Test your game

Studio has two ways to try your game before players see it. Both use your current draft, including changes you haven’t published, and neither touches your game’s real saved data.

	Play	Test on a real game server
Where it runs	In your browser, inside Studio.	On a private Rally game server.
Who plays	You.	1 to 4 test players, side by side.
Good for	Quick checks while you build.	Multiplayer, and anything that depends on the server and players’ devices talking to each other, the way your published game runs.
Saved data	Kept in memory and thrown away when you stop.	Starts empty and is thrown away when the server stops.

Owners and collaborators can both test. Each test runs a snapshot of the game from the moment you started it: changes you make during a test show up the next time you start one.

Play in your browser

Select Play in the toolbar, or press F5.
Studio builds your scripts first. If something stops the game from building, Output lists the errors and the test doesn’t start. See Find and fix errors.
Your game replaces the viewport, and you play as yourself. Output starts fresh with “Playtest started.”
When you’re done, select Stop in the toolbar, or press Shift+F5.

Play runs the whole game in your browser, server scripts and LocalScripts together, with you as the only player.

If your game stops responding, for example because a script is stuck in an endless loop, Studio shows This game isn’t responding. Select Stop to end the test, or Keep waiting to give it more time.

Test on a real game server

Select the arrow next to Play.
Under Test on a real game server, choose Just me, 2 players, 3 players or 4 players.
Studio builds your scripts and starts a private game server for your game. Each test player joins it in a view of their own, side by side over the viewport. Click into a view to control that player.
When you’re done, select Stop in the bar under the players, or in the toolbar.

With Just me, you join as yourself. With more players, they’re named Player1, Player2 and so on.
The bar under the players reminds you: Private test server · 2 players · data isn’t saved.
Nobody else can join a test server, and it shuts itself down shortly after its players leave.
Output starts fresh when the server starts. Lines your server scripts print start with [server]. You also see what the first test player’s LocalScripts print.

Learn more about how servers and devices work together in Multiplayer.

Read the output

Everything your scripts print during a test appears in Output, under the viewport:

Each line has the time it was printed. print lines are plain, warn lines are yellow and errors are red. The Output header counts the errors.
Lines that point at a script are underlined. Select one to open the script at that line. Error locations point at the lines of your TypeScript.
Output follows new lines as they arrive. Scroll up to read, and it stops following until you scroll back to the bottom.
Select text to copy it, and select Clear to empty the panel. Output keeps the last 2,000 lines.

Your Output is your own: collaborators see the output of their own tests. For more ways to find problems, see Debugging.

Stop a test

Select Stop in the toolbar. It takes the place of Play while a test is running.
Press Shift+F5.
For a test server, you can also select Stop in the bar under the players.

After testing

When everything works, publish so players get your changes.