In this post, I want to delve into the joys and significance of testing—a crucial aspect I've encountered in my previous work but experienced in a whole new light with my current game project.
For the testing phase, I assembled a group of eager testers, ensuring they had minimal exposure to the game beforehand. This approach aimed to gauge how easily they could navigate the game, comprehend its objectives, and uncover any unexpected behaviours. Their diverse perspectives provided invaluable insights, enabling me to identify and address potential bugs to enhance the game's quality.
Here's a glimpse of the action-packed gameplay that ensued during our testing sessions:
But before diving into these exhilarating moments, we encountered a few bugs along the way. Here are some key takeaways from this testing process:
- User Variability: It's essential to acknowledge that not everyone will interact with your product in the same way. Testers often explore functionalities and scenarios that creators may overlook, offering valuable perspectives for improvement.
- Network Challenges: Introducing multiplayer or live updates can introduce synchronization issues or errors, particularly when multiple users access the game simultaneously. Proper management and testing are crucial to mitigate these challenges.
- User Navigation: The accessibility of menus and navigation paths is paramount. Keeping the user journey concise and straightforward, ideally within three screens, minimizes the risk of users feeling disoriented or lost.
- Hardware and Network Considerations: Recognize that users may have varying hardware configurations and network conditions. Understanding the required specifications ensures optimal performance across diverse environments.
Despite overcoming these initial hurdles, we encountered some amusing bugs that added a touch of humour to our testing process. it's all part of the learning and growing a project process, you have to be ready to face these kinds of things as experiences that can make you better at what you do. But for hopefully a chuckle here are a few memorable ones:
- The archer could shoot the ground and would suddenly no longer understood how gravity worked as he flew away into the distance
- The rogue's dagger-throwing ability occasionally spawned an excessive number of daggers, turning the character into a one-person army
- The mage had a giant fireball to use, however it became a little tough to hear anything when the sound effect didn't stop and kept repeating
- The stone golem started asleep and sometimes wouldn't wake up when it was meant too, forcing the party to adventure into a forest to find out where it was
- The stone golem also packed a hard punch that resembled the archer with the lack of physics understanding and would launch anyone who dared into the sky for a few minutes
I hope you found this post insightful and enjoyed reading about my testing experiences!