Stardew Valley is a farming-simulation RPG highly reminiscent of Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing (and I'm sure others that I haven't played). Created by one developer, ConcernedApe, the game is a charming and polished labor of love. 

From a usability perspective, aspiring developers can use Stardew Valley as an inspiration. While there are a few recommendations here and there for the developer, this post is mostly about what Stardew Valley does correctly and why those methods work. 

Character Creation

After pressing, 'Start' on the main page, the user sees a character creation screen. On it, the user can enter their character's name, farm name, sex, and so on. For other developers, there are some key elements here that this screen accomplishes:

• Text Elements
  The window's text is well-sized and colored, making filling out the character creation section easy. The red treatment of 'Favorite Thing' makes it clear that the user needs to pay attention to that text field - and when something has been entered into that field, the font color changes and the 'OK' button lights up. The layout and font styling makes this window easy to understand.
• Customization Selection
  The arrows and sliders are easy to  read, and the character elements (hair, shirt, etc) navigation is cyclical (ex. item 1 --> 2 --> 3 --> 1, etc) making it easy to view all of the options

  

  Arrow from The Sims

  . The only arrow treatment that was unclear was the arrows on the character portrait. Since the arrows next to the hair/shirt etc. navigated between different options, I wasn't sure what the arrows on the portrait did. Once experimenting, it made sense (the arrows rotate the portrait), but when I think 'rotate' I think of circular arrows, like the one shown.
• Icon Usage
  The window uses clear, basic icons that don't need explanation (cat or dog; male or female; random generator). The only potential issue with the icons is the placement of the random icon (the die) - I didn't find it until just reviewing the screenshots now (if you didn't immediately see it, go back and find it). It's not a vital feature, so it's not the end of the world if it's not easily found. Other clear uses of icons are on the main screen itself -- the eighth-note icon indicates that clicking on the icon will affect the music, and the two boxes in the upper right are shorthand (at least on PC) for making a screen windowed. 

Recommendations for ConcernedApe: nothing high priority here - you could keep the arrows and random icon as is and it wouldn't be the end of the world. They'd be enhancements at best.

So, new devs, the lessons you can take away here are thus:

1) Use intuitive icons. When you first think of that concept, what do you imagine? Brainstorm four or five different options. If you've seen the icon used frequently in other games in the same context (the six-sided die in character creation, for example), it's a pretty safe bet -- otherwise, draw out the different options you brainstormed and run them by a group of people (go for at least seven, if you want to be even more thorough, do an online survey). An example question would be, "Below are six images. When you think of the concept of 'randomness,' which of these image/s, if any, most fit with your mental model of 'randomness'?" And then you'd have a few different options to show, as well as an answer that's "none of these images fit my mental model of randomness."

2) People are curious; let them explore. In character creation, or other places where users are encourage to select one element from a list of options, make navigating between options as easy as possible. Stardew Valley's arrow setup (1 --> 2 --> 3 --> 1, as mentioned before) makes exploring the options easy. Other games that I've reviewed do ( 1 -- > 2 --> 3; 3 <-- 2 <-- 1) which hampers exploration. Basically, when you have a list that you want users to select from, make that list circular.

3) Make sure your text is legible. I can't stress this enough. Make sure your font is easy to read on a screen (sans serif font face) and is greater than 10 pt. font if it's vital text; don't use light text on a light background; don't use more than two different font faces in  your game, and when you do, make sure they're in different contexts... there's just so much. If you're not sure if something is legible, bring your game to a coffee shop or something and ask for feedback. Be open to criticism. Just because you know what it says doesn't mean other people can read it. 

Teaching the Game

As soon as the player's character wakes up on the first day, brief tutorial elements are shown on the screen. They're clearly evident on the screen due to content on the black background, and on the right side, the arrow below the ( ! ) bounces until the player interacts with the exclamation point.

What Stardew Valley does correct here is not distract the player with too much visual information. The size and placement of the tutorial information (WASD, etc) makes it easy to find (visually, players would look at the middle of the screen first, then left to right), and then to direct the user's attention to the ( ! ) a moving element is used (captures attention). The other thing that the screen does correctly is that hovering over the elements creates a hover-popup to explain the content (so hovering over the ( ! ) shows that pressing 'F' will open the Journal). Lesson for devs: use contrast (light on dark) and movement to capture users' attention during the tutorial. Show one thing at a time so the learning path is linear.

