Spiral Craft 3D: our 6 key improvements to make it into a Hit Game — Hit Story #3
Table of content
#1: Reduce “overchoice” and clarify game’s objectives
#2: Minimalize UI & improve ergonomy
#3: Reduce path count and clarify level design
#4: Make the long-term objective more understandable in a fun way
#5: Make players want to play level after level
#6: Tune game economy to reduce churn
In the first part, we talked about the origins of Spiral Craft 3D, from the idea stage to the creation of the prototype.
In this second part, we’ll discuss the 6 key improvements we made to the game thanks to data analysis and players feedback at release. These 6 improvements have made Spiral Craft 3D even more enjoyable and adapted to all players, turning it into a Hit Game.
Improvement #1: Reduce “overchoice” and clarify game’s objectives
Context:
Early into the development of Spiral Craft 3D, player progression was largely unrestricted: they could take a multitude of paths as they pleased, discover machines, build them, upgrade them and make various choices to multiply their resource income. The goal of each choice was to induce a feeling of progression.
Problem:
For some players, having a huge sandbox to navigate and many possible exploration paths from the very start of the game put them off. They were afraid of not taking the “right path”. They thought that they were missing the point of the game, that they didn’t understand it.
This phenomenon is called overchoice.
It is a cognitive impairment in which people have a difficult time making a decision when faced with many options. Making a decision becomes overwhelming due to the many potential outcomes and risks that may result from making the wrong choice.
Solutions:
We improved ingame progression by delineating it more clearly, making it more linear and easier to digest:
- Each machine is unlocked one after another in order to give only one clear and readily understandable objective to the player.
- The act of building a machine, which is both satisfying and easy to undertake, leads to an immediate visual reward for the player.
- Once an objective is cleared, an easily graspable new one appears for the player, who knows exactly where to go to progress.
Improvement #2: Minimalize UI & improve ergonomy
Problem:
One of the main gameplay components in Spiral Craft 3D is upgrading machines.
At the beginning of development, each machine had two different upgrades available:
- Increasing the maximum amount of resources that a machine could produce.
- Increasing production speed.
However, upon seeing a machine upgrade screen, some players felt overwhelmed by the dense and uninviting UI, and bombarded with information as they were asked to make the choice.
This often resulted in them giving up, preferring to ignore and close the upgrade page.
Solution:
We decided to reunite the two upgrades into a single one. This allowed players not to get lost in various choices and to feel like they’re progressing, all while reducing the size of the UI to make the player experience more engaging. Indeed, keeping a good sense of progression is more important than giving players the feeling they are making sensible choices.
Improvement #3: Reduce path count and clarify level design
Problem:
Some players get lost in the levels and know neither where to go nor what to do.
We discovered that this issue stemmed from the geography of our levels, which was complex and devoid of notable landmarks.
One of the rules we used to build our levels was that any given island starts with an entry and an exit.
As players progress, they would unlock shortcuts to reach new islands quicker.
This idea seemed interesting to us, as it allowed players to rediscover the level without getting lost and to feel a sense of progression by going through the same level quicker and more efficiently every time.
However, after analyzing several user testing sessions, we saw that many players got lost in the level, which they qualified as “labyrinthic”.
In reality, our “shortcuts” only resulted in players getting confused. Having several paths which led to the same expanse of ground caused them to mix up the different parts of the level.
In hyper casual gaming, players want to have fun quickly, and it’s important that they’re not required to remember all their other sessions, otherwise it becomes difficult to fit a 5-minute game between two meetings.
Solutions:
We rebuilt simpler levels following two golden rules :
- Machines are placed close to one another to make them easier to find for players.
- There’s only one entry and one exit per island, and they must be the same.
Results:
In the first model, players:
❌ Got lost
❌ Couldn’t remember the geography of the level
❌ Roamed without finding objectives
In the new model, players:
✅ Quickly find their objective
✅ Are able to draw the level once the game is finished
✅ Navigate the level without trouble and feel a sense of progression
Improvement #4: Make the long-term objective more understandable in a fun way
Problem:
Even though players understood the main mechanics of the game, we had issues conveying the long-term goal to them.
