Hi Guys:

I just re-did my entire site, and launched a new game... I was wondering if anyone had any tips for improving the "selling" of the site/game :-)

I have been doing this for a couple years now, so I basically know what I am doing- but I have tons of room for improvement, especially in the area of marketing :D

Oh yeah, my new site is at http://www.retro64.com

Thanks!
-Mike

I think the site itself is very well done, it has a simple interface and renders flawlessly in both IE and Netscape. The only problem with a game called "Best Friends" is that people are going to have a hard time finding it in a search engine. If someone sees the game at a friends house and goes and types "Best Friends Game" into google their going to get a whole bunch of links to some hello kitty game.

Now I haven't successfully gotten "Katsu's Journey" to show up in a google search yet either. But then I haven't really tried as we are not at a point where marketing will really have a positive impact on our company. That said, there are usually a large number of hits that come directly to our "Katsu's Journey" page without hitting the main page. I have no idea how their finding that page, yet we get about 30 new unique ip addresses hitting it every day.

It could be that posting a link to my page in my sig on all the message boards I frequent is upping the relevence of my site for search engines... hmm.. something to think about ;)

I would agree about the name 'Best friends' being tricky to search for.

I picked the name Fitznik because it had very few hits in a search engine prior to the games release. I tried lots of names ihn search engines while coming up with a name. Google had only 6 hits before release. Now it has 1,340. Pretty much all for the game.

Having said that though, I think it might suffer a bit by not being descriptive of the game at all.

Maybe 'Beast friends' might have worked. I don't know.
Bit late now anyway :)

'Best Friends' looks cute. Downloading now.

ehehe....your game "Best Friends" looks really cool....i'll download it when i'm @ home :D

The screenshots... Can you add full-size (or enlarged) versions as well? I'm on somewhat high resolution (1280x960) and it's kind of hard to tell details in those small pictures. :)

why dont you just set your screen resolution to 800x600 or 1024x768 so you can see the screenshots a bit better and after that just switch back to 1280x960 :D :D :cool: ;)

I really liked the new game, and was quite tempted to purchase the full version (I may yet)

My only criticism of best friends is that it seems very short. I worked my way through the demo levels fairly quickly and I figure I wouldnt be able to get more than a day or two of play out of the full version. If that isn't true then I have no way of telling. Something to change that impression would make a big difference sales wise.

I played Best friend in its eraly stages of development and it is a very cool game and it is even better after the new imporvements especially supporting mouse control (that's cool).

I knew that Best friend is 72 boards but you mentioned somewehre it is 50 boards and I think this should hurt the sales alittle bit.

@servo: you maybe right but I think there's more challenging levels wait for, even tho, I think Mike should allow the game to show other levels but not allow the user to play them, as Steve-Dexterity said, show the customer all the fun awaiting for them ;)

Hmmm.
The boards in the full version are much more difficult. Basically, those are the first 14 boards, and it gets tougher as it goes on. You are right though, I am not conveying that to the game player. I either should make the demo harder, or make it more clear that it gets tougher.

As for the search engine thing, I understand the point, but my other games have their names at the top of all the search engines, and I don't get many people coming to my site using those terms. Instead I get, "Free Games", etc.

The words "Best" and "Friends" are both English words that people who speak other languages recognize- which is why I picked those.


Edit: I changed my order page to reflect the easiness of the free version, think that helps? I may have to change the actual free version as well- to point that out more clearly :-)

Thanks for the comments guys, they help a lot!
-Mike

Yes this is a tough problem. I have the same problem with Aargon. If I make the levels too hard people get turned off. If I make them too easy people get turned off. You can never tune it "just right" for everybody.

But in this case the issue is length of play. I assume you're saying that harder levels would have to be attempted many more times to succeed. Or are you saying that the later levels are much longer and more involved?

I'm pretty sure that if this is a problem you'd need to do something clear within the context of the game iteself and not merely some wording on the buy screen or order page. The wording might help, but often people won't even read it. I haven't played all the levels so I can't say specifically how I'd go about approaching it. I don't think giving away harder levels is really the key though since you could easily turn people off because they won't be ready to play those levels not having built up enough skill to tackle them yet.

