Frequent updates and new features are a big part of game development. To maintain stability and ensure quality, game development teams constantly work towards maintaining a steady flow of releases, but it can be quite a challenge from different perspectives.
Working with game teams over the last few years, we’ve learned one thing pretty quickly: regression testing works best when it’s part of a bigger picture. It’s not just about running automated tests and ticking boxes. It’s about combining structure with exploration, curiosity, and a real understanding of how games evolve.
In this article, we’ll share how we think about regression testing in game development, how it complements exploratory testing, and why mixing different testing techniques isn’t just good for game quality, it’s also a huge win for project management and team efficiency.
Regression testing vs. Exploratory testing: different focus, same goal to ensure quality
Regression testing and exploratory testing often get talked about as separate (or even competing) approaches. In practice, we see them as deeply complementary.
Regression testing is all about checking what already worked and being ready to prove when it no longer does. Every time a change is introduced (a new feature, a bug fix, a refactor), regression tests help us check two things:
- That a known functionality still behaves as expected, and
- That a recent change hasn’t introduced a side effect in an area that used to work fine.
That second aspect is especially important. A failing regression test isn’t just “bad news”, it’s evidence. It clearly shows that a change caused a previously working behavior to break, which makes debugging and decision-making much faster.
| Key focus: To catch side-effect regressions and ensure no unintended consequences are introduced by new updates or changes. |
Exploratory testing takes a different but equally important approach. It’s a structured, experience-driven technique where testers explore the game with a clear purpose, guided by risk, product knowledge, and player behavior. By adapting their testing in real time, testers can uncover other types of issues, e.g., edge cases, usability issues, and subtle gameplay problems, that scripted or automated tests are unlikely to catch.
- Regression testing focuses on known behavior and side effects
- Exploratory testing focuses on unknown risks and player experience
| Key focus: To discover new, unexpected issues through creative, unscripted interaction with the game. |
Understanding side-effect regressions: proving breakage
One of the most valuable things regression testing does is help teams catch side-effect regressions. These are the bugs nobody intended to introduce.
You add a new feature. It works perfectly.
But suddenly:
- a menu stops responding,
- saving fails in a specific scenario,
- or a gameplay mechanic behaves differently than before.
For example, imagine you add a new weapon system to a multiplayer game. While the new feature works perfectly, players suddenly experience crashes when saving their progress – an issue that was never a problem before.
Regression testing can help identify and isolate these unexpected side effects by re-running tests that cover pre-existing systems. When tests fail, they demonstrate that the change has broken something, helping the development team quickly pinpoint and address the issue rather than guessing.
When to use regression testing
It’s easy to associate regression testing with release crunch time. And yes, it’s absolutely critical before shipping an update. But from what we’ve seen, it’s just as important when there’s no release on the horizon.
Before a release
Prior to a major release or update, regression testing ensures that any new features or bug fixes haven’t inadvertently affected other parts of the game. When deadlines are tight and changes pile up quickly, automated regression tests act as a fast feedback loop. They make sure new features and fixes haven’t quietly broken core systems right before players get their hands on them.
Ongoing development
Even when you’re not preparing for a release, regression testing helps maintain a high standard of quality. Routine code changes, such as optimizations, refactoring, or small tweaks, can cause issues in unrelated areas of the game. Running regression tests regularly helps teams:
- keep quality stable over time,
- avoid “surprise” bugs later,
- and prevent technical debt from quietly piling up.
In other words, regression testing isn’t just about releases; it’s about maintaining trust in your codebase.
How automating the regression testing can fit into your test strategy
Regression testing is powerful, but it’s not meant to work alone; it can be part of a broader testing strategy that incorporates multiple techniques to address all aspects of game quality, each covering a different type of risk. Of course, this is relative to the complexity of your game development project, and your team’s dimension and expertise.
Automating your regression testing can be an extensive and complex process, but in the long run, it can help you ensure wider coverage across platforms and devices, as well as create more space for diving further into other complementary testing techniques, such as:
- Smoke testing: Quick checks to confirm that the game builds, launches, and basic flows work before deeper testing begins.
- Performance testing: Essential for catching frame drops, memory issues, and performance relapses, especially as content grows.
- User acceptance testing (UAT): Letting real players or stakeholders interact with the game often reveals issues internal teams simply won’t see.
- Security testing: Especially important for online or multiplayer games, security testing helps detect exploits and vulnerabilities that could disrupt gameplay or put player data at risk.
- Exploratory testing: As already stated, it’s a great approach for uncovering unexpected behavior, UX issues, and edge cases that automated tests won’t anticipate.
How AltTester® supports game testing through test automation
Implementing a multi-faceted testing strategy requires the right tools, and that’s where AltTester® comes in. As an end-to-end test automation solution, AltTester® enhances your regression testing and overall testing approach in several ways:
- Cross-platform automation: AltTester® enables automated testing across multiple platforms, ensuring that your game remains stable on PC, consoles, and mobile devices without having to rewrite tests for each platform.
- Fast feedback in CI/CD Pipelines: By integrating regression tests into your CI/CD pipeline, AltTester® ensures that tests run quickly and efficiently after every change, providing immediate feedback to the development team. With this purpose in mind, AltTester® allows you to run up to 20 test suites in parallel, speeding up the release process.
- Comprehensive test coverage: AltTester® allows you to automate tests for gameplay mechanics and UI, ensuring that all critical aspects of the game are tested with every build.
Conclusion
Regression testing isn’t just about confirming that “everything still works.” It’s about spotting when something stops working, understanding why, and keeping control as games grow more complex.
When combined with other approaches and techniques like exploratory testing, smoke testing, and performance testing, it creates a powerful strategy for catching bugs, improving not just the game itself, but also how teams plan, communicate, and release.
From our perspective, that balance is where real, sustainable quality comes from.