Recommendations for ConcernedApe: 

• Consider changing the name of right-click to 'Interact.' Since right-click has so many effects (opening doors, eating, picking up items), you're not really checking anything (with the exception of mail), you're really interacting with the world. Plus, renaming it will remain consistent with the naming conventions of other recent games.
• Consider moving all of the tutorial information ('E' and equipping items) inside the building -- once you go outside, there's so much visually going on that I completely missed those other instructions -- only on my second play-through did I notice the second half of the tutorial. 

Unclear Elements

Though I'd say 95% of Stardew Valley is clear, there were two elements that confused me: dropping items, trashing items, and eating.

For discarding, it wasn't clear to me immediately how to drop an item on the ground. I thought that I would be able to discard an item from the generic item bar on the screen (so selecting an item in the item bar with the arrow keys, and then left clicking on the ground) but this didn't work. Apparently one needs to open the item menu, and then click on the background behind the screen. This wasn't intuitive.

For trashing, it took me a while to find the trash can on the screen. Though it's a good size, its placement off of the main window made me think that there wasn't a way to trash, because it wasn't immediately evident. It's not the end of the world if you don't move it -- players will find it eventually, but it's good to know that it isn't immediately clear how to trash.

But eating was the most baffling of it all -- in order to eat an item, the player must select the item, then right click on their character with that food selected (another instance where 'check' doesn't really make sense). I'm not sure how this could be made more clear (I tried selecting the food and then left-clicking on the energy bar) -- it could just be right clicking on the item while it's in your item bar -- having to click on your character is a little much.

Recommendations:

• Consider re-working how discarding occurs; since it's very easy to fill up one's inventory early-game, the ability to discard something and then pick it up is very helpful. Consider allowing players to discard straight from the item bar.
• Consider moving the location of the trash can to be below the 'Organize' button. It's a little strange that it's not right next to the item section. You could even add a 'Discard' icon there, too.
• Consider making it such that players can eat food without needing to right click on themselves. It's not a clear interaction.

Final Thoughts

All in all, a charming game. I can see why it's so highly rated on Steam -- I'll go leave a rating myself. Thanks, Jeff, for the recommendation!

Evolution is an Early Access Steam game where the player controls a pool of primordial beings and watches them evolve. Watch cells navigate in tidal pools, fighting to survive and socialize with others of its kind. 

Evolution's primary issue is that it hardly explains how to play the game. And while it technically has an information pane that covers elements of the game, the content is not in-depth enough to cover actual gameplay. 

Screen Elements

When a player first logs into a new game of Evolution, he or she will see a dark screen with three panes popped out: an information pane (lower left), a creature pane (upper right), and a settings pane (lower right), and a colorful... something... in top-center.

I'll break these down one at a time, because each of them has their own issues.

Information Pane
____________________________

The information pane has four main elements: the primary tabs showing the different game levels, sub-tabs listed under specific level tabs, the small blue information icon, and a button that says "Online Help." The issue is that the information pane raises more questions than it answers.

Primary Game Tabs

What does the green treatment mean?
Under two of the game levels are green underlines. One (under Primordial) is bold, and has serifs pointed downwards. The other (under Tidepool) is not bold and has its serifs pointed upwards. The bold underline suggests to me a few things:

1) That I'm in the Primordial (Soup) level... but the Tidepool underline strikes that suggestion out (plus, I can see in the lower right corner of the screen that I'm in the Tidepool level). 

2) That Tidepool is a creature stage chronologically after Primordial SoupBecause I'm in the Tidepool stage, and Primordial is also underlined but treated differently, I must have progressed past the Primordial Stage. But, with Battle Arena listed last, this also isn't the case.

3) ???I really have no idea.

...What does the turquoise treatment mean?

