Finalizing and Testing Axirune

Finalizing and Testing Axirune

By the start of July, Axirune was mostly there.The game had its artwork, sounds, menus, Campaign Mode, Generator Mode and the main puzzle systems were working. For the first time since I started the project I wasn't really thinking about what I needed to build next.Most of the month was spent playing the game.

Again.

And again.

And then again after changing something that I thought I had already fixed.

It wasn't the most interesting part of making Axirune, but it was probably the point where the game changed the most without actually looking very different.Earlier in development I could ignore something small because there was always a bigger problem waiting. If a button was slightly awkward or something on a screen needed adjusting, I could tell myself I would come back to it later.July was basically "later."

Playing it until things started bothering me

I went through the Campaign Mode repeatedly and started paying much more attention to how everything behaved rather than just whether the puzzle could be completed.I tried normal moves, bad moves and sometimes things that I knew made no sense just to see what would happen.

Restart the level.

Try it again.

Put an arrow somewhere I normally wouldn't.

Restart.

Take a different route.

Restart.

Eventually you start finding small situations that never appeared while you were concentrating on building the actual system.This was especially true with the arrow mechanics because the whole game depends on the player understanding what is happening on the grid. If something behaves strangely, even once, it makes you question whether you misunderstood the rule.That is a bigger problem in a puzzle game than it might be somewhere else.I also realised how difficult it is to judge your own game after working on it for months. Some things felt completely obvious to me because I already knew exactly how they worked.Of course I knew what the player was supposed to do. I made it.That doesn't mean somebody opening Axirune for the first time is going to know.

So I started looking at the game more from that point of view. Not necessarily making it easier, but checking whether the game was giving enough information for the player to figure things out themselves.There is a difference between being stuck because a puzzle is difficult and being stuck because you don't understand what the game is doing.I wanted the first one.

Generator Mode was its own problem

Campaign Mode was easier to test because I knew exactly what puzzles were there.Generator Mode was different.The whole point of the generator was to give Axirune more replayability instead of having the player finish a fixed set of puzzles and then have nothing else to do.The problem with generated puzzles is that the game can create combinations you might not immediately think of when designing puzzles manually.So I spent a lot of time generating boards and playing them.Some were straightforward. Some took longer than I expected.There were a few occasions where I started testing a generated puzzle and then realised I wasn't testing anymore. I was just sitting there trying to solve it.I actually liked that.

It was probably one of the first times during development where I could forget about the code for a few minutes and just play Axirune as a puzzle game.A big part of July was also checking the less noticeable stuff around the puzzles.

Menus.

Buttons.

Text.

Spacing.

Transitions.

Sounds.

What happened when a level restarted.

What happened when you completed something.

Whether the game responded quickly enough after an action.

None of these things sound particularly important when written down individually, but when a few of them feel wrong at the same time the whole game starts feeling unfinished.I made a lot of small adjustments during this period. Nothing that would make an impressive before-and-after screenshot, but enough that the finished version felt cleaner than the version I started July with.

At some point you have to stop

This was probably the hardest part.There were still ideas I could have added.There are always ideas.Another mechanic. Another animation. More puzzles. More effects. Another game mode.Every time you add one of those, though, you create something else that needs testing.

I had originally chosen Axirune because I wanted a game that I could realistically build and finish by myself. If I kept expanding it every time I thought of something new, I was going to completely defeat the reason I chose a focused puzzle game in the first place.

So I stopped adding features.

If something was broken, I fixed it.

If something felt confusing, I looked at it.

If something was simply another idea I thought would be nice to have, it stayed an idea.

That helped a lot.

There was also the source project to think about.

Axirune wasn't only going to be released as a game. I was preparing the complete Godot project as a Source Edition as well, which meant I had to look at the project from another angle.Normally a player is never going to see how the project is organised behind the game.Someone opening the source will.That gave me another reason to go through everything and make sure I was comfortable releasing it.I wouldn't say I reached some magical point where I looked at Axirune and suddenly knew it was perfect.That never happened.What happened was much simpler.

I played it.It worked.I played it again.It still worked.

The main systems were there, the two game modes were working, the game looked and sounded the way I wanted it to, and I wasn't fixing anything important anymore.At that point I could either keep changing Axirune forever or call it finished.

So I called it finished.By the end of July, the development part was basically over.

August would be a completely different job.

Now I had to work out how to actually release the thing.