The title is what my best beta tester told me. And he wasn’t wrong. The stars weren’t aligned.

You know the 90/10 rule that says 90% of your time will be spent on the last 10% of a project? Yeah, that’s definitely true for games. I was hoping by now I’d be deep into constant level design and game mechanic development. But it’s always those last little things that get you. That you need to spend a lot of time fixing. From selecting the right color sets to double checking spelling or, in this case, aligning the stars.

On the importance of beta testers

And this is why alpha test users are so important: I actually knew about the star-alignment problem but had forgotten about it. I saw the bug a month ago but had more important things to do first. So, naturally after a month of staring [starring?? ha ha] at the out-of-whack stars, my eyes got so used to it that I forgot the problem existed. It’s not until you bring in brand new people to test a software package do you find the real last minute bugs that need fixing.

At least I got the demo done and out, and I only have a few more levels to design before I can release the full game with the full 28 level set.