Sub-Tabs

I thought that the turquoise treatment meant that section is selected, but in the image above, the explanation text talks about the Outbreak level. So does the green treatment mean that's what section I'm in? If so, why wasn't I seeing anything about Tidepool before?

Creature Sub-Tab

And then even later, in the Creature sub-tab, all of the sub-tabs are the turquoise color. And all of the DNA tabs (DNA, Structure, Sensor, etc) are the turquoise color. So, I really don't know what that means.

Why are all of the game levels listed?
Is it important for the player to know the specifics of Laboratory when they're in the Tidepool level? It's now evident that this is meant to be a universal panel across levels -- but when I'm in a level, I don't really care about what the goals of other levels are.

How do I close the information pane?
I eventually found this out -- either by using a keyboard shortcut or pressing the blue ( i ) in the upper right of the information pane. That action, clicking the ( i ) to minimize and maximize the pane, really isn't clear.

Recommendations

• High Priority: Consider adding a 'Tutorial' level where you explain what everything means (rather than having the player hunt through the information pane to learn the game). In that level, teach them the controls one step at a time (so for example, the first step could be selecting and moving an organism). Once they've successfully completed a task, have them move onto a new one. Show, don't tell.
• High Priority: Increase the font size on sub-tab and body text (with the exception of the Overview text). It's really hard to read the information panel.
• Medium Priority: If you create a tutorial level (which I highly, highly recommend), collapse your full information panel (with design changes) into a menu option (like a 'Help' option). And instead, when a player enters a level, they see that level's goal  & reminder text for what certain elements mean. But players shouldn't have to read a novella to play the game.
• Medium Priority: Be consistent with how you use the green and blue treatments and think about what each version conveys. For example, changing the visuals of a tab from others (highlighting it, bolding it, underlining, etc) suggests that that tab has been selected or activated. If both the green underline and the turquoise mean something is selected, choose either green or turquoise to be your 'activated' state.
• Medium Priority: Considering changing the ( i ) button to a + / _ symbol, to more clearly show that the menu can be opened and closed. If you start a level with the information pane open, (with the _ symbol in the upper right) they'll know that it's an information pane and that they can minimize and maximize it.

Creature Pane
____________________________

On the left and right sides of the main screen, a player can see a creature screen. But, like much in the game, it's not explained (unless you read the information novella, and even then not everything is explained). Here are my questions:

What do each of the colorful bars mean?

I think green is health, which may or may not refill when a creature eats? But the red bar refills when a creature eats meat, so it might be that the green bar refills when the creature eats plants? What is the blue bar? White? It's really not clear...

What does the moving green line on the left DNA structure mean?

During the game, a small green line (pictured above) moves up and down on the creature pane. It doesn't go entirely top to bottom, but hovers between to places for a bit, and then moves. I have no idea what this signifies, if anything. It could just be a decoration?

Why would you kill a creature?

It doesn't yield meat for other organisms, so I wonder what the point is. Plus, the font size is tiiiiny.

What do lock and target do?

I assumed that lock would track the creature (so when it swims out of your field of vision, the camera would follow it because it's locked on). But it acts more like the creature's stats are pinned on your screen. This isn't clear.

Which creature panel, left or right, is the creature you currently have selected?

I can't tell which is which.

Why do some organisms suddenly have a blue box around them, even when you haven't clicked them?

And then I believe a creature panel appears, but I don't know why. Are these highlighted creatures important somehow?

Green circle elements

What information on the creature pane is really necessary to know?

Does the player need to know both the age and generation of the organism? The species number and the creature number? What does 'New' even mean?

What is the relationship between energy and on-screen effects?

I read in the information pane that when a creature's energy is full, they reproduce (or something). Is that related to the green circle elements that appear occasionally around an organism? I don't know what the green circles mean -- I've been guessing that they have something to do with creating an organism chain (so lots of nuclei connected by a small line). So maybe when you get the big green half circles to line up with another organism, they evolve into another organism... or something? No idea.

