lap.
You know how your game works, Lap will help you find out if anybody else does too. Watch a playtester on Discord or Zoom while Lap records their shared gameplay, then mark the moments you’ll want to come back to. All locally!
Download for WindowsSET UP
Before your playtester hops on Discord to share their screen, give the session an ID (fancy word for name) and a build ID (genuinely important). This is to ensure when you’re three builds deep and wondering which version had the weird jump, you’ll be able to find it easily.
(We are DONE with the “final-final-new-actually-final.mp4” era)
RECORD THE STREAM
They share your game over Discord (for example) like they normally would. You switch on Marker Replay and select the call window or Discord in Lap. So that’s the whole set up on their end, which is a beautiful amount of setup.
FRAME IT
Draw around the gameplay inside the call window, resize the box, and press Use Area. Now your replay is about the game instead of whatever else is happening on your desktop.
OBSERVE
Press Start Session and watch what they ACTUALLY do. Lap records the stream while you fight the overwhelming urge to say “dude it’s literally right there.” That urge is exactly why we’re doing this.
Genuinely give them a chance to surprise you (or get lost, both are useful).
MARK THE MOMENT
They missed the hint? Press S on your keyboard. They finally figured out how to jump? Pat yourself on the back with a W for worked. Tap Worked, Unsure, Stuck, or Hit without interrupting, and Lap remembers where it happened in the recording.
W Worked A Unsure S Stuck D Hit
ADD CONTEXT
I love the confidence! But no half measures. Hold a marker key down and write something quick and useful like, “They missed the double jump hint,” and press Esc to save it before the next interesting thing happens.
Your brain is already busy watching someone walk past the tutorial for the fourth time, lol.
CLICK BACK
After the call, open Review and click the marker or note that’s been bothering you. You’re straight back at that moment in the recording, without scrubbing through twenty minutes of “wait, where was it?”
Maybe the jump needs fixing? Maybe the hint is practically invisible? A replay is often a better witness than our memory.
KEEP THE CONTEXT
Open an earlier session and the build, replay, markers, and notes are still together. You can revisit last week’s Discord or Zoom playtest with ease.
Use Notes Review when you want everyone’s observations together, rather than twelve documents called “feedback.”
SPOT THE PATTERN
Once you’ve watched a few people, open Aggregate to see where Unsure + Stuck keeps piling up. Then check their notes and replays to work out what’s going on before you rewrite half the game out of panic.
A big number gives you a reason to investigate NOT to delete your favorite game mechanic!!
TEST THE NEXT BUILD
Good job you have made the hint bigger and shipped another build. Get someone else playing and open Compare to see whether players are getting less stuck and more of the good stuff is landing. We’re rooting for you btw, we’d just like to help you make sure it’s working.
Our sample friction drops 9 → 2. Encouraging! Different testers and session lengths still matter though so check the replays before moving on.
Session setup
TRY LAP
Hit Start Session in Lap and our little automated playtester will have a go at the game. You get to watch, mark moments, and leave notes, just like you would on a Discord or Zoom call.
This is your playtester playing the game
Hit Start Session in Lap
and we’ll get our playtester moving.
And this is you
W Worked A Unsure S Stuck D Hit
Hold a key for a note. Esc saves it.
WHY LAP
Your game gets one shot at Steam Next Fest. Please don’t spend it finding out that nobody understands the tutorial. Valve allows each title to participate in only one Next Fest, and its build review is not a substitute for your own testing.[2] This is your game meeting potential fans, streamers, and future customers. You probably want their first big discovery to be the cool mechanic, not a door they can’t figure out how to open.
The opportunity is worth taking seriously. In Chris Zukowski’s survey of February 2026 Next Fest participants, the 60 games entering with 1,000–9,999 wishlists gained a median of 1,006 additional wishlists during the festival. The median per-game share of demo players who had also wishlisted was 16.3%. Games whose demos launched much earlier earned roughly 2.5× as many wishlists as those launching closer to the event. That last relationship was weak and overlapping: an association, not a promise that releasing early will multiply your wishlists.[3]
Zukowski also recommends playtesting demo content before its public launch, leaving time to improve usability and fix bugs.[4] Denisova and colleagues’ interviews with indie games professionals also identified difficulties managing playtest data.[1] So get someone on Discord or Zoom while you still have time to change things. Lap makes that free and practical: record their shared gameplay, mark where they struggle, click back to the exact moment, and compare the next build. Your first impression shouldn’t be your first real playtest.
Your playtester shares their gameplay on Discord, Zoom, or anything the both of you decide to call on. You select the window of whichever app in Lap and optionally crop to the game feed. Lap records the visible video without audio while you mark moments.
Yes, pinky promise, the whole thing. There’s no trial countdown waiting to ruin your evening, and you don’t even need an account to get started. Lap was made to make your awesome game even awesome-er at no additional cost!
You don’t need to worry about game engines. If someone can share gameplay on your screen, you can use Lap to watch and record it. Unity, Unreal, Godot, GameMaker, or even your extremely brave attempt at a custom engine. They are all welcome. The Unity integration in the settings tab is completely optional.
They stay on your computer, always. The desktop app collects anonymous product diagnostics and it will never include your recordings, notes, and game content. Lap was built with your privacy in mind.
Lap’s original interface with sample sessions and an automated game. It records only the demo game canvas, keeps practice data in this tab, and sends no diagnostics. Refresh to reset.
YOUR NEXT PLAYTEST
The desktop app does this with your actual game, real screen/window capture, saved sessions, and local replays.
Get someone on Discord or Zoom and let them loose on your game. You’ve put too much into making it to leave the useful bits of their playtest to “I think they got stuck somewhere near the bridge.”
Download for WindowsLap on Mac is coming soon!!!!
No account required. Recordings and notes stay on your computer. Lap collects anonymous product diagnostics.