Developing and releasing a game is a tedious process. The game can go through various builds before it reaches an acceptable version, ready for release. Creating different builds and identifying if the game is ready is essential for every game developer. Cyberpunk is a clear example of what happens if organizations don’t perform effective game testing.

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Millions of games fill the Play Store and App Store; however, if these games do not match user expectations, they uninstall them immediately. Additionally, ensuring your game is unique in that massive market is essential.

QA testing helps you find bugs and errors in your game, yet it is not limited to this. QA testing enables you to identify factors that help your game build an emotional connection to your audience, has that fun factor, is visually appealing, and its competitiveness and features create a thrilling experience.

Here are a few techniques for testing games that can help you develop games that perform well:

1. Functionality Testing

Functional Testing helps ensure the game works according to the requirements set by the clients. It involves identifying the generic problems in the game, its stability, game asset integrity, user interface issues, problems with game mechanics, and audio-visual issues. QA teams must consider issues within the game’s progression, user-friendliness, and issues like crashing and freezing to test the game’s functionality. QA teams pass issues found within the game to the developers, who then fix them and return the game for re-testing.

2. Combinatorial Testing

Combinatorial Testing is essential to improve the game’s test execution quality, effectiveness, and cost burden. It ensures the development team tests the game at the earliest, analyzing and scrutinizing all inputs and outputs to identify all possible outcomes and combinations. It allows organizations to generate test cases easily and test them efficiently.

3. Ad Hoc Testing

Ad Hoc tests involve randomly conducting tests on gaming applications to check for errors. Generally, organizations do not map errors to test cases making this approach to game testing unstructured. However, this Testing benefits an organization when it is less on time or has conducted all other testing methods.

4. Compatibility Testing

Organizations run compatibility tests to ensure their game is compatible with all hardware, graphic, and software requirements; this is essential due to the different versions of software and screen sizes out there. So whether you’re building games for PC, console, or mobile, this is crucial.

5. Clean Room Testing

Clean room testing helps organizations build games with minor errors. It combines design refinement and statistical and mathematical reasoning to generate effective test cases that play the game like users. The idea is to help developers understand the mindset of their players; this will help them create a game that better addresses user requirements and improves user experience.

6. Regression testing

Regression testing involves checking and rechecking the game. Games usually have various builds. Sometimes, changes to the code can affect areas of the game that were previously without issues. Regression testing ensures developers test each new build for errors or vulnerabilities to ensure this does not happen.

7. Performance Testing

Organizations run performance tests to ensure their current infrastructure can allow the game to function smoothly. Performance tests help optimize game speed and check significant parameters like graphic performance, processor & memory constraints, response time, battery consumption, and connectivity.

8) Load Testing

Load testing ensures the game’s seamless functionality under heavy load. It shows how the game reacts to multiple users running it simultaneously. It helps determine if the current infrastructure of the game is adequate for the game to run seamlessly. Additionally, it checks for sustainability when the game is at its peak user load. It helps developers specify an estimate on the number of users their game can support and helps build performance management strategies.

9) Play Testing

Playtesting is when game testers play the game to analyze its non-functional features like balance, difficulty levels, fun factors, and more. Game testers play beta versions of the game to check workflows. It is an essential aspect of game design and is most effective for character-playing and PC games. It aims to ensure the functionality of the game in a structured manner.

10) Tree Testing

Tree testing is similar to usability testing in that testers use it to organize test cases. It helps select appropriate tests for specific code changes. Testers can run it ahead of designing navigation menus or page layouts; it allows refinement of labels, menu categories, and inexpensive exploration. With Tree testing, testers only need the tree menu and tasks to run it as it does not require sketch wireframes. Lastly, it helps improve the overall understanding of the game.

Conclusion

The main focus of game testing should be to test procedures, which can get complex due to various components. Game development teams must ensure that the game functions well in the long run as, over time, the user will focus on results and user experience over the game’s charm.