Designing coin and obstacle patterns to increase player completion rates.
The game is a region-exclusive adaptation of the popular Jetpack Joyride developed by Halfbrick Studios. A major change that took place from the original version was to have a level-based progression system which lends well to the overall narrative of having boss fights at the end of each world.
The main task was to increase player completion rates across the game, especially in the early levels and this meant that levels needed to be more finely tuned to help the players learn obstacle patterns.
Client
Mech Mocha
Sector
F2P mobile game
Platform
iOS
Android
Skills Used
Unity
Level Design
Market Research
QA
Level Tuning
My role :
My main responsibility was to move the metric of player completion rates as a Level Designer in two ways :
1. Coin Pattern Sequences: When the player is traversing through the level, coins appear in patterns designed to affect the player's movement, but these patterns were meant to help the player increase their mastery in controlling Barry and finishing the level. The below video illustrates one such example.
2. Obstacles Pattern Sequences: These patterns consist of zappers and rockets which are some of the obstacles in the game.
A riskier path led to a higher reward and vice versa. The patterns were designed by breaking them into sections and helping the player get used to making a calculated High Risk- High Reward maneuver.
A total of 120 patterns were made to train the player in various movement patterns. The above video is one such example.
Using these the two above approaches Player completion rates rose significantly across the board in the earlier levels of the game.
