soak-test

Soak Test

A soak test (also called an endurance test) is an extended play session run with specific observation goals. Unlike a smoke check (broad critical path, ~10 min) or a single-feature playtest (~30 min), a soak test runs for 30 minutes to several hours to surface:

• Memory leaks — gradual heap growth that only appears after scene transitions
• Performance drift — frame time degradation that worsens over time
• State accumulation bugs — issues that only appear after N repetitions of a mechanic (inventory full, score overflow, AI state corruption)
• Fun fatigue — mechanics that feel good in a first session but grow repetitive over extended play
• Content exhaustion — the point where players run out of novel content

This skill generates the observation protocol and analysis harness — the human does the actual playing.

Output: production/qa/soak-test-[date]-[duration].md

When to run:

• Polish phase — before /gate-check release
• After fixing a memory or stability issue (regression soak)
• When extended play has not been formally tracked

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1. Parse Arguments

Duration (default: 1h):

• 30m — short soak; suitable for testing a single mechanic or scene
• 1h — standard soak; covers most common leak categories
• 2h — extended soak; recommended for first full Polish soak
• 4h — deep soak; required for games with long session design (RPGs, sims)

Focus (default: all):

• memory — focus on heap size, object count, leak patterns
• stability — focus on crash/freeze/hang detection
• balance — focus on fun fatigue, content exhaustion, difficulty perception
• all — all of the above

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2. Load Context

Read:

• .claude/docs/technical-preferences.md — engine (for engine-specific memory monitoring guidance), performance budgets (memory ceiling, target FPS)
• design/gdd/game-concept.md — intended session length (for comparison against soak duration), core loop description
• Most recent file in production/playtests/ — prior playtest findings (to avoid re-documenting known issues)
• Most recent file in production/qa/qa-plan-*.md — current sprint test coverage (to understand what has been formally tested vs. what the soak covers)