FTUE Update
Game: Genies & Gems
Role: Lead Game Designer
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Completely overhauled the first 200 levels in the game to reduce churn, onboard players more quickly, and increase engagement
Overview
Genies & Gems was facing an issue with dropping DAU and retention from new players. I worked with data analysts to dig into the issue and it became clear that the levels were suffering from very low winrates overall, especially compared to competitor games. After doing more digging, it became apparent that players were having much lower win rates on a specific level type as well as on levels featuring specific design elements.
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I concluded that the game's onboarding was not teaching the mechanics well and players were dropping off due to not understanding how to play these types of levels.
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To address this issue, I proposed a complete update to the first 200 levels in order to better onboard players into the game.
Teaching Concepts
I completely reordered the way we introduced certain level types and objectives to feature simple to understand obstacles and modes first. Originally, the priority was placed on showing off more unique game modes and features first, but that was leading to players being thrown into something unfamiliar too soon.
Obstacles that were naturally understood by players revolved around the main action of the game: creating matches to break objects. I pulled these features up in the level progress and pushed features that shifted the game board or had more complex interaction much later.
Left: The original first level introduced a unique game mode that was not immediately intuitive
Right: The update first level started with the easily understood concept of 'break everything'
Level Design Philosophy
Original introduction level to Stone blockers - requires some thought as to what to do
Updated introduction level - very intuitive as to what to do - just break everything!
I changed the entire level design approach to the opening levels of the game. The original opening to the game was very methodical and required players to think rather than react. I wanted to shift the game into a more 'quick and natural' feel.
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The new level design philosophy that I lead the team to implement through the new levels were:
Design Clarity - a player should be able to look at a level and understand immediately what they need to do to complete it
Quicker Play - not only should levels require less moves to complete but the player should be able to see the move they want to make more quickly
Less Colors - changing the color balance of the game from 5-6 colors to mostly 4-5 colors meant more matches to make in a given level
The Obvious Move is the Right Move - older levels featured design 'traps' where players could make a move that seemed 'right' but would be the strategically wrong move. I wanted to do away with this as it felt bad to play against player expectation.
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Raising Winrates
The average winrate (the percentage of wins over the number of attempts at that level) for the first 200 levels was 44%. The first 10 levels alone were only 70%.
I created a much gentler winrate curve for the opening, easing players into the game and ensuring they were having fun before ramping into more complex levels. The first 10 levels were set to be as close to 100% winrate as possible with a more gentle ramp up in difficulty.
Much the 'easier' difficulty was done through creating levels that were more intuitive, rather that actually creating flat out 'easier' levels. This preserved the fun and challenge while reducing frustration.
An example of preserving a level's intent while reducing the complexity. Left: the original level design required players hit the paw spawners (black paw blocks) to generate paws, then collect those paws. The entire time, the paw spawners are also on a conveyor belt, moving every turn. Right: The layout and intent of the level remains the same but now all paws are available on the board. A player's instinct is the just break every obstacle on the board, which will win them the level.
Results
The new FTUE was tested to great success and subsequently released to 100%.
Some key results from the updated FTUE were:
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Retention increase - 13% D7 increase, 5% D7 increase
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Revenue increase - 20% D7 & D14 ARPI increase
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2.8x players reached level 200 by D10
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1.6x players reached level 300 by D10