Three Days Usability Review
Three Days Usability Review
Three Days, by Gore Pixel Games, is a survival game in which the player has 72 hours to escape an island contaminated by deadly mutation agent called SCP. Collect resources and craft items to build a boat to flee before the island is bombed to prevent the spread of SCP to the mainland.
As an Early Access game, there's a lot of work to be done in Three Days. The game's primary problem is that its tutorial is not an effective teaching tool, and leaves the player stranded and confused.
When you start a game, you're first shown a tutorial. It goes through the basics of the game -- eat enough food, drink enough water, and keep yourself at a good temperature. The better your mood, the more quickly you move. And as you level up, you can get perks.
This is fine, as it's showing the player different elements of the screen, it moves the white box and arrow to very clearly direct the player's attention.
But while I might intellectually know that I need to craft shelter before it's night, and that clicking and dragging two items together will create a new item, the intervening steps are a mystery to me.
The problem with Three Days' tutorial is that it tells me how to play the game, but doesn't show me how. I've played about an 30 minutes of this game, and I have yet to make it through one night. In each game, I've lasted an average of 2 minutes and 15 seconds. That's a lot of deaths.
My recommendation is to create a tutorial that, instead of giving the player paragraphs to read, provides step-by-step instructions to guide the player up until s/he levels up and needs to allocate a perk point.
For example, after the player has read the prompt about the island being destroyed soon, the character's thought bubble might say, "Hm, I should create spike traps to defend against monsters at night. I wonder if I can find flint and sticks on this island." The game would then guide the player though the making and setup of the spike traps, as well as guide players through maintaining the health of their character (when chopping down a tree, the character might say, "Oh, an apple! Yum.")
The reason why I recommend this step-by-step process is because for some (I'd argue most), reading about a process isn't enough. One needs to be taught step by step how to play a game.
I know that currently the dev is planning on shortening the tutorial (I think it's great that he keeps a Trello to mark down what the changes are, and let users mention bugs), but I'd argue that the tutorial doesn't necessarily need to be shortened as it does need to be altered to show players how the game works. Going through the steps (and getting right into the action) may help make the tutorial feel shorter.
This is fine, as it's showing the player different elements of the screen, it moves the white box and arrow to very clearly direct the player's attention.
But while I might intellectually know that I need to craft shelter before it's night, and that clicking and dragging two items together will create a new item, the intervening steps are a mystery to me.
The problem with Three Days' tutorial is that it tells me how to play the game, but doesn't show me how. I've played about an 30 minutes of this game, and I have yet to make it through one night. In each game, I've lasted an average of 2 minutes and 15 seconds. That's a lot of deaths.
My recommendation is to create a tutorial that, instead of giving the player paragraphs to read, provides step-by-step instructions to guide the player up until s/he levels up and needs to allocate a perk point.
For example, after the player has read the prompt about the island being destroyed soon, the character's thought bubble might say, "Hm, I should create spike traps to defend against monsters at night. I wonder if I can find flint and sticks on this island." The game would then guide the player though the making and setup of the spike traps, as well as guide players through maintaining the health of their character (when chopping down a tree, the character might say, "Oh, an apple! Yum.")
The reason why I recommend this step-by-step process is because for some (I'd argue most), reading about a process isn't enough. One needs to be taught step by step how to play a game.
I know that currently the dev is planning on shortening the tutorial (I think it's great that he keeps a Trello to mark down what the changes are, and let users mention bugs), but I'd argue that the tutorial doesn't necessarily need to be shortened as it does need to be altered to show players how the game works. Going through the steps (and getting right into the action) may help make the tutorial feel shorter.
Comments
Post a Comment