Dev Diary #319 The mindset of a tester

[Nikki Severin 1132]

Ahoy Ylanders!

Today, let's for once leave the seas of Ylands and instead dive into what it's like to be a tester.

In general, us testers get to shine when a new feature or asset is introduced and given to us in its raw state. Here it's important to keep two mindsets: one of a tester, but also one of a player. But let's get to the latter in a little bit.

Generally, as testers, we basically have one important job - to grab what we've received and attempt to break it in any way imaginable. Already knowing all that is doable in the game, this is where we do that "all" and way more. We get to wreak havoc and investigate all that could possibly go wrong, and this is where being creative and imaginative really pays off. Finding as many ways to break every new thing as possible lets us, after all, try our very best to bring you everything in the most polished, pristine state after it's reported, fixed and retested.

 

The mindset of a player comes into the picture when we also have to consider the question of: is this user friendly? As most of us already have our fair share of experience with games, we know fairly well if not only the usability but also design is something that would generally please a player. Overall, it's important to us that every new thing is easy to understand, can be used well, but also looks a way that would catch our eye as players. As such, not only do we find bugs, but also bring our own feedback to the table.

When a release is knocking on the door, that's when the most things can possibly go wrong. Instead of testing rather specific things, we now have to look through every single corner of the game to make sure nothing has been broken in the process. Even things that until now seemed minor are important to test so that we can try our best to make the experience we bring you, our players, as flawless as it could be.
And then the release comes, maintenance happens, and we have the job and last chance of checking that everything is fine, so we split the most important parts of the game amongst our lovely team of testers and go through all Story ylands, intro, shop etc., basically all that absolutely has to be in a proper state no matter what. And we have to manage in time so that you can get the finished product and continue sailing as soon as possible.

Overall, seeing that progress that newly added things go through is really exciting, as it goes from a sometimes rather broken state to a finished feature and we get to experience all those stages. Sometimes that results in funny bugs that we would not otherwise experience while being simply players, which we then get to share with you, our community, afterwards.

At the same time, it can be a difficult job since we're not just playing the game. It can sometimes take us days to find how a specific bug happens, which often results in us just doing the same thing over and over and over again until we figure it out, and then once more after it's fixed. It takes a lot of effort, thinking, and patience, but in the end it's always worth it.

If you run into a bug or simply need help with something, let us know in our Discord!

That's it for this week! 

Stay Classy!