Wildmender
Wildmender is a game about bringing a deserted world back to life.
Explore the vast desert, alone or with friends. Collect plants and bring them back to your garden to thrive. Craft new tools and use them to shape the earth, and channel water to your plants. Delve into the mysteries of a fallen civilisation and discover its magic. Befriend animals, spirits, and seek out the gods to help you defend the land from the vicious wraiths who seek to corrupt it. It’s up to you to save the world, one seed at a time.
Role: QA Tester (Production Support)
Studio / Publisher: Kwalee
Project Type: Shipped Commercial Title (Credited)
Timeframe: Early development → full production → release → post-release
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Toolkit: Jira • Monday.com • QA docs & reports • Console devkits
MY WORK ON THIS PROJECT
QA (Quality Assurance)
-
Worked end-to-end across early development, full production, release, and post-release with consistent functional and regression coverage.
-
Tested across builds and console devkits, then verified fixes through retesting and regression passes to protect release readiness.
-
Maintained structured QA coverage through test plans, test cases, and test matrices so the quality signal stayed consistent as features evolved.
-
Produced daily and weekly reports and internal feedback sheets to keep teams aligned on risk and progress.
PRODUCTION SUPPORT (Producer-adjacent)
-
Kept issues actionable by writing clear Jira tickets and tracking follow-ups so decisions and next steps stayed unblocked.
-
Supported triage and prioritisation by maintaining a high-risk bug tracker and surfacing what mattered most for build readiness.
-
Maintained Monday.com boards and helped assign and track tasks based on agreed priorities to keep momentum and visibility.
-
Supported team cadence by arranging quick syncs when needed, capturing decisions and action items, and following through until items were resolved.
WORK STYLE
On Wildmender at Kwalee, I treated QA as a delivery function, not a final gate. I work in tight feedback loops to keep work clear and moving: reproduce → document clearly → support triage → verify fixes → communicate status. My focus is always on clarity, risk visibility, and follow-through so the team can make decisions quickly and keep shipping.
How I show up day-to-day
-
Clarity first: issues are only useful if a developer can reproduce them quickly, so I keep reports specific, evidence-backed, and actionable.
-
Quality with momentum: I run structured coverage and verification across builds (including devkits) to protect release readiness without slowing delivery.
-
Producer-minded visibility: I keep boards, priorities, and high-risk items tidy and visible, so blockers and next steps are obvious.
-
Follow-through: I track fixes to closure, capture action items, and share concise updates so nothing important gets lost.
TAKEAWAYS
• Built a stronger release readiness discipline by combining smoke, sanity, and regression checks so build stability and high-impact flows stayed protected under time pressure.
• Improved risk-based testing judgement, prioritising coverage around the highest-impact player flows and historically fragile areas rather than treating all tests as equal.
• Levelled up bug report quality by using a consistent, developer-friendly structure (environment, steps, expected vs actual, evidence, severity) to reduce back-and-forth and speed up fixes.
• Got better at triage thinking, separating severity from priority, and communicating impact clearly so the team could make faster decisions on what to fix now vs later.
• Strengthened multi-platform regression habits, treating regression as something that runs alongside feature development, especially when builds change quickly across platforms/dev environments.
• Learned how board hygiene and lightweight reporting reduce confusion: keeping status, blockers, and follow-ups visible makes delivery smoother and avoids “lost” issues.
• Developed a more “producer-adjacent” mindset around risk, dependencies, and communication cadence, focusing updates on what unblocks the team and protects milestones.