Welcome back to this awesome new series!

The Almighty Test Cases are corralled into Test Suites — and today, we’re going to look at my core Generic Test Suite and how I arrived at it.

The Goal – Functional Certification

Compliance and certification checks required by platforms prior to a game’s release categorise their test cases into similar suites. These typically cover:

🔹 Brand names and trademarks – Ensures a platform is referred to properly.
🔹 Hardware and software terminology – Verifies correct naming of the platform and peripherals.
🔹 Achievements – Confirms the player can unlock and receive achievements.
🔹 Save data – Validates that progress is saved correctly and can be transferred.
🔹 Network – Checks that the game interacts correctly with the platform’s networking services.
🔹 Entitlements – Confirms access is granted only to purchased content (e.g., DLC, virtual currency).

These categories highlight what platforms prioritise (without getting too specific — I’m not trying to get in trouble here!). As you can imagine, test cases like these are relatively easy to adapt across different games.

Here’s a super basic example:

Save Data Test 001
Ensure the user’s save data retains progression.

Steps

1. Boot the game.
2. Create save data.
3. Close the game.
4. Restart the game.
5. Load the save data and verify progression is present.

High level, super simple.

These kinds of test cases rely heavily on the experience of the tester and their understanding of how games work — so they can apply the same test case to any game they’re testing.

That’s the basic foundation for suites used in compliance and certification.

And it’s also the foundation I wanted for functionality testing.

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Generic Suites

If you read the last post, you’ll remember I was knee-deep in labeled bugs that needed organising. My goal? To categorise those bugs into something similar to the compliance test suites — and after a few iterations of sorting and refining labels, I landed on these Generic Test Suites:

🔹 Dev-Ops and Tools
🔹 Performance and Stability
🔹 World Navigation Mechanics
🔹 Gameplay and Progression
🔹 Basic Systems
🔹 Multiplayer & Social
🔹 User Interface
🔹 Asset Position and Manipulation
🔹 Audio
🔹 Materials, UVs and Virtual Effects
🔹 VR Comfort
🔹 Additional Content
🔹 Design and Implemantation

Pretty tidy right?

Can you picture the kinds of test cases I’ve built within these yet?

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Wrapping Up

Every time I start a new series, I wonder whether I’ll have enough material to make it engaging.

Then, once I get writing, the challenge becomes not going off on overly detailed tangents and explaining the thought process behind every single item.

Still, I hope you’re enjoying where this is going. I feel like this bridges the gap between testers and leads — so hopefully there’s something here for everyone.

Next week, we’ll expand on the test cases and make up the Generic Test Suites.

Until next time, QA sleuths!