Winning BEST PROJECT in the GDVC program.
Showcased at the Berlin International Annual Exhibition.
The Last Crow
A Video Game Tutorial
Course: Bachelor Design Project
Project Supervisors: Prof. Alexander Tibus, Felix Ewers, Ben Wittner
Bachelor Thesis Supervisors: Prof. Alexander Tibus, Dr. Juan Almarza
6th semester
With over 3 billion gamers there is a lot of love, dedication and entertainment spent virtually. This massive demand on the other hand causes a lot of repeating challenges in the development process. One of those is the experience of the player during the learning stage of a new game.
This “Tutorial” stage is crucial for the first impression and longevity of the game. With my goal to achieve a better gaming experience during the learning stages of video games, I developed a high-fidelity prototype that showcases strategy to lower frustration, awaken interest and communicate more clearly.
Solving the challenge of under-used game tutorial tools and practice tools as well as enhancing the active engagement with those was my main focus. Designing core elements, such as a humorous advice character and controlling the difficulty for beginners through a set character selection, enhances the players overall time spent with the game tutorial.
As a solo developer of this project, my key role was to be a well rounded UX Researcher & UX Designer, since I had to show a wide variety of knowledge in tasks ahead.
Beginning stages...
Hypothesis
By designing a video game tutorial for casual gamers that purposefully enhances the learning experience, we can make the player more commited and less frustrated and thereby achieve a better gaming experience.
Methods
- Business Research
- Unscripted Interview
- Scripted Interview
- Shadowing
- Feedback and discussion
- low fidelity prototyping
- high fidelity prototyping
- Usability Testing
- User journey mapping
- Survey
Approach
To enter the right direction, I decided to invest half of my time in UX Research methods and their analysis and the other half to design in the scope of UX practices.
Organization is key therefore I actively used Miro and Trello throughout the entire process.
Additionally practicing the game engine Unity helped me prepare beforehand to efficiently design the high fidelity prototype.
The MVP Appraoch
Source: https://digitaleneuordnung.de/blog/mvp-minimum-viable-product/
The MVP approach allowed me to finish this my first mile stone of produding a full functioning high-fidelity prototype in just 4 month
Scaling down
Scaling down all the thoughts and ideas to the most important categories allowed me to get started efficiently and helped me set short term goals.
From this
To this
RESEARCH PROCESS
Understanding the problem...
Unstructured Interview
- Introduction
- (Optional) If little experience in video games
- Prefered difficulty in a game
- Impact of understanding/ learning the game in early stages
- Preferred game elements
- Sound, ambient and audio
Rules
- Participants with different gaming experience backgrounds
- Participants have to play different genres of games
- Emotional feedback/ face recognition
- Channels used:
- Face to face
- Discord
- Teams
- Channels used:
Analysis and Results
Some players dislike reading
(but it is always a good side option if something is not understood)The option to have full freedom as early as a tutorial is exciting
Learning by making the wrong decissions first is the best way of learning
Color codings like red for enemy blue for ally helps understand concepts and goals more quickly
Key Problem
Players are not actively engaging and regularly using the in game tutorials or practice tools.
Who am I designing for...
Shadowing
Players of different age groups and different amounts of time invested into gaming play the tutorial and introduction level of „Pokemon Unite“ (a moba) on the same Ipad. During this stage I recorded their reactions and decision making until each participant finished the level without interfering.
Analysis and Results
I noticed multiple types of players and playstyles that can be categorized into 3. This helped me to dictate not only a great set of behaviours to design for but also personas that will help me define a target group for my video game.
Experienced in variety gaming
Understands basic mechanics and controls immediatly
Interested in all forms of guidance
Pop up text seems to help the most to reach the goal
Casual experienced gamer
Uninterested in guidance through text
Learns gradually the controls
Visual hints like effects seem to seek most attention
Social only gaming experience
Tendency to get frustrated
Tendancy to give up before finishing a goal that seems difficult to accomplish
lack of understanding mechanics
Outcome
Since the experienced variety gamer makes up the majority of the gaming industry, are most likely to buy and play new games tutorials regularly and all other players can advance to this stage, I decided them to be the target group of „The Last Crow“. Additionally this group of players requires the most amount of attention since they endure problems in video game tutorials most regurlarly.
Structured Interview
In a short structured interview participants are asked for their favorite channels, haptic features and consoles to play video games and why.
This interview is additionally supported with on screen examples from a selected amount of options. The participants asked to explain their choice from least favorite to favorite.