I appreciate a few tough levels at the tail end of a demo. I remember in the Fitznik demo getting to the level with water in the center and about two dozen rocks you had to manipulate to get all the gems. It was tough, but I loved it because it came right at the point I needed Emeril to bring it up a notch.

I think you have to supply a variety of levels to appease your quick learners, but clearly separate or label the difficulty so the slow pokes don't worry that the full game will be too hard. I'm thinking for my game half of the demo will be from the easy levels, a couple hard and the rest average difficulty. Doing this also let's me give them sneak peek at a couple levels utilizing the tile sets from higher levels. When you start a level the level # is displayed, so the player can see that this level 45, although difficult, is an advanced level. I've thought about maybe splitting the demo into two packs, easy and hard. The player will have to specifically select the pack to play, and will see the description that says, "This pack contains a selection of advanced levels that appear later in the game."

I'm also adding an undo feature, because I think having to restart from the beginning over and over is one of the things that frustrates people at harder levels. You know you've gotta move those rocks then those, but it's the rest you're having problems with. Why restart if you could just step back a mistake?

Originally posted by elund
You know you've gotta move those rocks then those, but it's the rest you're having problems with. Why restart if you could just step back a mistake? [/B]

because it takes thinking out of the equation. Not entirely but you can get by with a lot less. All you do is try different things until something works. You don’t actually plan out the things you try, you just try stuff without really thinking because it's so easy to back up. Eventually with a little intuition and some luck you beat the puzzle.

That might be the type of gameplay you’re going for but it seems like such a waste for a designer to put all that effort into creating a difficult puzzle only to have the players "bang around" until something works only putting in a fraction of the throught the level designer did.

A happy medium might be to make the player be able to use his avatar to undo his own moves. Like for instance if fitznik could pull block as well as push them. He could undo a lot of his own mistakes, but occasionally he would get himself in a situation where two blocks where next to each other and he couldn't push or pull his way out of it. In that case he would have to restart the level.

Dan, I see where you're coming from, but I don't entirely agree.

Punishment After a couple mistakes and restarts, I understood how to clear the first set of rocks. However, because I couldn't undo, when I made a mistake later in the level, my punishment was to restart and repeatedly perform a solved problem. It's a chore. Every time I wanted to try another solution to the problem of the rocks down below I had to clear those rocks on the left. It presented no intellectual challenge to continue doing so, except perserverance, but the game made me do it for making a error.

Piecemeal solutions You imply a player should plan out the whole solution in their head before moving, but that's not how I play or think. All problems can be solved by breaking them down into smaller problems. First I solve the problem of the rocks on the left, and then I solve the problem of the rocks down below. Sure, I may have solved the first problem incorrectly and then later realize I have to backtrack -- and that's a very valid reason for a player to want to restart -- but that's a disadvantage that comes with this manner of problem solving. Its advantage is you don't have to hold an unreasonable number of variables in your head. I think it's more practical, particularly when the puzzle is large.

Genuine mistakes Finally, what about the case of the complete total slip up on the keys? I can't tell you how often I accidentally pushed a rock into the water. This punishment is worse because these mistakes are often brought on by impatience. After restarting several times and getting tired of solving the intial problems over again, I get impatient, and hit the keys faster. This makes it more likely I'll make a mistake like this. Which turns into a nasty feedback loop that could wind up in a non-sale.

Eliminating some of a puzzle's dead-ends, like pulling the rocks, is a fairly fundamental change to the design of a game. I've seen some games allow you only one or two undos, which at least solves the problem of genuine mistakes. Another thought is when the player selects the game difficulty, that determines how far back they can undo. Or perhaps you let the player undo a block of moves just to eliminate fine control over it. Some games do something like this by having a waypoint that saves the game state. Well you got me thinking about it now. :p

Being able to undo moves in logic puzzle games is a topic of much interest to our players as well. Adding an undo feature is perhaps the single most requested feature addition for games like Dweep and Fitznik.

As a game designer, my opinion is that having an undo spoils the gameplay experience I intended. But players tell me the opposite. Giving players what they want is a lot more important to me than being right. I'd rather be wrong and have the sale. If I had the time, I would add an undo feature to Dweep, but it's a bigger task than I have time for right now. It would certainly be something I'd include in a Dweep 2 by design though.

