Mobile Game Development and Testing Habits to Remember
Mobile games, or any form of games in general, are hard to create. It takes a lot of time, effort, and dedication. And in the mobile industry, due to the constant change in the mobile landscape, mobile game development can be a daunting task. Despite that challenge, there are now a lot of successful mobile game developers. It is not only hard work that has given success to mobile game developers; discipline and routine habits also have significance to their success.
Here are a few habits to remember for mobile game development and game testing:
Bring ideas to life
Even when they lack ideas, good game developers will always be busy on smaller projects. You can’t just sit around and expect an idea to come immediately. Ideas come through inspiration, and doing various projects will probably trigger your next big idea. Frequent brainstorming will keep developers inspired in creating their next big successful game.
Keep the users in mind
As early in the planning phase, of course, it is essential for you to be able to determine your target users and know them and their expectations. This knowledge will help you understand usage patterns and support mobile game testing more appropriately in your business. A better understanding can simplify efforts on what matters to your customers the most and will allow you to develop and update your game appropriately with your target markets demands and wants in the game.
Plan before coding and follow a process
When developing a game, the game development team should not proceed blindly. It is essential to be able to plan ahead, so developers and testers know exactly what to do and the process they should follow. Also doing this will help the developers and testers familiarize themselves with the requirements needed to be completed for the project on their given time frame. Figuring out the procedure first will then help organize things and prevent delayed progress.
Develop a phase
Take advantage of your mobile users updating apps through WiFi. It can be a risky move to fill your game with so many features at one go. Consider tweaking and adding features to your app over time, which will allow for a more effective end product. At this rate doing so will also keep the users interested as they continue to play rather than being overwhelmed.
Don’t skimp on standard test methods
Even if you develop games or applications for mobile devices, functional and nonfunctional testing skills for web or desktop applications are required. Without following proper mobile game testing procedures, it is likely to come across different application errors which would affect the quality of the product and could delay your mobile game development efforts. Following every needed procedure well and properly must be a must for both developers and testers.
Test usability and mobile platforms in multiple ways
Mobile users have high expectations regarding the usability of the app. The players should easily understand the different game commands easily without difficulty. If errors occur, the game must guide the users on how to solve the problem in the app with clear instructions.
Test in different languages
If the app is available to different countries, keep in mind that there will be a language barrier and would likely need to support different languages. Testing the language is important because every character has different font sizes, without testing this could affect the game design and the different functions of the game. Missing this out will make your game unappealing to your audiences outside of the games original country and would lead to losing players.
Create device groups for testing
Mobile app testers can create mobile device groups, which helps down size efforts in the testing world. Mobile testers can create groups with each group having different priorities such as high, medium and low in the game testing efforts. Here, based on the device usage and types of phones within each customer target group tester will be able to determine if new features should run in latest phone groups or on all device groups available. This is done to ensure that most possible users with different device types can enjoy the game and its features.
Document Change
Changes on the application can happen and sometimes won’t get recorded. Changes from the game design, fixing program errors and glitches can be changed. Without proper documentation, tracking down changes will take longer and can result in miscommunication among mobile game developers and testers. Documenting every change and detail made in the app will make it easier to track down and can also be used as a form of records that can be used as a basis for future projects to avoid similar mistakes.
Learn new skills
Trends in the game development industry tend to change fast. Continually learning new mobile game development skills and techniques gives you an upper hand in the mobile gaming and mobile game testing industry. Game design trends, game themes, programming tools will change and expand your skills to the new trends will keep your games up to trend.
Don’t give up
Developing a mobile game may be hard work and time-consuming. But even if some projects don’t work out as planned, there is still no reason to give up. There will always be room for improvement in developer skills and in the game itself. Regular update improvement with the applications will also boost the users and popularity of the app. Of course, not all apps start perfectly, but improving apps constantly will always gain great user leverage.
Final Say
It takes a lot of time, patience, and good habits to follow to be able to create a mobile game successfully but without a good process, the game development and the testing process could face many more difficulties in creating the envisioned game which would lead to other problems like delay and possibly losing customers. These are just a few of the many habits you can apply to your mobile game development process. Are there any more tips you want to add?