Analysis and Results | Favorite Channels
Classic gaming controllers are favourited the most
- the comfort makes players forget about having to use a controller
- enhances the experience in the virtual space
- PC and consoles like the PS4
- best for regular gaming
- Widely interactive controllers like Wii
- favourited for socially gaming
Outcome
Since my tutorial is going to focus heavily on more advanced gamers, the clear channel of choice is PC and solo player console gaming (Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch)
How might we...
Questions
- How fast can we make players learn game mechanics, while playing a game for the first time?
- What video game mechanics and tasks are most exciting and stick with the player?
- How might we decrease the risk of frustration and increase active engagement with helpful tutorial tools?
DESIGN PROCESS
During this stage further research will take place but integrated hybridly into the design process, which carries a much higher weight now.
Introducing the story...
Writing a powerful short story was the first call to make during the ideation process. It allows the player to dive deep into the world of „The Last Crow“ and reduce the possibility to be distracted by tutorial tools and sustain a regular game flow, wanting to explore more.
Background
- The planet on which the creatures used to live was completely exploited for their comfort and power
- After years of exploitation only a hollow empty planet was left
- The planet slowly died – so did the creatures
- Some were send out on a mission and asked the „LAST CROW“ for a 2nd chance
Pre-Game/ Introduction
- THE CROW (legendary an wise as it was) wanted to test the creatures
- It let 2 houses compete for a 2nd chance
- Each has to bring it the 3 feathers of wisdom to complete the mission and proof how willing they are for a 2nd chance
In-Game
- Each feather can be found on the planet
- The planet is divided into 3 zones ( swamp, dune and high mountains area)
- Each feather kind (water, sand and swamp) can be found in its zone
- In the LAST CROW’s eyes if a house is able to work together as a team and pass through the obstacles, they proof finally learning from their mistakes
Post-Win/ Lose
- The winning house gets a 2nd chance and starts building a new and better society from 0
- The losing house gets send back to their exploited homes and the story of the 2 houses ends there…
Determining rules...
Determining a set of rules early helps to integrate a clearer direction. This especially comes in handy during the ideation process of character strength.
(These rules will be adjusted over the process)
- 3 vs 3 competitive multiplayer game
- 1 time usable ultimate ability of individual characters
- Highly strategic
- The better a characters ult is the weaker it will be in other aspects of the team game (stats, main ability, movement speed, jump height)
- Monsters are neutral and will attack anyone randomly or depending on triggers
Existing Research... - What video game mechanics and tasks are most exciting and stick with the player?
Tutorial design techniques and methods
- Inverted Pyramid of Decision Making
- The user interface that grows with the player
- Best UX practices in competitive games
- Supportive/ Complementary usage of expansions and add-ons
Read my entire Paper
Figma Prototype | Early player feedback...
Introducing a low fidelity prototype followed up with player feedback, this early allowed me to figure out key problems in a 2D gaming environment that represents „The Last Crow“ and the necessary mechanics.
Low Fidelity Prototype
This first prototype helped me get qualitative data in a quantitative amount. Making it viable to play quickly on the phone or on the PC allowed me to reach a lot of players. Besides friends, family, students and lecturers the highest participants were reached through channels like Discord, Reddit and Instagram.
User Feedback
- Too much information
- possibly forget
- Change of action without interaction
- Players should play around freely in between steps
- Some controls are not like in most games
- Text size too big
- Arrows are too agressive and controlling
- Visuals for the controls can be confusing in black and white
Click QR for PC or scan for mobile
Sketching and Ideation...
Map Design/ Level Design
Adding obstacles for players that will enhance/ reduce difficulty and implement a short term goal factor to the game will enhance the overall gaming experience of the game. These level design practices can influence the state of emotion of the player. This means integrating a tutorial tool like a hint during a very difficult to understand task can increase their mood by figuring out a solution themselves or adding an unnecessary tool during the exploration phase of the player can frustrate them by taking them out of the game flow.
Additionally the map is divided into 3 sections going from left to right. The team starting on the left side will start at the „Desert“ area, the team on the right side will start at the „High Mountains“ area. Each team will fight their way through to the middle the „Swamp“ area where they will encounter a very strong monster. By having 3 changing nature maps the will to explore might be increased (one of the best learning practices is to explore on your own – read in my paper above).
Character Design
Each playable character in „The Last Crow“ is a „Dependant“. One of my goals is to make games less frustrating by scaling levels of difficulty. Strategically I introduced shapes to the Dependants. These shapes have different meanings according to Eastern European beliefs and thereby offer a great structure for the personalities and characteristics of each individual playable character.
