## 28 Beta

Because I don't have many other things to do with my back problems, I have found a new task : One of my neighbours is developping mobile games, especially for Android. He was asking for beta testers. If I did that for other types of software, it's the first time for a game...here, it's for two games but especially one of them. It's a puzzle game, one of my favorite genre ! 

I don't know if I was the only one who responded to his request, but he seemed very satisfied with my "work." Only One hour per day to play a game, it's quite easy for me. There were no major issues or crashed. But there were a lot of improvements to do in the GUI, and in the game to make it more exciting and addictive. As many puzzle games, each level is like the previous one with less time or more difficulties. And his game was far too easy to play. I don't know if he tested it with one of his children but I easily reached level 50. He added a "resume" function to be able to play short sessions and save the level. 

He made lots of changes in only one week and for the moment, the game could be published for a first version. But for me, there are a lot of options to add for real gamers and not only people playing 10 or 15 minutes a day in the public transportation. As many good puzzle games, the principle is simple but you can make many strategies to win each level. Now the game is more dynamic (there's still an issue in the animation for me but quite difficult to fix). I'm testing the eighth version of the beta now. He said that I saved him a few months of testing and improvements...Hum, I don't know but what I see is that many games are released too early with a lack of "polish".

This week was very interesting for me, and even for my work. You can see how details are important in everything to take a good product and turn it into an excellent one. It's not an excellent for the moment but it could be. I don't know if the chosen programming language is the right one for Android but it works on an entry-level smartphone with not much memory. I asked for a better battery life but I couldnt't do anything to remove the few advertisements that will fund the game. I don't see it with my ad blocker. Now I'm working on difficulty level and game mechanics that are more important for higher levels. It could be only a game of scoring but I wanted to see some other modes like in many casual games. He had ideas and I had mine with common references. It's more easy when the programer listens what the tester says and when there's only one person in the team. 

And now, the game is online : 
=> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.woodrow.torusnine Google Play

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