Beta Week

Handmade Network Beta Week

November 16 - 22, 2026

One week of testing and improving Handmade software.

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The Handmade Network Beta Week is one week dedicated to testing and improving Handmade software.

Since Handmade Hero started in 2014, the Handmade community has made a lot of amazing software. We highlight much of it in our project gallery. But for every Handmade project that gets released, dozens more stay on the authors' computers as hobby projects that never see the light of day. And for those that do get released, many remain a bit too scrappy to really find the audience they deserve.

Beta Week is a chance to change that. There are many projects that, with a little focused effort, could be used by the community every day, and could be polished to the point that they could really be taken seriously. So for one week, let's test the heck out of Handmade software!

Projects to test

You can sign up to beta test up to three projects. Projects with very few testers are listed first.

Lost Crab

John

Todd Matthews

Needs testers

This is a game where you are a crab exploring a maze and avoiding deadly raccoons. The authors are looking for testers to find bugs and crashes, but would also appreciate feedback about confusing or difficult levels.

Satelital

Miguel Dorta

Needs testers

Satelital is an atmospheric 2D puzzle game with a custom engine; as of Beta Week, it will have just launched on Steam. The author is looking for both bugs and performance issues, and particularly needs help testing on integrated Intel Arc GPUs.

My editor

Ján Tóth

Needs testers

This is an Emacs-like editor that is currently being daily-driven by a couple users. The author would like to make sure the project is fast and reliable for more people before a larger beta release. Note that users who are familiar with Emacs will have a better time getting up to speed.

VES

Deex

Needs testers

VES is a small and simple video editing program. The author is interested not only in finding bugs in the timeline view and import/export, but also getting general feedback on the program and what would make it more useful.

Wintrace

donadigo

Needs testers

Wintrace is a time-travel debugger for Windows to replace WinDbg. Currently it can debug x64 applications, with 32-bit support planned in future. The author is primarily looking for users to test the overhead of recording traces. Actual replay is still under active development and expected to be buggy and incomplete.

Finesse

DocLobster

Finesse is an experimental visual programming language, designed for understanding compiler optimizations and data dependencies. The author is primarily looking for feedback about the effectiveness of the existing visualizations, and ideas for how to better display them.

Gap

starfreakclone

Gap is a tool for viewing diffs. The author is looking for testers to stress-test it and ensure it has good performance and polish on a wide variety of diffs. He also would be interested in feedback on additional features that would make Gap more useful.

Project Neyon

thehuglet

Project Neyon is a bullet hell game made with a custom engine. The authors are looking for general experience reports and for performance troubleshooting with dedicated vs. integrated GPUs.

Muze

luca

Muze is a music transcription program that has only been in development for a short time. The author would like feedback on the UX as well as overall program design. MIDI keyboard support is being added and would be ideal to test (if ready in time for beta week).

Blindspot Debugger

leddoo

Blindspot is a time-travel debugger for modern macOS. The author is looking for users to test the recording engine on various workloads and to get feedback about what record/replay features would be useful in future releases.

rcut

beast_pixels

This is a new UI library intended to rival Qt or GTK without the bloat. The author is looking for bugs, but also looking for feedback on the APIs and documentation.

Icarus

Giovannicarlino

Icarus is a new IDE that has been in development for a few years. An IDE is complicated enough that just about any testing would be worthwhile, but the author would particularly appreciate coverage of the debugger, syntax highlighting, and project system.

Feed

Simon Anciaux

Feed is a standalone RSS feed reader. The author has been using the program every day for six years, but no one else has ever used it, so the author is looking for first-time experience reports, compatibility info with other machines, and for bug reports on application fundamentals (e.g. the GUI).

Painter

paulpage

This is a simple paint program meant to replace old-school MS Paint and potentially later more advanced programs like GIMP or Paint.NET. The program is early and development and pretty simple, but old-school Paint is also pretty simple, so the author is looking for users to stress-test the app’s stability and usability. (Note that performance testing is a low priority.)

Hybrix

Pete Gonzalez

Hybrix is an education-oriented programming environment and virtual computer, designed to teach programming in a way that lets you understand the entire stack. The author is mainly looking for bug reports and feedback for the IDE and editing experience. This one is complicated to test but hopefully worthwhile!