Analysis of gameplay data is crucial for evaluating design de-
cisions and rening a game experience. However, identifying
player strategies and nding areas of confusion is dicult be-
cause a designer may not know what queries to ask or what
patterns to look for in the data. To make this task easier,
we present Playtracer, a method for visually analyzing play
traces that is independent of a specic game's structure.
Playtracer applies multidimensional scaling to cluster play-
ers and game states, providing a detailed visual representa-
tion of the paths the players take through a game. We eval-
uate our method by analyzing an educational puzzle game
and highlighting common hypotheses, pitfalls, confusing el-
ements, and anomalies. Our results suggest that Playtracer
can be an eective tool for game analysis and improvement.