UX Designer & QA Lead | Oasis Blitz

What is this game:

Speed through floating islands, drill into the terrain, burst back out, shred down sandy slopes on your board, and grapple to enemies to keep the momentum going. Will you be fast enough to save the Oasis?

Oasis Blitz is a fast-paced 3D platformer that features a unique movement mechanic: drilling into the ground. Players take on the role of Bandit, a drill-wielding fennec fox on a mission to reach the Oasis in the sky. To succeed, players must master a combination of abilities: drilling with a powerful drill, sliding on a sandboard, and grappling to enemies for extra momentum. Conquer deserts filled with rocky hazards as you race to recover the last hope for the oasis—a vital plant—bringing it back to your burrow.

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What I did:

QA and UX Leadership: Directed QA and UX design for the AAA title "Oasis Blitz", establishing bug tracking systems that facilitated the identification and resolution of over 100 bugs, significantly enhancing game quality and user satisfaction.

Playtesting: Managed external playtest scheduling, synthesized feedback from playtests, and generated weekly analytical reports for the development team, guiding critical adjustments.

Team Collaboration: Orchestrated collaborative efforts between designers and engineers, enhancing gameplay and user experiences, leading to significant improvements in game quality.

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What I think:

Navigating 3D Camera Challenges in a Drilling-Based Movement System

At its core, Oasis Blitz was inspired by the game concept of Super Mario Odyssey and the movement mechanics of Pepper Grinder, where players use a drill to tunnel through the ground, achieving movement paths that would be impossible with conventional traversal. However, unlike Pepper Grinder, which operates on a fixed side-scrolling perspective, Oasis Blitz is fully 3D with free movement. This fundamental difference introduced a significant challenge—how to handle the camera system, especially when the player is underground. Issues such as perspective adjustments, stability, and maintaining a clear field of view quickly became apparent. Recognizing the importance of resolving these technical hurdles early, I actively joined the core development team while also taking on responsibilities in game design. This dual role allowed me to refine the drilling mechanic while ensuring a smooth and intuitive player experience.

Streamlining QA Processes for Efficient Bug Tracking and Communication

During the transition from the prototype phase to early development, I quickly recognized the necessity of systematizing and modularizing QA workflows. Given the constraints of team size, resources, and game scope, cross-departmental communication often became complex and inconsistent. This led to frequent cases where the same bug was repeatedly reported by different teams, creating redundancy and inefficiencies. Additionally, engineers often fixed issues as soon as they encountered them, which sometimes resulted in unclear bug resolution priorities or confusion about whether certain issues still persisted.

To address this, I developed a custom bug tracker template in Notion, designed to streamline communication between engineers and designers by making it easier to prioritize, track, and resolve critical issues. This tool not only helped ensure that the development team stayed aligned on high-priority bugs but also allowed me, as the QA lead, to maintain a comprehensive view of the game’s overall quality. Additionally, I wrote a detailed tutorial for the tracker, ensuring that new QA team members and the entire development team could quickly understand and utilize the system to identify, document, and resolve game issues efficiently.

Bridging the Gap Between Developers and Players Through Playtesting

Beyond internal team communication, I actively sought external player feedback, understanding that a game’s success is not solely driven by the developers' creative vision but also by its ability to resonate with its target audience. As both a QA Lead and UX Designer, I saw myself as the first bridge between players and the development team, making it my responsibility to continuously gather player insights and relay them to the team in a structured and actionable manner.

To achieve this, I initiated and organized weekly external playtesting sessions from early development through full development. I invited developers from other teams and non-affiliated players via email to provide unbiased feedback on Oasis Blitz. I then curated key gameplay footage and presented it during engineering and design meetings, ensuring that developers had a clear and objective understanding of player experiences.

To further quantify player interactions, I implemented automated in-game data logging, recording key gameplay actions such as drilling entry and exit points, player movement trajectories, and checkpoint activations. This provided objective performance metrics, allowing us to track player navigation behavior and difficulty bottlenecks. Combined with quantitative playtest surveys, this data-driven approach allowed us to identify patterns in player movement, pinpoint frustration points, and optimize level design accordingly. By correlating player feedback with in-game behavior, I ensured that our UX decisions were backed by tangible evidence rather than intuition.

Through this process, I also refined my approach to communicating bug reports and usability issues—rather than framing feedback solely from a QA perspective, I learned that presenting issues through the lens of player experience made it easier for team members to accept and act upon necessary changes. Since our shared goal was to improve the game, this player-centric approach made discussions more constructive and solutions more readily adopted.

Additionally, after each external playtest, I invited producers and artists who were not directly involved in programming to participate in evaluations. This helped them stay aligned with the game's progress, artistic consistency, and overall polish, ensuring a more cohesive final product. By integrating external feedback and real-time player data into our development workflow, I reinforced Oasis Blitz's ability to deliver a refined, data-backed, and player-friendly experience.

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Conclusion: Iterative Improvement Through Data and Player Insights

My experience with Oasis Blitz reinforced the importance of bridging player feedback with data-driven analysis to create a more polished and engaging gameplay experience. By combining quantitative metrics tracking, structured bug reporting, and external playtesting, I was able to streamline QA workflows, enhance developer communication, and ensure that player needs were prioritized. This approach not only improved Oasis Blitz’s core mechanics but also strengthened my ability to analyze player behavior, facilitate cross-team collaboration, and implement systematic improvements—skills that are crucial in both QA and UX design.

As a game designer and QA professional, I believe that the best games are built through continuous iteration, objective analysis, and an openness to player perspectives. This experience has deepened my passion for creating intuitive, player-focused experiences, and I look forward to applying these principles to future projects.