Getting started: playtest a web game

Betacade hosts your web game's prototype, gives you a link anyone can play, and shows you how people played it: who came, how long they stayed, how far they got, what broke, and what they told you. This page walks through your first playtest by hand. If you'd rather an AI coding agent did it, see Have an agent do it at the end.

Which engines work#

Unity (WebGL export), Godot 4 (Web export, GDScript projects) and plain HTML/JS, plus anything else that exports to the web. Unreal Engine and native iOS or Android games can't be uploaded as they are, but you can still playtest a part of one: see playtest a slice. More in uploading a build.

Open the studio at https://studio.betacade.com and sign in with your email: we send a 6-digit code, no password. Your first sign-in makes your studio.

Make a game#

In the studio, choose New game. Give it a name, and optionally your studio's name: players see both on the play page ("Space Frogs by Pond Studio"). You can change either later; the link stays the same.

A new studio can have 3 games and start 20 builds a day. A new build replaces the old one for players, so reuse a game rather than making a new one per change. Write to hello@betacade.com if you need more.

Upload a build#

On the game's page, under Builds, choose Upload a build and pick a .zip of the folder your engine exported (the one with index.html). Betacade checks it, works out whether it's Unity, Godot or plain HTML, and makes it the version players get. More in Uploading a build.

Every game has a play link like https://play.betacade.com/g/space-frogs. It always plays your latest build. Send it to testers; they play in the browser, on a phone or a computer, with nothing to install.

Before you share it widely, set up your game's page: a one-line description, a cover and an icon make the link look right when it's pasted into a chat.

See how people played#

Back in the studio, the game's dashboard shows who's playing now, how long sessions last, the screens people used, errors, and the notes testers sent you. Players are anonymous: each gets an alias like "Amber Fox", never their name or email.

To see how far people got (levels, scores), the game needs to keep its progress in the browser's storage. That's the most useful thing to set up next: Game state.

Have an agent do it#

An AI coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor and the like) can do all of this for you, including the code changes these pages describe. Point it at the agent guide and ask it to deploy your game. The studio's setup boxes also give you a ready-made prompt to paste.

If your agent speaks MCP (Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code and others), connect it to Betacade's MCP server instead: add https://api.betacade.com/mcp as an HTTP server and sign in once in your browser. In Claude Code that's claude mcp add --transport http betacade https://api.betacade.com/mcp, then /mcp. You'll find the connection under Connected apps on your studio's account page, where you can revoke it.

Getting help#

Stuck, or want to show what you're making? Join the Betacade Discord: ask questions, trade playtests with other studios, and tell us what to build next. Or write to [hello@betacade.com](mailto:hello@betacade.com).