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.


Tutorial Tells, Not Shows



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.

Recommendations

  • Consider changing the tutorial so that the fundamentals are taught through the character's thought bubbles, rather than paragraphs of text. (High priority)
  • Show that pressing space or E will eat food -- I saw this in Trello, but I had no idea it existed in-game. (High priority)
  • I suggest you read this article about tutorials.

Final Thoughts



  • Make sure you're proofreading your dialogue - in the beginning sequence, "destabilize" is misspelled.
  • Consider slowing down, or removing, the animation of the buttons and title on the main screen. It's distracting, because it's not clear to me what I should be clicking on when everything is competing for my attention. You can keep the background animation of the chickens/island, but animating the words is too much.
  • You might also consider reducing the number of buttons to click on here on the main screen -- if I'm not able to interact with the crafting pages, end cut scenes and such (I assume that's why they're grey), why am I seeing them on the main screen? Also, "Endless Mode" and "Tutorial" are sub-sets of "Start," so why have three separate buttons that all Start in some way?
  • I was looking at the crafting chart, and not in a million years would I have guessed that jam + sticks makes a torch. You might want to consider some other material besides jam.
  • You don't use space effectively on the screen. The text is huge (which is great), but you could forego most of the text with a more icon-driven design. Take for example, the HUD or The Flame in the Flood (shown below). This design clearly explains one's status without crowding the screen with text. The benefit of this design, versus your small bars with text, is that the status is far more prominent on the screen. If you want inspiration, check out this game.
    The Flame in the Flood HUD
  • Your crafting chart is confusing as all get-out. Click to zoom? And then when you're no longer clicking it zooms out? Plus, the lines are baffling, and woe be to anyone who's colorblind. Using color alone to mark which lines are which isn't considering players who are colorblind.

    Three Days Crafting Guide
     Why not just have the scroll wheel have an effect, or a (+)/(-) on the screen? Or you could consider doing something like Civ V where the tree is scrollable. That way you don't have the problem of not seeing all parts of the crafting tree, and you can get rid of the need for color in marking which elements go together.

    Civ V Technology Tree


  • When you die, I didn't realize that clicking on the corpse of your character would restart that level. Is that a feature or a bug? If a feature, you should mark it with a "Try Again" button or something.
  • Also when you die, you have "Exit Game" instead of "Main Menu," even though you also explain on the screen that clicking the button will return you to the menu. Why not just change the name of that button to "Main Menu" or whatever? Exit Game makes me think I'm going to return to my desktop and close the game.
  • Other confusing thing: why is a -1 shown when you're deconstructing trees/rocks/whatever? Do resources have HP? It's more confusing than it is helpful. I can already see that the durability of the resource is decreasing with the purple bar.
  • Consider changing how items are combined -- clicking and dragging can be an accessibility issue. Here's a passage from Game Accessibility Guidelines:

    Ensure that multiple simultaneous actions (eg. click/drag or swipe) are not required, and included only as a supplementary / alternative input method:

    Holding something down rather than tapping causes difficulty for one group, and moving in a precise direction causes problems for another, so combining the two into a drag or swipe multiples the issue.
    Other people rely on and enjoy these controls and find simple controls frustrating or less intuitive, so if you can, allow both.
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Apologies for the short post! Busy these days. I've got choir, jujitsu, rock climbing, D&D, and board game stuff going on. And work. That too. I'll try to keep up with the schedule, though!

I'll also be writing a bit more about usability as a whole, as I did with the two prior posts. I've been saying I'd for a while write about designing a game with usability in mind, but I feel like I need to read more up on accessibility literature to really give that topic justice. I'm going to start reading http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/.





PAX East was much louder and cooler than I expected. Last month, I got the opportunity to attend as both a general convention-goer (Saturday) and as a volunteer (Sunday) with Perception by The Deep End Games.

In my last post, Guerrilla Usability For Game Developers, I recommended that developers try to get usability feedback at conventions. Now, having done this myself, I have some tips and tricks on how to conduct quick-and-dirty qualitative tests at conventions.


  1. If you can, get a neutral observer. 
    In general, people are averse to hurting others' feelings. As such, there are times where an individual might have criticism about a product, but may be reluctant to divulge their thoughts in fear that they'll hurt someone's feelings.

    If you want to get a broader spectrum of positive and negative feedback, consider recruiting a neutral observer - a friend who hasn't worked on your game but is willing to help you out at the booth. That person should not wear clothing branded with your game's name, to further emphasize that they're not involved in the development of the game.

    Why? When interacting with players at your booth, that neutral observer can honestly tell the players that they didn't have anything to do with making the game, and that candid feedback, positive or negative, is welcome all the same. By not wearing branded clothing, the neutral observer reinforces that they're not directly connected with the game.

    (In addition, allowing a neutral party to conduct the usability research allows you to focus on running the booth as a whole.)

    Probably an hour into my volunteering, I was watching a player who had ample criticism about the demo and was very articulate in his frustrations. Afterwards, another volunteer remarked that that player was the first person to voice negative comments about the game. What's important to note is that unless you are directly asking for negative feedback, and express that it's not going to hurt your feelings, it's unlikely you'll hear a ton of criticism. I noted that just because he hadn't heard negative feedback before probably wasn't because no one else before that player had criticism. 
  2. Moderating limit of two. 
    In the very beginning of my shift, I wasn't sure how many players I could watch at once. Once I got into a rhythm, though, I found out that I could moderate two players simultaneously if they were sitting adjacent to one another. Trying to moderate three at once was very difficult and led to a drop-off in the quality of my observations.

    Later, when players had different start times on the games, I found it to be much more difficult to moderate two players simultaneously (radically different problems in early and mid-game that I wanted to probe on). Once the start times were so out of sync, I started watching only one person at a time.
  3. Similar start times.
    If you can, try to get them to start the game at roughly the same time. Getting the players to start at the same time allows you to give your spiel about "I'm a neutral observer, tell me how you really feel" only once. This was far easier earlier in the day, when the line wasn't too long.
  4. Scrap talk aloud and focus on body language.
    While the talk aloud method works great in the lab, it's so loud at a convention that it's nigh impossible to hear what players are saying. Instead, be on call if they have a question about something and watch your players' body language. Some players slightly shake their heads when they're frustrated, or lean in slightly when they're having difficulty reading something. One of the players I watched had a clear tell for frustration -- his fingers would flare out and up off the mouse for just a second and he would tense up.

    It was beautiful. When body language is clear, it's easier to probe on thoughts that the participant didn't initially feel like/think to share with the researcher.

    Unlike in a lab, where you can more easily see a participant's face, you'll need to focus more on the head, shoulders, and hands of the player.

  5. Consider exit interviews.
    Later in the day, conducting orderly usability sessions will be naught but a dream. If you weren't able to watch a player go through the game, consider conducting exit interviews as they leave to get their candid feedback. One of the other volunteers redirected players done with the demo to me so that I could get their feedback & quotes.
  6. Don't make usability testing a whole-day event.
    I volunteered to help from 9am - 3pm, but by ~noon I had found all of the usability issues I was going to find. I lost track of how many players I spoke with or watched, but it was far, far over the 5 people one technically needs to get 75% of usability issues. If you're paying your neutral observer, consider only making her or his shift a few hours (or have their role shift a few hours into the event).

Photo of the Perception setup (credit: The Deep End Games)

All in all, a great experience. Thank you Bill Gardner, and the rest of Deep End Games, for letting me tag along.