Game development can be a mysterious process, and here at Strange Folk Studios we'd like to make it more transparent! Today, we'll be talking all things QA testing with Daniel Hebert, our resident designer and QA tester! 

What is QA testing?

QA or Quality Assurance testing, is the process of testing all elements of a game to find issues and bugs. 

What does a QA tester do on a day to day basis?

A lot of people think QA testing involves simply playing through a game from start to finish, perhaps writing a small report and then providing feedback. This isn’t really the case, as playing and testing are two very different ways of interacting with software and games.

My day as a QA tester involves constant communication with the team's programmers and designers to locate, understand and resolve issues. As Strange Folk Studios are agile and work in sprints, my work follows a cycle: I’ll receive a new build of the game with bug fixes and new features from the programmers, which I’ll test, trying out the mechanics both in the ways we'd expect of a player and also through attempting more unusual actions to identify bugs and glitches. I document everything I find and relay information about these issues back to the necessary team members, usually the programmers but sometimes other specialisms. I work with whoever I need to to discuss, understand and help resolve the issue. Then, once the issues have been resolved, I receive a new build to test, and the cycle repeats.

What process does Strange Folk Studios use for QA testing / bug fixing?

Most QA testers tend to use high end, professional software, such as Jira, to help organise and track bugs. At Strange Folk Studios we prioritise ease of use and the ability to keep everyone informed, which works better with our small team size, so our QA process uses simple spreadsheet software to log issues and a specialised channel in our team's communication server to report them. 

The above images show our teams QA testing channel, and a screenshot of a portion of the QA testing spreadsheet. When a bug is found, I will document it in the QA channel with an accompanied screenshot or screen recording of the issue. Then I add it to the spreadsheet, adding a severity level (how much impact the issue would have on player experience if the game was to release without the bug fixed), the category (what aspect of the game is responsible for this issue) (see below for the key for issue categories), a description and, if possible, steps to recreate the bug. Alongside this I'll include a link to the appropriate message in the QA channel with more information and screen recordings.

Using the spreadsheet, team members can search via category and severity to quickly find relevant bugs that are the most impactful and important to fix soon, and can then use the information from the spreadsheet and the QA channel to understand exactly what is causing the them, in addition to maintaining communication with me regarding the issues. Once an issue is resolved, it is highlighted green and moved to the resolved area of the spreadsheet, ready to be archived and documented. 

What's the funniest bug you've come across while QA testing the game? What's the worst bug?

QA testing isn’t something that would strike many people as funny, but it has gotten quite a few laughs out of me! My favorites are always those that cause Reenie, our player character, to fall out of the world and into THE VOID.

 The above issue was a very quick fix; our system to load the player character into a new level put them in the wrong place! As soon as Reenie spawned in, they were freefalling through the void (looks like fun!). 

This gif shows a bug from a far earlier build of the game, when we were first implementing the base mechanics. This is usually where most of the severe issues arise, which are often also the funniest. Here the player was able to bypass a collider that stops them moving through a wall by pushing a plant pot through with them!

Sometimes even the worst bugs can also be funny. The worst one I've come across so far, and the only one documented on our QA spreadsheet as "URGENT", was a bug that appeared in a recent build: sweeping caused the game to crash (kind of ironic for a game where a large part of the mechanics are related to sweeping)! Thankfully the issue was quickly resolved by our programming team. 

Anything else you'd like to add?

QA testing is a tedious process, but it can also be fun! Laughing at the game doing silly things it shouldn’t can be quite enjoyable, and working with my team to locate and resolve the issues is great; it feels super satisfying to squash an annoying bug!

So far, over 100 bugs and glitches have been documented, with the majority of them being solved. It’s an incredibly important process, and I’m glad I get to help out the team with the work I do!