« How to play » Tutorial design
Company
Kayfo Games Studio
Year
2021
Role
UX Designer-Game designer
Tools
Unity 3D, Photoshop, Illustrator
Project summary
Jam Rush is a basket ball flipper-like mobile game created by Kayfo Games. This project has been going up for 2 year since 2020. With occasional breaks. This project has sought to showcase the studio African talent in game design and art creation. This meant improving the gameplay experience and the accessibility.
The challenge
After the first testing iteration, we realized that the game wasn’t easy to handle. Players were confused by the mechanics and the learning curve was slow. Out of 15 users, 5 were able to understand the game after one trial. The rest struggled. This came with a subsequent realization, our primary target is local (Dakar, Senegal) and most of the users do not take the time or cannot read the language of the game as they primarily communicate via voice notes, and calls with the use of recognizable icons. The challenge was to overcome these difficulties and retain the user with a clear interface about how the game is played.
The solution
Establishing the different action taken by the user
Research on what has been done with tutorials
In order to find the bet approach, I went on looking for similar games in the markets, other mobile games with explicit touch screen action that also share the same art style.
The game Tomb of the Mask proposes a tutorial button hidden in the setting menu.
This game chooses to indicate how to play with a hand sliding at the bottom of the screen.
The game DUNK HOOP, propose something simpler, an animation shows a hand sliding left and right. As soon as the player touches the screen, the game starts.
Research conclusion
What all these games have in common is the use of explicit hand gesture and simple iconography, short animations that can be easily skippable.
Experimentation and wireframes
With that in mind, my first approach was to create tutorials, short animations showing the movements the player will have to execute.
The 2 finger actions: tap (2) and release (1)
The ground dash animation cycle action screen
The shoot animation cycle for lateral movements
The shoot animation cycle for upward movements.
My second approach was to allow the player to select which training to get by selecting an option, master it, try again or leave.
But then I when with a more direct and I believe, seamless approach. with the action screen being the short animation showing the gameplay.
How to Dash tutorial
How to shoot tutorial
How to Dunk tutorial
The results
After presenting this to a new group of 15 players we've notived a significant increase. The testing stage is still ongoing and data is still being gathered.