Recommendations

• High Priority: Have an icon next to each of the colorful bars to show what that bar is -- currently, anyone colorblind could have significant difficult discerning what those bars are and what they mean.
• High Priority: Increase your font sizes on the creature pane (with exception of the 'Creator' line and the 'Creature' number, if you decide to keep the latter).
• Medium Priority: Please, please explain what those green circles/symbols around creatures are. Very confusing. Cool looking, but confusing.
• Medium Priority: Add numbers to the colorful bars. If any of those colorful bars are Energy/Health/what have you, you could add the numbers onto the bars themselves to free up space in the creature pane.
• Medium Priority: If any of the information on the creature pane isn't really relevant to that current creature's survival, I might remove it from the creature pane.

Settings Panel
____________________________

One of the more self-explanatory elements of the game is the Settings panel -- although an equalizer icon might be better fitting than a gear (because you have all the sliders anyways).

Settings Panel

My only recommendations for this panel are to increase the font size, to possibly change the icon from a gear to an equalizer, and increase the contrast between un/selected slider elements (so the right side of the 'Food' slider would be darker because the slider hasn't reached it). Right now the contrast isn't high enough (so it's a bit difficult to read).  

'Colorful Something'
____________________________

Top Bar

I honestly have no idea what this means. I'm assuming the different colors represent different colored organisms, but I don't know what the little red squares below the colors mean. Plus, I feel bad for anyone colorblind. This really needs explanation, and potentially icons to go along with the the colors -- I definitely know that my brothers (who are red-green colorblind) would have a lot of trouble with the red green all the way on the left and the dark red/puke color all the way on the right.

Various Other Recommendations

• Low Priority: Once you click on a game level for the first time, the three options are 'Continue,' 'Restart Level,' and 'Main Menu.' If it's a player's first time on that level, 'Continue' and 'Restart Level' shouldn't be options -- it should be 'Start Level' or 'New Game.'
• Low Priority: On the opening screen, the yellow text over 'Outbreak' has a spelling error. It should be "Very Early Preview," not "Very Early Prievew."
• Low Priority: Within the Outbreak description text, you're missing some commas --> "No worries, these creatures can't possibly infect every single living thing on Earth. Well, probably not, anyway."
• Low Priority: On the main screen, the player can see bits of the info pane (lower left), the two creature panes (upper left and right) and the settings pane (lower right). Since these are uninteractable on the main menu, don't show them. It's confusing. 

Opening Screen

Final Thoughts
____________________________

I might come back to review this game again at another point in its development -- there's a lot of content to write about in the Outbreak and Laboratory levels -- but I have work to do this weekend (I've had jury duty, so I've been needing to work on my projects out of the office). So, comments on those other levels will have to wait.

Screenshot of Laboratory Level

Screenshot of Laboratory Level

Screenshot of Outbreak Level

Roguelands (aptly named) an action-adventure, rogue-like platformer in which you play as a galactic cadet exploring planets and gearing up to ultimately take on The Destroyer, a creature which threatens your world. The game is Early Access on Steam and currently has "very positive" reviews on Steam.

My primary criticisms for Roguelands aren't what I usually mention -- its font color, type, and sizes are fine (and its dialogue format nostalgic, if you played JPRGs), its UI is intuitive, and its controls easy to pick up.

The place where Roguelands has the largest room for improvement is in player onboarding and crafting.

The First Few Screens

The first few minutes of the game are self-explanatory -- on the main menu, you can click Play, Data, Options, and Quit. Clicking on 'Play' shows you seven Empty save slots -- and when you click on one, you're led to the character creation screen.

This screen was easy to figure out - clicking on each button had a predictable effect, and the 'Stats' icons had a mouse hover effect so that I could learn what each meant. No too much to much to elaborate on here, but I have a fair number of recommendations/enhancements that don't require length paragraphs to explain.


Recommendations:

• High Priority: Stabilize the initial menu/setup screens by either eliminating the movement of the buttons or slowing down the movement speed of the background.
  
  Having both a scrolling background and slightly moving platform buttons is disorienting. I'm prone to getting motion sick when playing video games -- and I feel the risk of getting sick when on those initial screens.
  
• Low Priority: Consider allowing 'Esc' to be used in the initial setup screens (such as in the Race Selection screen).
  
