🐛Bugs

Bugs and glitches are a development inevitability, but a thorough and structured playtesting process dedicated to finding them minimizes the risk of frustrating issues in your released game.

Key Types of Bugs to Target

• Progression Blockers: Any bugs that prevent players from completing quests, levels, or the main story take top priority.

• Gameplay-Breaking Bugs: Focus on bugs that significantly distort mechanics, create exploitable loopholes, or fundamentally disrupt the intended play experience.

• Crashes and Freezes: Thoroughly test different platforms and hardware to identify any scenarios that cause the game to crash or freeze entirely.

• Visual Glitches: While generally lower priority, distracting graphical glitches (flickering textures, objects floating, etc.) still negatively impact the player experience.

• UI Bugs: Missing menu elements, incorrect text, or unresponsive UI components can cause confusion and hinder navigation.

• Audio Glitches: Distorted sounds, missing audio cues, or music looping incorrectly can disrupt the soundscape and become irritating.

How to Facilitate Bug Reporting

• Clear Reporting Process: Provide playtesters with instructions on how to report bugs, including necessary information (steps to reproduce, hardware specs, screenshots/video if possible).

• Specificity Aids Squashing: Encourage testers to be as specific as possible when describing how the bug occurred. Vague reports make it difficult to pinpoint the cause.

• "Edge Case" Hunting: Instruct testers to deliberately try to "break" the game by performing unusual actions, interacting with objects out of order, etc. This can surface unexpected bugs.

• Beyond Functionality: Even if a bug is technically harmless, note if it significantly disrupts immersion or is visually distracting.

• Bug Bounty: For larger projects and community-involved testing phases, consider a bug bounty system where players are rewarded for finding and documenting significant issues.