Today’s post isn’t about new content – it’s about going back to redesign something that just doesn’t work – or at least, that could work better. Refactoring while in progress can be a trap – often, unless it’s a core feature, you’re much better served to continue working and then fix it when you have more of the game complete and a better big picture understanding. In this case, it was a core organizational design choice, so the redesign should make things easier going forward. It might also guide some of future design choices.
Initially, my idea for general game organization revolved around
- Choosing a path (what do I want to learn)
- Being presented with a number of villages (levels) that each focus on certain symbols that you learn. Inside each village are a number of exercises (mini-games) that you can do to practice.
- You start a village, and that village lets you practice symbols from previous villages and the current village.
- There is a “Proficiency Challenge” mini-game that, completed successfully, unlocks the next village.
You could think of it similarly to early super mario games – each village was a world and each mini-game was inside that village, Ie 2-1 would be world 2 mini game 1.
The problem with this, as I worked through the problem, is that mini-games are always the same. Villages were just adding an artificial layer of complexity with very limited benefit. The Village selection screen was really just selecting settings for the mini-game screen.
So, the solution seems rather obvious now – get rid of the idea of villages. You now,
- Choose a path
- Select from a series of mini-games designed to help you learn the symbols in that path.
- Take a Profiency Challenge to unlock your next set of tiles.
You still unlock symbols sequentially (I even kept all my old data so I can re-use my old unlock pattern) and you still have to complete a proficiency challenge to unlock the next set. Somehow, I’ll need to indicate on the mini-game screen which symbols have been unlocked.
Having gone through the dev work, this is not a difficult design choice. Villages were an annoyance and kind of confusing. I am taking away a small amount of agency from the user by changing the design in this way, but I’m vastly improving clarity and usability. It’s fewer clicks to get started, and that will always be a big deal. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to find the best fitting design is to do the wrong one first, figure out what’s wrong with it, and iterate on that.