  Enabling 'Esc' in the Race Selection screen will save time in the instance that the player doesn't want to change their character's race after reading the other abilities. It's weird to press 'Confirm' for something that's already in place. Plus, in the game itself, you use 'Esc' to close menus -- so why not do it here, too?
  
• Low Priority: Consider allowing both left and right clicking on the Character Creation menu to allow players to more easily cycle between options.
  
  Currently, there are six types of Allegiances that a character can take. If I left click and see the Church of Faust, but decide I want to be The Galactic Fleet, I have to left click six more times to return to The Galactic Fleet option. Allowing for cyclical navigation will save the user time.
  
• Low Priority: Add a kerning in the Variant field, "Variant:1"should be "Variant: 1"
  
• Low Priority: Consider adding a mouseover effect for the character class type and character allegiance.
  
  While the names are super cool, I want to know more about what those mean. Sure, they might not have a stats effect -- but I don't want have to Google the game's lore to learn about what I'm selecting. 

Starting the Game

After creating your character, you appear in a space ship and can navigate with WASD. The game also clearly illuminates what items you can interact, as a 'W' appears above your character's head. Simple enough. But once I had explored the space station and talked to all the NPCs, I couldn't figure out how to get off the ship. I first went to my character's computer, which showed two location options: the Desolate Canyon and the Deep Jungle.

Since this computer was showing me where I could go, I assumed that the way to get off the ship was on this computer screen, and that 'Select' would display a 'Teleport' option.

This was not so.

It turned out that in order to get off the ship, I needed to go to what I thought was another computer, but was actually a portal. When I stood in front of it, it said 'Hostile Zone,' which I assumed (incorrectly) was some sort of multiplayer arena.

It was only when I selected 'Deep Jungle' that I saw the connection between the computer and the Hostile Zone machine -- when the Deep Jungle was selected, the screen's color changed from orange to green.

This led to my first death -- I teleported to the Deep Jungle, and being woefully undergeared, I died my first death. A horrible, terrible death. Alas, poor Bubba, I barely knew thee.

My next dozen lives were spent in the Desolate Canyon, and could be attributed to two things: me not understanding the level's puzzle traps, and a woeful lack of health packs.

For the latter, I was desperate to find health packs, but I couldn't find a way how. They were infrequently in treasure chests, and all of my attempts at alchemy failed.

What I discovered, through Googling how to get health packs, was that I was using the alchemy station completely wrong.

When in the alchemy station pane, shown below, the player is able to place three items in crafting slots, and then press the potion button in order to craft. When that happens, the alchemy pane shows a green bar, that swiftly decrements back down to zero, after which the crafting fails. What I assumed  was that I only had to press the potion button once, and that if the items were a viable combination, I would receive a potion. I wasn't sure what the green bar represented.

It turns out that the player needs to press the potion button multiple times in quick succession in order to receive a viable potion, if the player's recipe was correct. This process was not clear to me, not only because I wasn't sure of the green bar's purpose, but also because there was no notification telling me that my crafting had failed. As such, I thought I was putting in an invalid combination of materials, not engaging with the alchemy station correctly.

Screenshot with an alchemy station pane.

Once I knew how to create potions, the early game got significantly easier, and after that point, there weren't game elements that tripped me up.

Recommendations:

• High Priority: Consider changing how you display the progress bars for crafting.
  
  Currently, it's very unclear how crafting works from the existing visual language. While in retrospect the progress bar makes some sense, it is not intuitive enough to pick up without some explanation. One way to potentially make the crafting mini game clearer is to add percentages on the bar, and have the number decrease over time. That way, it's more clear that one must press the potion button multiple times in order to craft successfully.
  
• Medium Priority: Clearly display crafting failure from not getting the bar to 100%.
  
  This will help reinforce that the potion creation was not due to an incorrect material combination, but from player action.
  
• Medium Priority: Change either the teleporter's image or hover text in the space station.
  
  If changing the image, change it to the same planet icon used in the computer's planet selection page. But my recommendation would be to keep your formatting consistent. Since the teleporters at the end of each level have the next area's name as the hover text, I'd do the same here just to be clearer.
  
• Low Priority: Consider changing the layout of the very first Desolate Canyon trips so that the Tip text is to the right of the player, rather than under him or her.
  
