So, for the last 9 months me and my team have been developing a Marble Game called For Keeps where you play PVP to shoot marbles at other marbles and you get to keep what you knockout.
Theres also this whole segment that you can go around the map and interact with marbles to get new marbles, aka collecting them.
We recently launched the game and all the players that joined from the ads just stayed there and couldent click the button for {Next} in the tutorial, so they would just end up leaving.
We thought that its too complex so we made it even more simple but players just dident stay more than a minute in the game despite all the stuff we threw at them to do.
So right now im looking for feedback on the game cause every single person that has played told me its a âgood gameâ. Idk if im missing something but good games tend to have players.
But at the same time, games about brainrot get thousands of players on the first day.
Feel free to drop by but if you do, tell me your opinion why this is doing bad.
hey, just checked out your game and the art style is great, but the onboarding currently has too much friction and you need to make it as effortless as possible to get to the fun (shooting at the marbles).
I can share some things I have noticed that you can think about changing:
remove the starting how-to-play and play screen entirely, it is very unnecessary and very few players will ever click on how-to-play, especially for younger demographics that even click on ads, they expect you to teach them how to play via good level design and UX
The second I join I see a wall of text that takes up a quarter of my screen, Roblox players do not like to read, Iâd recommend to remove the wisp bunny entirely and focus on teaching them via icons and very short instructions
Honestly I think the best thing you could do is teleport new players into a solo round automatically and let them be able to shoot marbles within 25 seconds of joining
I think the gameplay is fine, so not much comments on that
Well first I do like the art style here, itâs very interesting but I would also say the tutorialâs cinematic sequences are long and irrelevant.
Thereâs sections that have no use to the game and cannot be skipped
Attempting to shoot the marble during the actual tutorial can be unreliable and the marble can just vanish which creates problems when players try to learn how the game works (It happened the on every attempt to play through the tutorial so I donât know if it will actually work)
The âWisp Bunnyâ doesnât really explain how the game works when you just press play. You get a simple âDo thisâ but it doesnât tell you why youâre doing it or what the point of the game is. Thereâs no âThis is how you winâ explanation in the single player mode so learning what your goal is just doesnât happen.
The text block for the tutorial takes up about a third of the screen which is a little large for a tutorial. That might cause players to feel a little overwhelmed.
in the main game youâre able to see the marble trajectory, should add it to the tutorial. The tutorial does have a lot of delay and next buttons so keep all the next buttons at the same position and let people spam it with no waiting for transitions until they actually get to the tutorial.
Tutorial could also do well by only just having 1 section that just plays the game with an ai with you, like:
Today Iâm not feeling okay and I havenât read a single thing aside following the arrows. It has been just trial and error. I donât see the friction that the others are talking about.
Even though the production values of the game are excellent and the concept is interesting I donât find it particularly fun to play. Itâs a shame though because I can see there is a lot of hard work there.
My feedback isnât particulary useful because Iâm a 50 year old programmer, not the target audience by far.
Fun fact, I did a game about throwing balls to other balls too that nobody played. At least your game has had some players.
Hey I know this has been up for a while but I took a little peek at your game. The visuals are very pleasing and the game feels well made and not broken or janky, and all the systems seem well-connected and feed into your core gameplay pretty well.
The game isnât really confusing but because itâs a relatively novel (or just niche maybe?) concept a lot of players wonât have prior knowledge of how the gameplay is expected to work from other games and so might quit before they âget to the good partâ.
Speaking of which, âthe good partâ of the game it seems like is supposed to be the multiplayer marble-throwing bit, but you need to retain enough people at the same time for long enough that they get through the marble-finding minigame and get to play the main marble-throwing game.
It might not hurt to add some more engaging single-player gameplay. Like puzzle levels with limited marbles in special arenas. Or if making an AI opponent is on the table that could help people practice or play while others arenât available. Even adding some more in-world puzzles using the marbles and their throw/collide/deploy physics could help. Something like a Challenge tower with increasingly difficult levels might add some intrigue to the game for some people. All depends on what you have the time to create I guess.
Additionally the island is quite small and confined, and having some other areas (more islands shouldnât be too hard? I wouldnât be surprised if you already had that planned) to explore might help keep people entertained for longer, assuming each region has itâs own unique marbles to find. It may also be more compelling to lock areas behind marble collection requirements (similar to the way the quests work but instead of generic reward #13 you get access to a new area or building to explore or use).
Canât speak to the multiplayer gameplay but I assume it is fun and engaging and probably not where the retention issue stems from.
Finally, it might help to specify that for the quests you do need to collect the marbles via the funnel in the quest UI, and maybe add shop or storefront that you can sell unwanted marbles to for a few shards each (unless that breaks the economy).
Good luck and I hope your game succeeds, better made and designed that most of what I see on Roblox these days.