I like the idea of limiting to 2 undo's primarily because it forces the user to think at least 3 moves ahead.

The idea of punishment or negative feedback is not entirely bad. It goes hand in hand with the saying "Nothing Ventured, Nothing gained." If the user does not take any risks (like the risk of having to start over) when they make a decision in the game the feeling of success or accomplishment when they make the correct decisions isn't as rewarding because they didn't have to risk anything when they made those decisions. With no risks (unlimited undo’s) the user knows they will only have to play the level once (barring them leaving half way through), and it’s only a matter of time before the stumble on the correct sequence of decisions and beat the level.

The feeling of accomplishment or overcoming challenges is a positive gameplay attribute, and I would even go as far as saying "required". I don’t think this feeling of accomplishment can be invoked in the player successfully completing the level if they did not have to risk something in order to achieve it.

This is primarily why the idea of limiting to 2-3un-dos appeals to me more then unlimited un-dos because there is still some risk if the player proceeds more then 2-3 moves past a wrong decision, I think you may slightly dampen the feeling of success when the level is completed but you will also lower the level of frustration along the way. It will be something that needs to be tested and balanced by your play testers.

Alternatively, One could also implement a save feature, where players could save a level if they got to a point that they were happy with. The save could have limited slots so that it would be like the undo feature but the impetus would be on the players to store the undo states. Or you could go all out and let the user save as much as they like, if they want to save after every move its up to them.

You could also implement the “Save Post” style of saving where once you have beaten the first portion of the level you reach a save post where you will restart from if you have to restart the level later on.

I agree with Elund and Steve, but Undo is just one potential solution to the problems mentioned.

I made a game called Rocknor's Bad Day (http://www.monolux.com). Which is a puzzle-solving game like Fitznik or Dweep. In early testing I was hearing the same things: It was too easy to make a mistake by pushing a block too far, or to fall in the water accidentally. Other people would stop playing the level if they had to redo it too many times becuase it just became frustrating.

I anyalized how people were playing, and when i did I realized that the fun comes from figuring out the puzzles the first time, not the actual act of solving the puzzle in the game. Having to redo the same puzzles over and over again just to get to puzzles later on in the level was a real turn-off to gamers.

So, I added in waypoints midway through the levels, generally after difficult puzzles. If the player resets, the level resets all the puzzles, but the player starts off at the waypoint. This makes the levels easier, but it also focuses the gameplay on solving the puzzles. I had to redo some of my levels to accomodate this feature, and it made testing the levels harder, but it was worth it. And it still kept a little aspect of punishment for making a mistake, but it removed a lot of the frustration.

As for genuine mistakes (pushing blocks too far), I changed the game so that, when holding down shift, pressing the cursor keys moves Rocknor only one space per keypush. Then I made a tutorial level that teaches people about this feature (the feature is useless if no one knows about it).

I also changed the game so that Rocknor couldn't walk into the water (which would kill him in earlier versions). This also significanly improved playablility.

~Hanford

Good Points all around, I feel I should clarify my position in saying that I am not against saving or Undos. I'm advocating that these features be implemented in a way that does not eliminate all risk from the game.

I'm also not advocating that the risk of starting as the best way to implement risk in your game. Saving and Undos are best implemented in a manner that reduces frustration without eliminating risk. The two ways of doing this that appeal to me are using a limited 2-3 action undo, or allowing 3-5 saves per level. Personally I prefer the save option to the undo option for a number of reasons.

For one it puts the impetus on the player to protect themselves, if they get halfway through the level without saving and they have to start over they aren’t as frustrated with the game as they are with themselves for not saving. A player can still play though the entire game with minimal forced replay if they save consistently and pick their save points well. There will still be some frustration when they fail, but not as much as if they had to play through the whole level again (assuming they save periodically).

Minimizing frustration is desirable, but I believe it is also desirable to leave a little frustration in the game so that when the player does achieve victory they feel like they have really accomplished something.