  Because the tip text is below the player's avatar, they may be less likely to see it initially and will miss out on gathering materials until they spot the tip (this was the case for me). I'd potentially recommend making the very first part of the first canyon area lower down (so that they need to jet pack up), and then moving the tip text to the right, under the ledge so that there's better findability.
  
  
  
  

Final Thoughts

Roguelands is a thoroughly fun game, and I'll certainly be playing it in the future. Let me know if you get it -- the game has multiplayer! :) 

Explore, expand, exploit, exterminate -- Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a true 4X game. Released in 2012, the game still has a healthy following and mod community, with modders focused on changing the game's lore and maps to reflect Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Halo, Stargate... and more.

Overall, Sins is a solid game -- since I bought it ~three weeks ago, I've played 39 hours (thanks, Zeal, for the recommendation!). But there are certainly some usability elements where mods or game updates could make a difference.

Namely, Sins' issues rest in legibility, finicky notifications, and difficulty zooming into to planets.

Legibility

Sins, especially in the tutorial series, has an issue with font size. In this game, the yellow font color works both thematically (à la Star Wars) and practically, where other font colors may be difficult to read on a starry background. Sins' font size, however, is way too small -- to the point where the modding community has made mods to increase the font size. 

Recommendations:

• Add a setting in the Options/UI features to increase the font size throughout the game -- with except of sizes to the left of the world/ship/scuttling picture in the main UI bar (shown above). 

Finicky Notifications

There are many notification announcements in Sins. Notifications for combat, for successful planet exploration, for completed construction... and so much more. As such, the notification bar becomes overwhelming very quickly. In the tutorial, players learn that they can view more the most recent notification by hovering their mouse over the correct notification card (planet, construction, diplomacy, conflict) by left clicking, and that they can cycle through these notifications by left or right clicking. The issue is that because notifications come in so quickly (especially as you're expanding), it's hard to keep track of which notifications you've looked, and it's too easy to accidentally cycle past important notifications by clicking. Plus, it's easy to for a notification to "fall off" the queue (~10 are listed at a time) if there are so many notifications incoming at a time. 

And if the player wants to view the location of the notification's event (for example, completed construction), the player must press space bar to move the camera above the planet (not in planet-vision). This feels unintuitive -- for some reason, it feels like one ought to be able to double click on a notification to see its location, but that then cycles the notifications. 

While, over time, the player may become accustomed to the ebb and flow (well, torrent) of notifications, here are some recommendations for making the notifications less overwhelming.

Recommendations:

• Potentially lower the number of events that generate verbal notifications, or at least allow the user to specify which announcements they do/don't care about. For example, the announcement "Explorers have found natural resources on this planet" could be removed -- while sure, that's nice to know -- it doesn't have direct and immediate bearing on the situation. It would still be good to have in the notification frames, but doesn't need to be verbalized by the announcer/AI voice.
• Potentially don't allow users to open a notification frame by left clicking -- only allow the frame to open by pressing space bar. This would prevent players for accidentally clicking past the notification they want to read.
• Just as the planet icons flash when there's an enemy in your gravity well, it may be good to have other flashing notifications above planets (such as for construction). This may reduce the number of notifications that the user must interact with (so one doesn't need to open a notification pane to see where construction has just been completed.)

Moving the Camera

If there were one aspect of Sins I could change, it would be making camera transitions smoother. When interacting with notifications, such as "your planet is being attacked," the player can press space bar to then be brought to that planet. But it's quite difficult to shift between two planets that are under attack, or really just quickly zip from planet to planet to monitor their progress. For example, if two of your adjacent planets are being attacked, you need to scroll out, move your mouse over to the adjacent planet, and then scroll in. As such, it's difficult to micro-manage your own armies -- and when you need to spend so much time entering and exiting planet-vision, combat can feel tedious. 

Sure, the side bar (shown right) creates a way to quickly look at the number and types of units stationed at a planet, but does not make zooming in and out of a planet any easier.

