DARWIN’S PARADOX
Genre
Cinematic Platformer
Engine
Unreal Engine 5
Team Size
15-20
Role
QA Tester
GAME DESCRIPTION
Darwin’s Paradox! is a cinematic puzzle platformer in which the player embodies Darwin, an octopus with many abilities such as walking on walls and shooting ink!
I worked on the final phase of the production, on the main game and the Metal Gear Solid demo.
INTRODUCTION
I joined the production of Darwin’s Paradox for the last months of its production phase. It was my first time working on an unreleased game, as I was used to working on live service games at liveops stage of the development. I tested the game on PC & consoles and communicated the bug reports to the different members of the team, as well as discussing potential solutions to fix gameplay issues on both the main game and the demo.
MAIN GAME
After completing my discovery run, I started testing all the different chapters and areas of the game to better understand the current state of each feature and mechanic, as well as the different devices. Then, I started running tests on the UI and checkpoints with more advanced tests to ensure a smooth experience and progression.
As the game was available for 5 different platforms, my team needed to regularly perform tests on all different versions (Playstation 5, Xbox Series S & X, Switch 2, Epic Games Store and Steam). This was a huge amount of work, but it was worth the time as each platform can bring new issues and technical challenges, from in-game bug to store issues).
Darwin’s Paradox! being a platform in which the player has mostly free movements (underwater sections and ability to walk on the walls), I knew there were high chances of bugs being created by this freedom. As this movement freedom was at the core of the experience, I performed multiple tests on the whole game trying to break both the controller and the levels. This meant trying to walk on every possible wall, as well as testing multiple input combinations to check if the controller acts correctly in unexpected situations.
This way of thinking allowed me to find multiple new issues that we reported with my lead and checked later after the team fixed them to verify if they were not appearing in newer builds.
DEMO
Darwin’s Paradox! features a demo inspired by the Metal Gear Solid franchise. It was my first time working on a game’s demo, and this one was special, as it featured a few levels from the main game, but contained multiple references and new content in it, requiring the team to be more cautious with each change applied to any version of the game, as we had to make sure it would not break any content from the other one.
OPTIMIZATION
Darwin’s Paradox is the project during which I’ve spent the most time working on optimization issues. As the final deliveries were approaching, I’ve been spending more and more time tracking performances across the game thanks to in-game tools. With the help of programmers and artists, I ran daily performance tests on multiple platforms to spot the issues that our QA team shared with the owner of the area as a ticket using our task tracking tool.
POST MORTEM
This project was a huge step forward for me, working for the first time on an unreleased game with a publisher. It was the occasion to dive deeper into console testing, especially Switch 2 that I briefly experienced when working on Cyberpunk 2077. On the other hand, Darwin’s Paradox was also the occasion for me to discover how it is to work inside a small production team, and how important communication can become when the size go down.
What I learned from this project:
– Smaller team diverge a lot from larger teams.
– Optimization is a huge amount of work in the late stages of development.
– A unique demo is a technical challenge.
Gameplay Trailer