Boring or fun is quite subjective while talking about gaming. However, by applying proper design principles, we can put most players in an intended experience even for a very simple game. This article will demonstrate some tricks to achieve that. Video tutorial is at the end of the post.
What is the game 🤔
It is the number guessing game (guessing genre). Its mechanic is simple. A player will keep guessing a secret number generated by the game until it is correct. The game will give simple hint each wrong guess, for example, “Too big” or “too small“. You can try the game provided below.
How to redesign the game for mobile devices
Firstly, we want players to have an exciting and thrilling experience while playing this simple game. Design the game ambience so that users will be surrounded by.
the graphical user interface 🎲
So for the excitement, we will use some well-known factors associated with the graphical user interface (GUI). To help users immediately distinguish between common apps vs games in the first impression, we upgrade colour scheme to be more vivid, decorate buttons with cartoonised background and lots of animations,
Sample game menu buttons
Sample game fonts 🗛
The sounds 🎵
It is an important factor to signal users that this is a game. We choose different sounds for the menu and the gameplay. While some bright, fast, music can trigger the “being ready” of the player in the menu scene, some dramatic, intense music will be played during the gaming scene to stress the player.
Sample bright sound for the menu:
Sample intense sound for the gameplay:
further stress players with extreme conditions 💀
Now they may feel excited, but what we can further do is to set difficult condition for players.
Limit the number of guesses
Limit the time
It is always stressful if you put a millisecond countdown right in front of their face! 😀
PISS OFF PLAYERS WITH Feedback elements 😠
Many cases, the feedback mechanism is stressful. Under the time pressure and intense moment, any disturbing factors can destroy players’ concentration. Of course, the purpose of this is to make the game more challenging, not really for pissing off players.
Video tutorial
Enjoy the video tutorial to understand some useful elements in game design!
Useful Links
- Subscribe to Petamind YouTube Channel
- GitHub source code (Kotlin)
- Other game design articles