Dicey Decisions

Overview

Dicey Decisions looks like your typical online board game at first glance, but we have incorporated the usage of cards and dice to create a twist.

User Research

This game originated in Tabletop Simulator. However, my team believed it would be more immersive if we took this idea and recreated it in Unity. We thought of new rules and different implementations that a player would enjoy, and we did frequent playtesting to enhance our results. However, recreating a game on a completely different platform came with it’s own issues. We did not have a proper tutorial in the beginning as we believed the game was self explanatory, and this created a negative experience for our users.

Research Findings

Playtests

After every major change to our game, my team and I conducted playtests with other game designers and recorded their thoughts. Since everyone was knowledgeable in the creation of games and playing games in general, the results were always valuable.

Topics Addressed

• When were you the most confused?
• What is the first thing that caught your eye?
• What was the most frustrating mechanic?
• What was the most frustrating aspect of the game?

Insights

During our first playtest, we realized players did not understand the game as well as we believed they would. To combat this, we created a basic “tutorial” where we added directions for every move in the first round, and your possible moves would be lit up, similar to chess. Our second playtest was still confusing. Players felt like they were slowly learning, but still confused. With this in mind, we created an actual tutorial, which pushes players to learn the rules of the game before starting one with another player. Second, our game had a lot of color schemes and art styles going on. Teaming up with our artist, I created a theme for our game which was wood inspired. I added a background for the buttons for better visibility, along with animation and sound effects for the board pieces and buttons.

Ideation

Ideation

As a team, we held meetings multiple times a week to discuss the issues that users were having, and creating new tasks based off this feedback. We wanted a game that users would play multiple rounds of, not just something that they played because we asked them to playtest. In order to do this, I specifically focused on the visual feedback that users provided, such as displaying error messages when they are making the wrong move. I was constantly wondering, as a player, what could I add to this game that would make it more enjoyable? With mechanics such as the tutorial, animations, and sound effects, our game has already received 64% more positive feedback, and players are enjoying and understanding the premise of the game a lot sooner than before.