Defining the abilites is important to balance the game. If one character is stronger than the others it would influence the players choice of picking the character. This would weaken the relationship of the player to the game and decrease the user experience.
Each character ability has its own special traits impacting the difficulty of the Dependant. This means the more important and strong an ultimate ability is the more difficult the game becomes due to the ability requiring good timing and cooldown usage. Ergo the weaker an ability is the stronger passive skills of a playable character become. This influences speed, jump height, mobility and lower cooldowns. Strong basic traits like these would make a great tutorial playable character to introduce the game to new players.
Harmony
- Ultimate Ability „Timeless“ stops time (freezes everyone around her)
- Weaker base stats
- Can attack from range
- Complex to play
Vision
- Ultimate Ability „Sight Director“ gives information on enemy position
- Very strong base stats
- Can attack from close to medium range
- Very easy to play
Order
- Ultimate Ability „Magnetic Pull“ crowd controls people in a small area
- Strong base stats, especially health
- Can attack from close range, but can hit multiple targets
- Easy to play
Puppy
- Ultimate Ability „Unstoppable Rage“ transforms Puppy into her second form
- Extremely weak base stats, almost useless
- Can attack from close range only
- Extremely hard to play
Monsters
The most fun part during the ideation phase was coming up with clever boss ideas and what better way to do this than using research methods. After a poll asking the gamers on Reddit and Discord on which animal they are most afraid of, as well as which animal they are least afraid of. The idea was to feed the horror genre in my game by turning something beloved into fear and creepiness.
- Nr. 1 most scary animal: Spider
- Nr1. least scary animal: Platypus
Therefore introducing: THE PLATYPUS SPIDER
(perhaps also available as a figurine soon)
The Advice Character: Wildfire
Since this game is a multiplayer game that starts a game without any progress like a chess match it has a tutorial dedicated level. This causes the problem that the player can not interact with tutorial tools while playing. To susbtitute a very obvious point and hint system in the tutorial level I introduce to you „WILDFIRE“.
Wildfire is a non playable advice character. With his persona of an old man who is disgusted by the Dependants for treating their world as they did. But still behind all that hate towards creatures who burned their environment, Wildfire believes in a second chance. With his „dad joke“ attitude the players get entertained just enough to explore the world of The Last Crow while being hinted towards the main objective of the game…
The Main Objective of the Game: Feathers of Wisdom
The main objective of the game is to collect 3 of the nature feathers. Once a team has collected all 3 feathers and brings them to „The Last Crow“, they win the game. Each feather can be found in one of the nature based locations. This means there are 3 kind of feathers protected by monsters the teams will be fighting for:
- Dune Feather
- Swamp Feather
- Mountain Feather
Game Interface | Scripted Interview
To find out more in depth about the perfect interface I interviewed gamers on which of the example Interfaces they could take the most information out of. To make sure that appeal and art style does not contribute to this case, instead of asking them about their opinion I asked them to guess at least 5 game elements and their use. The colors show the average amount of game elements/ mechanics the players could name in 1 minute per interface:
- Red: 0-1
- Yellow: 2-3
- Green: 4-5
This way I found out that the more minimalist approach to interfaces always had the higher edge in contributing information to the game. The less information was shown the more information was understood by the viewers.
Thereby a minimalist approach with the least amount of information possible was my main goal.
Game Interface
I tried minimizing the game interface to the following features:
- Map
- shows position of the player
- each circle represents a monster
- Ability and Ultimate Ability cooldown
- boxes fill up white from bottom to top
- if full ability can be used again
- Level
- current level of the player
- level bar to time level-ups
The Outcome...
Unity Gameplay & more!
Why talk when there is so much to explore! Feel free to watch the gameplay below or download and play the interactive high-fidelity prototype yourself!
Short Gameplay
Menu Screen
DOWNLOAD AND PLAY THE GAME!
For Windows click here!
For Mac click here!
You might need to disable security settings to run the .app file
Usability Testing & Player Feedback...
Plans for the Future...
- finish interactivity with monsters
- add more variety in level
- position (roots of) Wildfire to multiple locations to give players hints throughout the gameplay
- construct a detailed main game map
- add the character selection menu screen from the 1st prototype (low-fidelity on Figma)
- ideate ideas for a 3D version of the prototype
- hire artists (3D), designers (Unity) and engineers (C#+Unity)
- add animations and abilities to all characters
Interest in working together? Feel free to contact me and ask any questions!