In this local multiplayer versus fighting game, you incarnate a teddy bear in its eternal fight versus its Nemesis in the (almost) complete Darkness.
This game has been designed in order to have short but intense fighting sessions.
My job as the only UX designer & researcher of this project was to collaborate with game designers & graphic designers in the creation of the game while preparing, executing and analysing Usability tests' protocols
Learning the principles
In this game, player has few controls to assimilate :
- Joystick : movement
- A Button/ Cross button Dash
- X button / square button : attack
During usability testing, we could observe two things about learning :
First, players did not all assimilate the controls with the same pace, creating a risk of making each game unbalanced
Second, the players having more problems to learn tend not to understand the controls at the end of fight due to the attention focused on survival & the duration of the fights which generally doesn't exceed 3 minutes.
In order to ease the learning, the first round of each fight begins with a 15" Free-testing session in which players are stuck in a half of the level each.
During the free roaming instant, there's light to allow the player to observe the arena before the fight begins
Landmarks in the darkness
One of the first problematics emerging from this project was about allowing the player to navigate with few to no trouble in an environment.
The game Invisigun Reloaded proposed a feature that could help us answering to that problematic :
The game Invisigun Reloaded proposed a feature that could help us answering to that problematic :
In some maps of the game, there are elements like water puddles which do react to the players' passage, plus, when a player attacks, they become visible; Those features were adapted to a setting where the environment is not visible.
In order to do that, some dolls which make some noise were added in each corner of the level, allowing each player (and their opponent) to have a landmark of their position, plus each attack has some salient visual feedback.
Testing the first iteration showed us that those adaptations were not enough, players were still struggling with finding their avatar and their opponent in situ.
Testing the first iteration showed us that those adaptations were not enough, players were still struggling with finding their avatar and their opponent in situ.
In response to this, some events were added where the television, the little lamp and the widows can emit some light at regular timespans.
The lamp is one of examples of light events allowing the player to have a reminder of the level, it can be either a help or a trap, be careful.
Cute and violent : the HUDdy Bear
The HUD's role here was to give indications about the player's state as efficiently as possible, in order to make the HUD readable with the fewest attentional cost possible, we decided, in partnership with game and graphic designers to implement what you can see on the following image.
First of all, being on corners of screen means that the peripheral vision will be solicitated a lot, especially when the player is focused on the action; considering this, using an animation seems like an obvious choice when having to indicate a change of the player state, especially when the player is supposed not to put too much attention on it.
In the other hand, using a color conditionment for the player state (here : the remaining life points) helps the HUD to be more eficient, it's not needed anymore to check the whole lifebar, in addition to the exterior to interior evolution of it, consulting how much life points remains to the player has been reduced to just watching the closest heart from the avatar's head.
First of all, being on corners of screen means that the peripheral vision will be solicitated a lot, especially when the player is focused on the action; considering this, using an animation seems like an obvious choice when having to indicate a change of the player state, especially when the player is supposed not to put too much attention on it.
In the other hand, using a color conditionment for the player state (here : the remaining life points) helps the HUD to be more eficient, it's not needed anymore to check the whole lifebar, in addition to the exterior to interior evolution of it, consulting how much life points remains to the player has been reduced to just watching the closest heart from the avatar's head.
A colorfol HUD a day keeps the doctor away
