What are your tips for effective game testing?

1 Plan your testing strategy

Before you start testing your game, it's important to have a clear plan of what, how, and when you are going to test. A testing strategy should include a list of test cases that cover all the features, functions, and scenarios of your game, as well as a prioritization of the most important elements based on risk and complexity. Additionally, you should have a schedule of testing cycles and milestones that align with your development phases, a selection of testing tools and methods suited to your game and platform, and a definition of criteria and standards that measure your game quality and performance. Having a testing strategy will help you organize the process, focus on the most critical aspects, and avoid missing or repeating tests.

2 Test early and often

One of the most common mistakes in game testing is waiting until the end of development to test your game, which can lead to a variety of problems such as discovering bugs that are hard to fix, wasting time and resources, losing motivation and confidence, and missing deadlines. To avoid these issues, it's essential to test your game early and often, beginning from the prototype stage. This will help validate your game design, identify and fix bugs quickly, get feedback from users and stakeholders, monitor your game progress, catch errors before they escalate, and ensure that your game meets expectations and goals.

3 Automate your testing

Manual testing is essential for game testing, providing an opportunity to assess the user experience and gameplay. However, manual testing can be time-consuming and prone to human errors. That's why you should also automate your testing as much as possible, particularly for tasks such as evaluating the functionality and performance of your game code, testing compatibility and usability on different devices and platforms, or assessing the security and stability of your game against potential threats. Automating your testing will help you save time, reduce workload, and increase accuracy and reliability.

4 Involve your users

Your game is ultimately made for your users, so it's essential to involve them in your testing process. User testing can provide valuable insights into how they interact with the game, what they like and dislike, and what they expect and suggest. It can also help you improve your game design, usability, and accessibility, as well as user retention and engagement. To involve your users in the testing process, you can conduct surveys and interviews to collect their feedback, run beta tests and early access programs to let them try the game and report bugs/issues, use analytics/metrics to track/measure user behavior/satisfaction, or create online communities/forums to communicate/collaborate with them. Involving your users will help you create a game that meets their needs, preferences, and standards as well as your own.

5 Learn from your testing results

The final tip for effective game testing is to learn from your testing results and use them to improve your game and your testing process. Testing results can provide information such as the number, type, and severity of bugs and errors in your game, the performance and quality of code, graphics, audio, and UI, as well as the compatibility and usability on different devices, platforms, and settings. It can also give you valuable feedback and ratings from your users and stakeholders. By learning from your testing results, you can identify and fix problems in your game as well as evaluate and refine your testing strategy, methods, tools, development practices, and standards.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?