EDIT: I realize I might not be comming across as I intended. By 3-5 saves I meant 3-5 save slots that you can save over as many times as you like. Hope that helps :)

The waypoints idea is interesting if the game design allows for it.
I can't see this approach working too well with Dweep because many of the levels wouldn't have good waypoints -- often what you do in the first few steps of a level influences what you do in the last few steps. Plus many levels have multiple solutions, and there's a lot of flexibility to do certain parts of a level in a different order.

Steve,

True. One big difference between Dweep and Rocknor's Bad Day is that Rocknor is more of an exploration game with huge levels that scroll around. Some of the levels are totally non-linear that can be explored/solved in any order. Others are point-A-to-Z levels where solving one puzzles opens up the gates to another puzzle.

I was against adding waypoints at first. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized it would be implemented just like another element of the game. Some of my games have teleporters, while others do not. Well, the same goes for waypoints. As I designed a level I could add as many or as few waypoints as I needed. Some levels have none. Others have 3 or 4. The key is in understanding when people need them. I could make a hard level easier by adding them, or I could leave them out of a level all together to increase its difficultly.

Waypoints made sense for me most when I had puzzles that had to be solved in a linear order. Rocknor's Bad Day has some really unforgiving puzzles. And I discovered in testing that when people approcah a puzzle for the first time, they are very careful. But if they reset, they want to rush through the previously-solved puzzles to get the unsolved one, and in the process of that rushing they make more mistakes than they did the first time.

And waypoints weren't the only thing I needed to implement to make the focus on puzzle-solving. In the early version of my game, Rocknor could walk into the water, which caused him to drown. At first I thought this was good gameplay, but I realized that it only added frustration to the game -- the ONLY reason people ever fell in the water was when they made a mistake becuase they were running around the level too fast.

Since that isn't really the focus of my game, I changed it. Making the water act basically like a wall for Rocknor was much better: it still provided the barrier it originally was designed to be, but made it impossible to kill Rocknor due to running too fast. I think it removed basically 1 puzzle from the game which was a "run really quickly through this maze without falling into the water". It is not missed.

Dweep may benifit from the same design: Rather than having lasers burn Dweep, why not have Dweep just refuse to cross them? Or perhaps the first time on a level he'll get burned but subsequent tries on a level makes Dweep will cower when directed into the path of a laser? That may put to rest one reason people are asking for Undo.

I'm not saying Dweep needs any changing -- it's a great game already. But it's just one of those things to think about if your players are asking for an Undo.

Hanford

Interesting... I can see how waypoints would work very well if you can incorporate them into the design.

In Dweep I do let you run into lasers because it makes the game more flexible in what it can do. Since Dweep can safely cross through a laser beam while wet, some players designed levels where Dweep must cross multiple laser beams in parallel -- you have to keep dumping another water bucket on Dweep each time he's between lasers. He can't stop between the beams, so he gets fried if you don't use the bucket in time. I didn't include any levels in the original game that include this tricky timing aspect, but other players exploited it in the level editor. Dweep is also something of a real-time game. Sometimes objects will explode in a chain-reaction, and while they're exploding, Dweep can be doing other things. So you can start moving into a laser beam, and perhaps the laser will be destroyed before you touch the beam. Or a mirror that's blocking a laser could be destroyed, causing the beam to intercept Dweep's path in real-time.

Because of this real-time aspect, players were able to create some really interesting levels that stretched the design in ways I never intended... and the gameplay still worked.

That's a cool element with Dweep I hadn't thought of :)

I guess it all comes down to *why* the request for undo is so high. If it's becuase of unintentional mistakes (as it was in my game) then it may be worth breaking some of your puzzles or otherwise limiting it. If no one is really complaining that the lasers kill Dweep too often, then I don't think it's a problem.

With my game I have speedramps (conveyor belts) that can lead to water. In this case, Rocknor will be dumped into the water and will sink. I put that up front in one of the early levels, claiming "Rocknor won't jump into water himself, but he CAN get pushed in". So I didn't get rid of the feature all together -- water can still drown Rocknor. He just won't do it on his own free will.

