ThursdayPlay – Symmetrain

Symmetrain is a simple game that based on the idea of mirroring everything. It’s easy to understand the rule of it and get addicted to. The reason I like this game is also because of the narrative behind it. The home page of this game is a train station. Instead of moving from one view to another, this game uses a running train as the metaphor to go to the next level.

Tap-Grass-s

puplay – paper prototype

What we’ve learned from wireframes and prototyping

  1. Time counting is necessary because users will get the sense of how long they have recorded their puppet play.
  2. Missing home tap will confuse users.
  3. Giving a little hint to users when they are playing is helpful, especially for those who play the first time.
  4. Putting three taps (gallery/ play/ show) together is easier for users to navigate.
  5. Users also like to save the puppet video to their own albums.
  6. Users prefer to have more interactions with the puppet.

puplay prototype – sophie & yang

 

ThursdayPlay – Blendoku

I have one more app to share today. It’s called “Blendoku.” It’s a color game where you arrange swatches of colors in the right blending order. The game play is super simple, but I think it’s one of those successful puzzle games that you can play for a long time without getting bored. The levels are easy at first, but it gets pretty difficult as your level goes up. The visuals and interactions are very simple too (you either tap or drag the swatches to place them in order). Everything in this app works coherently and smoothly.

blendoku1

blendoku2

ThursdayPlay – Tengami

I’d like to introduce this game called “Tengami” today. It is an incredibly beautiful platforming game where everything looks like fine paper craft. The world and the music have a Japanese folktale-like feel, and works very well with the paper craft aesthetic.

tengami1

tengami2

The entire world is built in the aesthetic of pop-up paper art, and the player character looks like a piece of paper too. There is only one character in the game, and you control him to solve puzzles and revive a withered cherry blossom tree. In the game, you literally “unfold” new stages and hidden stairs by touching the screen. It’s a simple interaction, but it was exciting for me because it felt as if I were flipping through a real pop-up book.

tengami2

There actually isn’t much narrative or explanation, so you never find out why your character is trying to revive the tree in the first place. As a game, it also gets a bit frustrating because the character moves so slowly. You need to move back and forth a lot to solve puzzles, but because your character moves super slow, you end up spending most of the time just watching him walk. Also, you double tap to move your character, but I think there needs to be better controls for the character. The “unfolding” interaction I mentioned above feels good, but the double tap feels rather incoherent with the visual and musical themes.

The gameplay is not the best, but overall, Tengami is an extremely pretty and delightful app. I really enjoyed the visual experience. I would recommend it!

SnapGuesser – Prototype 1 + User Testing

Team: Kamilla, Carrol, Seungkyun

Our first prototype is HERE.

Learnings from user testing:

– The most important learning was that there needs to be a clearer indication that this app is a guessing game. The home screen didn’t contain any hints as to what the users should expect from the app. Users seemed just as lost even when a snap loaded, and didn’t know what to do. Even when we walked the users through the steps, they seemed confused, so it is important that we embed better cues. In terms of prototyping technique, we learned that having a placeholder photo would have helped the users understand what was going on in each view.

– Another reaction we got from all the users was regarding the score display. We decided to show the user’s score after the rating has taken place, but users were confused that they didn’t get to see their scores right away. The sequence of “rate –> score” was different from the general expectation. We were suggested that we combine the score and rating views.

– When viewing a snap before making a guess, users said they wanted to skip and make a guess instead of waiting until the time was up. We figured there needs to be a button that lets users jump to the screen to make his/her guess.