Failed solution #1:
To solve that issue, we attempted, at first, to place a character next to the rocket who would call to the player when he or she came close (see gif below).
This helped attract players’ attention to their long-term objective.
But it generated even more frustration and confusion, because players wanted to go directly to the little character even though this was impossible as long as they didn’t unlock the last bridge. They couldn’t understand why they were unable to meet with him.
Successful solution:
In order to give some context to players without wearing them with descriptive text, we created an introduction cutscene for Spiral Craft 3D!
In this cutscene, Astro, the main character, is accompanied by Cosmo. Separated by an accident, Cosmo finds himself next to the rocket on an unknown planet and calls Astro to tell him they must meet up.
Finally, in order to avoid the frustration caused by the previous version, Cosmo is hidden during the game and only appears when the rocket can be reached. However, players keep in mind that they must find their friend, and therefore they know what their long-term objective is.
Results:
After releasing the update, we noted a +26% increase in our players’ Lifetime Value (LTV).
This indicator encouraged us to validate and implement this new feature.
Improvement #5: Make players want to play level after level
Problem:
At this point, we had an attractive game in which objectives were overall well understood by users. However, we noticed during our analyzes that some players finished the first level but did not continue playing.
Our hypothesis was thus: while they did know what their objective was, they had nothing to gain by continuing apart from discovering a new planet to explore, and therefore repeating the gameplay loop. Finishing one planet and finding their friend Cosmo was enough for them, they considered they had finished the game.
Solution:
We decided to add a stronger collection aspect to the game. By showing them that there were several skins to unlock, players understood that their adventure was not over yet.
This concept is validated by a study from Facebook Gaming. According to them:
Decoratives are a great way to introduce progression and self expression elements to Hyper-Casual games while also providing a sense of accomplishment.
The first skins were unlocked after finishing each planet. In order to show players they were on the right track to unlock the skin, we created a progression bar which filled every time they accomplished an objective. Therefore, they know how many objectives are left before they finish the level.
We also decided to hide legendary skins in the Lottery machine. These skins have a very low probability of being unlocked, but they add content to the game in a way that satisfies completionist players.
Finally, we implemented Cosmic Pets, creatures which, once unlocked, follow players around and grant them powers to progress more rapidly.
Results:
This update increased the LTV by +13%! 📈
Improvement #6: Tune game economy to reduce churn
Problem:
In our game, there are mandatory steps to progress: unlocking bridges. These bridges must be paid for with resources in order to unlock new parts of the level.
By studying the data, we saw that we lost a lot of users between some of these bridges, particularly at some bridges which started to show a stronger increase in price.
Solution & Results:
To improve user progress, we decided to perform AB tests (comparing several versions side-by-side) to figure out optimal bridge costs.
The best version resulted in an increase of +16% for the LTV. 📈
Another interesting point: we observed some amount of dissatisfaction with a specific bridge which was considerably more expensive than the others. Consequently, we reduced its price again.
This had the result of increasing the amount of players who finished the first planet, which seems logical since we made progressing easier. If we only look at this indicator, the update appears to be a great success!
However, it decreased LTV.📉 Indeed, since players finished the planet faster, they played less, which led to a decrease! Therefore, we didn’t validate this update.
Conclusion
After the game went through its concept phase, we improved Spiral Craft 3D thanks to playtests, our data and our LiveOps process.
After we:
- Understood players’ expectations and how to subsequently reward them 🎖️
- Simplified the UI to make it more intuitive 🤔 ➡️ 🤩
- Simplified the level design 🗺️
… the result is a game with solid gameplay, which allowed us to iterate in order to increase LTV.
Then, we added:
- An introduction cutscene to establish the context of the game 🎥
- Skins and Cosmic Pets to satisfy our players’ urge to collect things 💄
- Some fine-tuning of progression to better satisfy our players 🗾
This is thanks to this feedback phase and these 6 improvements that Spiral Craft 3D has now been downloaded more than 10M times!
