Sebastian's Games

So I’m about to launch FLUTTERFLY — a brand new side-scrolling color matching game. Guide colored butterflies as they migrate and match colored blocks.

For those of you who’ve been following this blog or who follow me on twitter, you might know that FLUTTERFLY actually started as FLUTTER. Flutter was a previous incarnation that was a simple endless game. There were no levels. No powerups. No stages. Just one endless side-scroller that went on and on.

I started work on the original Flutter in Feb 2014, and working in Unity3D, quickly got something up and running. The original core concept was to take a fun color-matching / tetrisy mechanic and make it a side-scroller. Could I combine two genres to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

It took another few months to polish the game into something I considered finished. And I uploaded Flutter to the app store in mid-May 2014 to (drumroll)… the sound of crickets! Flutter opened with a whimper. Despite some nice feedback from some folks in the community, sales were pretty non-existent. So… game over??

But I still believed there was something great at the core of Flutter. I thought the gameplay was original and fun. The app, however, had a long way to go. For the past five months I’ve been working non stop to make Flutter better. In fact the new version has evolved so much that it’s really an entirely new game. So goodbye Flutter and hello FLUTTERFLY!

In the meantime, here are THREE LESSONS I learned the hard way that I’ve worked very hard to fix.

1. PLAYERS WANT TO WIN

I created Flutter originally as an endless side-scroller mainly because I wanted to finish an app quickly and not spend five years on it. Why design 100 levels when you can design 1, amIright? And of course the endless platformer/flappy/runner is a tried and true genre all unto itself. But there’s just one problem. You never win. It’s not a problem for games like Flappy Bird. I think the frustration of dying repeatedly is what spurs players on in a game like Flappy. It’s addictive masochism.

But that sort of hardcore die, die, die experience flew in the face of my app. I discovered too late that people really liked these butterflies. They didn’t want them to die! And when they died, they felt bummed and didn’t want to play anymore. I needed to let people win. So I’ve spent a big part of the last several months developing levels.  I added a FLOWER object that served as a goal for players to reach.  Now players could actually win!

Now players can WIN

It has been a lot of extra work, but I think the results have been worth it. Playtesters are experiencing joy with the app finally. Saving butterflies is compelling. Winning is compelling. And it keeps people playing. Besides, I don’t want to be the guy forcing people to kill all their butterflies, right? Because that’s what an endless game is. It’s inevitable death. The lesson for me is that I had a happy game on my hands—not the casual equivalent of Team Fortress 2 (God, but I do love me some Team Fortress 2).

LESSON #1: If losing your game isn’t fun, players better be able to win it.

2. SCREENSHOTS MATTER

FLUTTER 1.0 looks great in motion. I made a trailer that I think showcases it nicely. But stills? Not so much. I had this idea I’d be Jony Ive and use this minimalist solid color approach. Helvetica everywhere. The problem is this makes for really, really boring screenshots. So I’ve gotten to work adding particles, flares, glow effects and a nice handwritten font. It makes a world of difference. The game is much more beautiful, both in playmode and in a still screenshot.

Which game would you rather play?

When you’re an indiedev and no one’s heard of you or your game, screenshots are THE first thing people will look at. I’ve learned the hard way that your screens gotta be amazing. There’s a chance no one will watch your video, not least of all give your game a try.

LESSON #2: If no one wants to play your screenshot, no one will want to play your game.

3. ONE MECHANIC AT A TIME

At its heart, Flutter is a pretty simple game. Or so I thought. Match butterflies with colored blocks. What’s so hard about that?

But sometimes as a dev it’s hard to see your own game clearly. If I’d been honest with myself I’d have admitted that there are actually many different kinds of blocks to match: avoid black ones, match identically colored ones, and hit the correct side of a dual colored block. In Flutter I’d spent a good deal of time on a lengthy tutorial hoping this would be enough to get players comfortable. But it wasn’t and they weren’t. They were confused.

I failed to realize that my game really had more than one mechanic. In a way it’s semantics, but I think it’s helpful to think of a mechanic as any one thing a player does that gets a unique result. Matching a black block is DIFFERENT than matching a colored block: it’s a different mechanic. As a result, people were confused playing Flutter. There were too many mechanics thrown at them all at once.

Flappy Bird can get away without a tutorial and without levels. Press the screen once and the bird goes up. That is the ONLY mechanic in the game. But even an ostensibly simple game like Angry Birds has several mechanics happening. If you think about it, the game is more than just a slingshot. Tap the yellow bird and it goes quicker. Tap the blue bird it splits apart. Hit ice and it shatters. Hit wood and it breaks. Pigs with helmets are harder to kill than pigs without. Etc. And the player has to learn and master each one of those new elements. And if you don’t want a frustrated player, introduce new mechanics ONE AT A TIME.

In FLUTTERFLY, what was once a one shot tutorial is now a series of 15 levels (There are over 70 levels in Flutterfly, but the first 15 probably cover what was in the original Flutter tutorial).

Learning is now spread out over many levels

The player learns the same tutorial content, but it’s spread out over time. Now the player is engaged and having fun as they learn. Moreover they have time to master each new mechanic before moving on to the next. It’s no fun trying to learn to ride a bike and swim at the same time. (For more on this, see Daniel Cook’s amazing presentation on feedback loops.)

LESSON #3: Players can only master one mechanic at a time.*

* notable exception being if the mechanic is so well known it’s part of the vernacular—like running and shooting in an FPS. WASD. We all know that.

FLUTTERFLY launches in a matter of days and so far reactions have been extremely positive. It’s also just super fun and rewarding to see an app you’ve put a lot of love into get better and better! Mainly though, it’s a reminder to me that sometimes you gotta just keep grinding to level up.