% of 1,542 5 Sept	60% of 422 24 Sept
Day 4	86% of 1,397 6 Sept	–
Day 5	90% of 1,200 7 Sept	–
Day 6	87% of 949 8 Sept	–
Day 7	89% of 965 9 Sept	–
Day 8	87% of 780 10 Sept	–
Day 9	89% of 676 11 Sept	–
Day 10	87% of 618 12 Sept	–
Day 11	90% of 689 13 Sept	–
Day 12	90% of 484 14 Sept	–
Day 13	91% of 377 15 Sept	–
Day 14	93% of 315 16 Sept	–
Day 15	88% of 330 17 Sept	–
Day 16	88% of 314 18 Sept	–
Day 17	89% of 350 19 Sept	–
Day 18	89% of 379 20 Sept	–
Day 19	90% of 276 21 Sept	–
Day 20	90% of 247 22 Sept	–
Day 21	89% of 201 23 Sept	–
Day 22	89% of 197 24 Sept	–

Townfall: early access, then everyone

Townfall’s early access opened 48 hours before launch, to players who bought the Digital Deluxe edition.⁷ They posted 648 reviews, 72% positive. Launch day brought everyone else, and 60% of its 422 reviews recommended the game.² Day by day, its reviews went from 76% to 68% in early access, then 60% on launch day.

68% of its negative English-language reviews mention performance, and so do 12 of the 20 negative reviews other players voted most helpful. On launch day, Konami said it was working on a patch for performance issues in the PC version.⁸

Its first-person camera, the change our tracker set out to watch, comes up in 16% of positive reviews and 3% of negative ones.² Of all 1,073 reviews of Townfall from PC buyers so far, 67% recommend it.

Early-access buyers recommended Townfall 72% of the time. On launch day, 60% of reviews did.²

Dawnwalker: judged in the first two hours

Dawnwalker went on sale at midnight in central Europe on 3 September,³ which is late on 2 September in UTC, the time zone our daily counts use. So its first day covers its first 26 hours: 3,902 reviews, 76% positive.¹

Among English-language reviews from Dawnwalker’s first 72 hours, those written with under two hours of play recommended it 50% of the time, across 646 reviews. Those written after two hours or more recommended it 89% of the time, across 3,995. The short-play group wrote 44% of that period’s negative reviews.¹ Two hours is also the refund window: a game played for less than that can be returned for any reason.⁹

Those early negative reviews were about how the game ran. In the first 72 hours, 42% of them mention performance (stutter, crashes, frame rate, optimization) and 15% mention a refund.¹ Rebel Wolves’ first hotfix notes, on 3 September, listed stutter and crashes while shaders compile as known issues.⁴

After 72 hours, the negative reviews change subject. Performance falls to 23% of them and refunds to 7%. Combat rises from 41% to 56%, and story from 32% to 43%.¹

Most of the climb came before the fixes aimed at frame rate and stutter, which shipped on 9 and 10 September.^5,6 Reviews were 83% positive on day two and 85% on day three, and 89% across everything posted from its second week on.¹ Of all 17,786 of its reviews from PC buyers so far, 87% recommend it.

What to test before launch

• Plan for the drop after early access. Townfall’s Digital Deluxe buyers recommended it 72% of the time, and launch-day players 60%. Early-access reviews come from your most committed players, so test the launch build with players who wouldn’t pay extra to play early.
• The first two hours decide the first reviews. Dawnwalker’s reviewers with under two hours of play recommended it 50% of the time and wrote 44% of its early negative reviews; everyone else recommended it 89%. Find what makes players quit in the first two hours, on the hardware they own, while they can still refund.
• Test performance on the hardware players own. Early negative reviews of both games talk about how they run as much as anything else, so a playtest on target hardware doubles as a reception test.
• Count the reasons in the reviews. The counts show what to fix first, and when players have moved on from the fix to the game itself.