In addition, it's not clear how to navigate a ship through a wormhole. On some maps, players can send their ships through a wormhole to travel to new galaxies. In order to do this, the player must navigate their ship into the middle of the wormhole (I found this out through the might of the Great Goog), and then scroll out to see adjacent galaxies. The player must then hover his or her mouse over one of the planets within a specific galaxy (no easy task), and then zoom in to individually select a planet to send their ship/s to. It's fun to expand to other galaxies, but it's a pain to have to scroll in and out of each galaxy (and then hover over a planet, then scroll back in, etc) in order to keep track of your empire.

Recommendations:

• Allow for easier zoom into a planet, potentially by double-tapping the space bar
• If a player has sent a ship to a wormhole, and then attempts to path it to a planet/star in a distant galaxy, automatically move that player's ship to the center of the wormhole
• Potentially make a way to quickly switch between planets -- so you press a key combination to shift between the last three planets viewed in planet vision

Final Thoughts

I took a week-long break in between starting and finishing this post because, as I've now learned, it's bad to over-play a game when you're trying to review it for usability issues. The more I played, the more I 'forgave' troublesome elements, and the less I saw them as issues. Sure, in any (well, most) program, a user can learn how to navigate the fiddly bits and overcome complicated usability aspects -- but that doesn't mean that the usability issues aren't there.

Well, I've learned my lesson. From now on, I'm not going to play more than three hours of a game before finishing a review. Or I at least need to return to writing it after some time so that my brain isn't as muddled with forgiveness. Or something.

Thanks again for reading! I hope you all had an excellent January, and are expecting an excellent February. 

In Shoppe Keep, an Early Access Steam game, you play as the main merchant in a small medieval town who sells a variety of goods to adventurers. Furnish your store, order and price goods, slaughter shoplifters (I paid good money for that Health Potion!), and craft new items to sell in the store. Since there's no (apparent) way to speed up time, the game is almost zen, as you must wait real-time for customers with creative names such as "Dick Butthead" to saunter in and purchase items. And, though I'll be covering quite a bit in this review, the game can be quite fun (and I believe has earned its 9/10 rating on Steam). 

The usability problems Shoppe Keep displays are inconsistency, legibility, a lack of 'guard rails,' and unexplained elements. 

Inconsistency

Probably the most inconsistent element of SK is its font usage. Playing through the game, one will see at least five different fonts throughout the various menus and text bodies. While font inconsistency doesn't necessarily make a game harder to play, it's good form to keep font faces constant throughout a product.

Another element of SK's inconsistency is that it breaks from traditional UI elements. For example, when the user first opens the game to input their Shoppe Keep's name, they see two buttons in the pop-up. But the left button, which reads "Enter your name," isn't a button. While it does give the visual clue that you can click on it, the format doesn't immediately read as "this is where you will be able to type in your name." Of course, once you click on the button, your typing cursor is shown, but up until that point it isn't immediately clear what'll happen once you click on the name button.

SK also falls into a familiar in/consistency trap --  re-using the same key to perform different functions. In SK, it's guaranteed that something will happen when the player presses Q, but what happens depends on which stance (combat, shoppe keeper, building, cleaning) the Shoppe Keep is in . So the fact that something will happen is consistent, but the effect is inconsistent.

While re-using the same key means that the user has to learn fewer keys and shortcuts, in the end it results in wasting some of the player's time. For example, one might be in the cleaning stance, and want to open the Order menu, but has to press (1) to change stances and then Q to open the Order menu. Sure, requiring two steps means that the user can't accidentally open the Order menu in combat -- but safeguards could be put in place such that the player is not able to open the Order menu while in combat.

Recommendations:

• Choose two fonts and stick with them. Use one for menus and one for text bodies. Make sure the fonts are legible (more on this later).
• Instead of making the "Enter your name" bit look like a button, make it look like a traditional textbox and have a flashing cursor in it. That gives a good visual cue without confusing the user as to why it's a button.
• Consider adding shortcuts to open menus, rather than having Q be the catch-all. For example, "O" could open "Order," "S" could open "Skills," etc. Allow these to be pressed regardless of stance.

Legibility

Now, this is a topic that I've touched upon in many a post. SK isn't the most illegible I've seen -- I think Karos Returns takes the cake on that one -- but there's certainly room for improvement. 