So you may be able to make it so Dweep will still get burned by a laser if one is aimed on him due to a mirror being turned or broken, but Dweep simply won't walk into it's path. It really just depends on why people are asking for the Undo.

My overall point though is that when people ask for something like Undo they're requesting a specific solution to a problem. But you may be able to solve the problem more elegantly than the solution the users are asking for.

In my case I was able to really minimize people's requests with changes that were much simpler than undo.

~Hanford

"I'm thinking for my game half of the demo will be from the easy levels, a couple hard and the rest average difficulty. "

The very first Aargon demo was just like that. Nowdays I go for more of a level by level first time player approach. A lot of people won't buy the full version of a game unless they finish the demo first. If they can't finish the demo I think you're writing off a lot of sales. In a puzzle game like Aargon the solution might be to include hints or solutions to the demo levels ensuring that everyone can make their way through.

Accidentally pushing rocks too far was one major pet peeve I had with Fitznik. I would have allowed for a single undo. I wouldn't typically overstep by more than 1 square.

In my new game DropTarget I've implemented a single move undo for erroneous clicks or slip ups and I think it's pretty effective. It's true though that users can now try a few moves to see the effect if they're not sure, but I prefer that to frustrating the player.

- S

Most of the time people request an undo feature, it's because they made a minor mistake late in a level and have to restart. For Fitznik this often involves pushing a rock one tile too far. For Dweep it's often more of a timing issue, such as not turning a fan at the right time while Dweep is floating by.

My games don't lend themselves to undo, because they are action games, but I don't see how an undo feature could hurt. It could only help.

As for how long/difficult a demo should be, I think short and easy is the way to go. I want to show the player how fun the game is without frustrating them and you want them to always finish as well. If you make a demo that is too hard and people can't win it, will they buy the full version? Of course not! I always try to save the tricky levels for the full version.

Cheers,
Mike

Originally posted by Dexterity
Most of the time people request an undo feature, it's because they made a minor mistake late in a level and have to restart. For Fitznik this often involves pushing a rock one tile too far.

I had the same problem for my game (people pushing things too far). I couldn't easily add in an undo, and I thought an undo would ruin some of the puzzles. As I mentioned before, I instead implemented a feature where holding down the Shift key while moving Rocknor will only move him one square per keypress (meaning you have to release and repress the key to get it to move again). This gives the user who is constantly overpushing something a way to slowdown and get percise movements out of Rocknor, esp when pushing objects. In the early levels, whenever the player gets near a block-pushing activity that could go sour, the game reminds them to use Shift if they are constantly over-pushing blocks.

I thought about reversing it so that when pushing blocks you only were able to push them one square per keypush UNLESS you held down the Shift key (which would let you push it as long as you held the key down). But I never tried it.

I learned that over time people playing the game become more adept at moving Rocknor so he overpushes stuff less. As they get better, they need the shift key less and less.

People still overpush the blocks in the game, but if it's something they're constantly doing, this feature can help them resolve the problem.

Hanford

I've been giving thought to a scoring system lately and think this might feed into the conversation we've been having on UNDO capability and incentives for deeper thinking/punishments for mistakes and not thinking. I still want undo, but think I can use the scoring system to give the players incentive to find the optimal solution in a frugal manner. For instance,

100 (perfect score)
+ number of moves in the optimal solution as I know it
- number of moves taken by the player (since restart)
+20 point bonus for no restarts
+10 point bonus for only 1 restart
+5 point bonus for only 2 restarts
+20 point bonus for no undos
+10 point bonus for 1 to 5 undos (since restart)
+5 point bonus for 6 to 10 undos (since restart)

So the maximum score allowable would be 140 unless someone discovers a better solution to the problem. The lowest, well, a negative number for someone who just runs around a lot; to be fair I'd probably floor it at zero. I might multiply all the numbers by 10 just to make them look bigger and more impressive. :) Add in some flashy gold/silver/bronze medals that come up on the level complete screen when you get a bonus.

With this scoring system in place, you allow unlimited undos, but excessive use of this capability will be represented in your performance review at level end. I wonder if bonuses are enough, perhaps you need to add penalties as well:

-5 for 15-20 undos
-10 for 20-30 undos
-20 for 31 or more undos

etc