WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS TYPES OF GAME TESTING?

Why do we require testing in the game industry? Game testing is the most important part in a game development process. This is the final step which analyses whether your gaming application is ready for launch or not. This service helps the development process to focus on issues like inconsistencies, errors, coherence and completeness. Following are some game testing techniques with respect to mobile software testing:

Combinatorial Game Testing:

This is a method is used for commercial software testing. It helps in increasing the test execution efficiency, provide better quality, reduce cost and better phase containment.

• Every possible combination of values of the parameters is covered here
• Identify every distinct attributes
• Systematically generate combination for testing
• It includes Category-partition testing, Pair testing and Catalogue based testing

Clean Room Testing:

This testing is done to check the reliability of a software.

• Programming begins after formal specification
• No programmer testing method
• This approach combines mathematical reasoning, design refinement and statistical reasoning during test case generation and testing
• Main aim of this method is to produce minimal defect software

Functionality Testing:

This method identifies bugs or errors in a game that may affect the user-experience.

• Check whether the application is working according to the specifications.
• It falls under the category of black-box testing technique.
• Takes more time to execute as testers look for game play issues, graphics issues, audio-visual issues, etc.
• Validates whether installation goes smoothly, the app works in minimized mode, the app allows social networking options and supports payment gateways.

Compatibility Testing:

This is used to find whether a game is functioning properly or not with respect to the hardware, graphics and software configuration that the device is built with.

• Validate whether the user interface of the app is as per the screen size of the device and ensure high quality
• Ensure whether the text is readable for all users
• This testing ensures that the product meets all user requirements set by the developer and the end user
• Ensures compatibility between different testing environments

Tree Testing:

This type of testing is almost like usability testing used to organize the test cases. It also helps to select the proper set of tests for the given set of code changes.

• Allows inexpensive exploration, refinement of the menu categories, labels, etc.
• Tester doesn’t need to sketch wire frames or write content for testing. The only things needed are tree and the tasks.
• Improves the overall understanding of the complex features in the game

Regression Testing:

Regression testing is done to check whether after changing a part of the code or adding any new code, the feature of the application does not change or do not affects the unchanged parts of the software. Here test cases are re-checked to analyse the working of the previous functions of the app works fine and that new changes have not introduced any new errors or vulnerabilities.

• Re-run the previously conducted tests
• Helps to compare the previous-results with current results and point out errors
• Critical aspect for quality controls
• Save time by detecting bugs at the starting stage itself
• Can be run as a functional test to verify the overall usability of the end product

Ad hoc Testing:

This is an unplanned testing method generally used to break down the system. Testers randomly test the app without test cases or any documents.

• Do not follow any structured way of testing, it’s randomly done on any part of the app
• Mainly done to find defects using a random checking

Load Testing:

It is a type of performance testing to determine the performance of a system under real-time loads. Load testing shows the reaction of an app when multiple users use the app simultaneously.

• Check sustainability of the app with peak user load
• Determine the number of users an app can support and its scalability rate to support more users
• Accommodates strategies for performance management.

Play Testing:

Play testing is the method of game testing by playing the game to analyses non-functional features like fun factors, difficulty levels, balance, etc.

• Main aim is to check whether a game works in a well-structured manner.

Reference Links: https://www.testbytes.net/blog/game-testing-methodology/, https://toy-testing.org/testing-techniques.html