Takeaways from Testing the Core Mechanics of a Survival / Farming RPG
Recently we’ve been running playtests of our new game, Veil of Dust™, looking to test and validate the fun factor and usability of the core components of our game before we move onto more advanced features and fleshing out the game’s broader content. Although Elle is a certified user experience (UX) researcher and Mike has his share of UX experience from building web applications — giving us a great foundation to start with — we still needed to get the game in front of testers to see how it worked for real players. We’d like to share three main takeaways that we’ve learned and the solutions we came up with.
Show Information in its proper context
We quickly discovered the value of showing how to use game mechanics in context. Our foraging mechanic, for example, is an important slice of our game — it features a first-person view of your character walking through the desert, with the chance to notice and grab forageable items as you pass by. Most playtesters saw the items and started grabbing them, but a few thought the entire thing was a loading screen! So we started to find ways to give instructions to the players, to ensure that they didn’t miss this important mechanic. We started with some in-game character conversation, but we seem to have forgotten the UX mantra that users don’t read.
Forgetting this a second time, we created a “Game Tips” section, the relevant portion of which was presented when the mechanic was introduced, both as a means of explaining the mechanic and as a reference area where players can refresh themselves on it later. While this was effective for the latter, users didn’t want to read an entire paragraph to orient themselves and mostly just skimmed it, ultimately causing a few users to continue to think of the foraging game as a loading screen. So, finally, we added an in-context, freeze-frame screen that circled a forageable item explaining that it should be clicked to collect it.
At first we thought it might be a little heavy-handed, but it’s a somewhat unique mechanic and it is important for game balance not to miss it. The player is only put out for a few seconds, and they are now understanding the system consistently. So our first takeaway was: if the feature is novel or unique from other common game mechanics, give the player the information as in-context as possible.
From a player perspective, we had a similar experience recently. We’ve been playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses; and as our first entry into the franchise, there were many mechanics we were not familiar with at all. We love the game, but while we were first ramping up we found the number of systems overwhelming and we neglected to use some systems in our first playthrough, battalions in particular. To us, it was a very novel concept that we hadn’t seen in other tactics or RTS games, it was hard to grasp, and it didn’t seem to be particularly necessary. Veil of Dust™ by comparison is a smaller game, so our systems do not need to be as complex.
Good system feedback is important
The importance of system feedback — the means to inform the user of the state of the system, such as a character’s health bar — can be overlooked in interactive design. When it is done well, it is nearly invisible to the player, but will consistently provide them with everything they need to know to play the game. When done poorly, it’s obtrusive, scant on information, or simply annoying (“Hey! Listen!”).
There are many ways to give system feedback: the way a cursor might change when hovering over something; the character animation when using an attack; consistent placement of buttons; a sound chime after performing an action; or helper text on how to use keyboard shortcuts. Since there is no one-size-fits-all design for games, it’s important to ensure that the combination of interface, sound design, and animation always provide the user with the information they need to solve the problems your game presents.
One recent example from Veil of Dust was the addition of an “ouch!” sound when the protagonist was taking damage. Players were going about their farm chores, not noticing when their stamina had been drained and were cutting into their health without noticing, so it was important to alert them.
So, the second takeaway is: Validate that players are always current on the status of the different systems in your game, especially when there’s a potential lose condition looming.
Keep an open mind
And lastly, listen for input that contradicts your design or instincts. Even if you feel confident in your design, always keep an open ear for feedback that will help smooth out the experience. As our playtesting unfolded, we were looking for more than feedback on the controls: we wanted to make sure that core parts of the game — farming, hunting, foraging, and cooking & crafting — were fun and presented them with strategic choices and never became tedious.
One area where we had feedback was watering crops: we hadn’t done anything to make it easier or less repetitive. We had more or less been modeling watering off other farm RPG games like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, but by listening to our playtesters — especially those who hadn’t played a lot of this genre — we heard that they were eager to “tech out” of the watering chore as quickly as possible.
Most farming games make watering easier by adding “super watering cans’’ where you can charge up and water a wide area with one swoop. We thought it would be more interesting to offer more decision-making here, so we implemented a few features that were more in line with the scrappy survival theme of the game. The first was a craftable mulch item, which is applied to your crop and allows it to retain water for two days in a row, meaning you have to water it half as often. Players understood the real-world parallel, and saw the strategic trade-off of crafting this item versus watering normally. We also added another small mini-game which can allow all of your crops to be watered at once after completing it — we won’t spoil it here, but along with saving on watering it also allows players to choose strategic placement of their crops. Lastly, we added the ability to drag the watering bucket over consecutive crops to make watering quick and simple.
After these refinements, we no longer had negative feedback about the tedium of watering. So our third takeaway is: keep an open mind when hearing feedback you weren’t expecting, and address them early for your core mechanics. Be creative and find solutions that work for your game specifically.
Conclusion
The ideal for game design on a project like Veil of Dust is that a player should be able to pick it up and actually start playing it in a relatively short amount of time, with no outside help and have fun while doing it. If your game isn’t meant to have a massive learning curve and you see all that happening, you can be pretty confident that you’re on the right track. It can be easy to let your excitement get ahead of you and be tempted to work on newer, flashier features rather than test and adjust core mechanics, but if players can’t learn and enjoy the basic parts of your game (the parts they’ll be playing repeatedly) they’ll never find the game in total to be much fun — if they even play long enough to get there.
You can follow our development via Twitter or by joining our mailing list.
