QA testing can be challenging when a team has an idea they like and that they understand, however, if the idea isn’t well explained within the game, this can be confusing, difficult, and even unappealing to a user or tester. Towards the beginning of our games development, we didn’t take our game to QA as often as teams I’ve been on in the past have. I feel like this was reflected by the way our original group dynamic was.

Our game, “Rouge-lite”, has improved a lot since our first couple QA sessions. Our main feedback from our QA sessions in the beginning were how our game either didn’t make sense, or the ideas weren’t well thought out. Other comments were that different aspects of the game didn’t all come together and fit within a cohesive aesthetic. Bringing our game now to QA sessions, testers have had more fun, and also showed interest in our game by suggesting specific detailed changes within the game.

The testers for our game get to experience a world that is unique and (finally) well thought out, with details that have been researched in order to help the game become more understandable and readable to any player. Since our team dynamic started off rocky, our game has had a couple issues story-wise. For some testers, some of the ideas within our game were difficult to understand. One main reason for why testers have felt this way is because there has been a lot of programming done in the background of the game, but it hasn’t been implemented within the gameplay yet. Not having proper UI elements can make any player confused.

Within QA sessions, some testers have been a bit confused on our intentions for this game. Our group wanted to create a light-hearted, silly game that players would enjoy. Since not all elements within for our game are within the gameplay loop, the overall concepts and aesthtic have been a bit tricky to understand for others outside of our team. Some of the confusion has been due to our assumptions about testers being able to understand our intentions, but also by not having important elements within our game. UI is a very large factor within our game, and since only the programming aspects have been implemented in the game so far (due to there being a large amount of programming needed to make all of the UI screens work), this has caused a bit of confusion for testers.

For the last sprint to our greenlight presentations, our group has been working hard on fixing these large issues for our game to create a gameplay loop that matches our game: Light-hearted, silly, and fun for the players.