Week 3 Update (Beta Testing)
Hey there! This post is part of a game testing project I am working on. There’s a lot more to it than what is covered in this post so check out the full project here.
This week’s testing consisted of some very well constructed games! I tested two multiplayer games and one very addicting phone game. Because of how well-made they were, I had few bugs to report. I also wasn’t able to give the kind of in-depth feedback I usually prefer for reasons I’ll explain below.
The games I tested
NOTE: The following are brief overviews of what I shared with the games’ developers.
- Catch Me!
- A thrilling and hardcore game of tag. One player is “it” and has to parkour through the arena collecting items while avoiding the other players. The game felt great to play and gave me a small adrenaline rush, but due to being in the testing phase, I was unable to get a match with any real players.
2. Hitori Kakurenbo Online
- A spooky horror game based off of an urban legend. One player will control a possessed doll and attempt to kill the other players while they try to escape. A creative idea with great atmosphere and decent mechanics. Unfortunately it had the same problem that Catch Me! did: No one to play with. Only the tutorials are available for anyone playing alone.
3. Singularity Runner
- An endless runner where you swap between an upper and lower half by clicking. A very simple control scheme, but a very fun game. It introduces some unique mechanics to the genre and has a very effective use of risk and reward. It more closely resembles a phone game, but it will be available on PC as well.
How it went
One of my goals for this week was to find a new platform to test games on. While I couldn’t find any on the PC front, I was able to find one on the Google Play Store. It has a section called, “Be the first to play,” which allows users to test open beta games. I’ll be utilizing this feature in the coming week.
There weren’t many bugs for me to report this week, but that may have been partially due to the multiplayer games I tested. Games like that require multiple people to test properly which I did not have available. Most of the detected bugs were UI issues that can be easily resolved once the developers are made aware of them.
- Catch Me!
- Hitori Kakurenbo Online
If I playtest any multiplayer games in the future, I’ll reach out to friends and colleagues for assistance.
What I learned
Multiplayer games require a team of testers collaborating together to effectively test them.
The game plan for next week
- Begin testing games on the Google Play Store
- Utilize my phone for mobile testing
I’ll be wrapping up the project in the coming week! Join me as I finish things off strong. Want to do some bug reporting yourself? Here’s a link to my spreadsheet template.