For example, one of the main font styles that SK uses is a white, old-fashioned font face.

My favorite part of this is that "greatness" is spelled "grateness."
Is grateness an excellent cheese grater? Who knows.

While I understand wanting to include a thematic font face for a medieval game, SK sacrifices clarity for theme. Written on a light-peach background, the font is very difficult to read. If the font were bigger, and the background a different shade, this might be easier to read. But I wouldn't advocate for keeping this font -- or the formatting. Light on light is difficult to read -- and when reading is the only way to learn the game (I'll get to that), the designer needs to make reading as easy as possible.

One other location where legibility was an issue was the Ordering menu (shown below). Showing the hands while browsing the menu is a cute idea, but the font angle of purchaseable items is hard to read. 

Recommendations:

• Ditch the light-on-light font. If you want to use a parchment look/feel, check out classic manuscripts such as the one shown here and try to replicate that feel
• I'd recommend also swapping out the old-fashioned font you're using in text bodies for something more modern. Sure, you're reducing some of the theme, but it's more important that your users can read. Using fancier font is fine for menu text (such as on the main screen)
• Don't use yellow as a highlighting -- or font -- color (as done in the tutorial text). It's hard to read on both light and dark backgrounds. Try a different color.
• Flatten the Order menu so that the font isn't angled. You can keep the clipboard look while still making the menu easier to read. 

Lacking Guard Rails

While trial and error is one way to learn a game, it's not always the best to let players fall into traps that they can only escape by restarting their saved game. 

For example, my first game, I didn't know I had to place furniture before I could sell items. So I used up all my gold buying items, and then couldn't actually put them down to sell them. I couldn't recover any of that gold, so I needed to restart the game. 

I was doing pretty well in my second game, and eventually had enough money to purchase armor. This time I knew how to place pedestals to display wares -- but the game wouldn't let me place the armor on the pedestal. I had, again, spent all of my money buying items -- and wasn't able to sell my stock. Fatal. 

In games with low stakes, it's okay to let players make these kinds of mistakes. But SK requires a lot of grinding to unlock new items -- so needing to re-start your game is devastating. 

Recommendations

For a game like SK, I'd recommend putting in what I'll call guard rails, or really safeguards against players making fatal mistakes.

One way that SK can address my first mistake -- buying items before placing furniture -- is to redesign the tutorial to provide context-sensitive tool-tips. As soon as the user loads into their first game, begin the tutorial, and tell the user how to access the build menu (and switch placeable items, which took me a long time to figure out). After they've placed furniture, show them how to open an Order, tell them about the wait time, and then show them how to raise/lower these prices. While all of this information is in the tutorial menu, walking the player through these steps aids learning.

Unexplained Elements

???

Maybe I didn't read the tutorial well enough, but there were quite a few parts of SK that I didn't understand. For example, what is the K bubble? There's already an XP bar, so I don't know what the K does. Is it related to my shop's appeal? How do I increase my shop's appeal?

WHAT IS THIS?

How do I get a cauldron to make new items? How do I get seed packs to grow my own plants to sell? How do I unlock new furniture so I can sell armor and weapons? 

What are skill trees, and why do I want to use them? 

Why do I want to do quests, and how do I turn them in? Are there smaller quests that I can do (that don't require crafting fancy items? That seems like a late-game quest). 

I think this is one of the instances where I could've browsed community forms or the related Wiki, but I prefer it when I don't need to do research in order to play a game. I don't like having to pop out of immersion to understand how to succeed.

Final Thoughts

Shoppe Keep is a fun game, with room for growth in how it teaches and displays information. I wish there were a way to speed up time (those customers walk soooo slowly!) or other ways to spend time when waiting for customers to appear. 

But before SK's final release, the designers really need to spell-check the game. There are a lot of spelling errors peppered throughout. For example, "grateness" should be "greatness," "aparently" should be "apparently," "cant" should be "can't"... there's just so much. My final recommendation to SK's team would be to go through all text with a fine-toothed comb and pick out all the spelling errors. Accuracy helps your game look polished and complete.