Hello, I’m looking for feedback on a new game I’m currently testing: Farm Star
I started advertising this past week and while I’m getting decent numbers on session duration, etc, it’s also getting a lot of dislikes, and I’m not exactly sure why.
Personally I consider its quality to be above average for the platform, and I expected the rating to be at least 80%+, but it’s currently around 65% positive. However I might be wrong with my assessment so I’m looking for alternate opinions.
If you can try it out and have any ideas of what’s triggering people to dislike it, I’d love to hear it. Thanks!!
The tutorial ended when I got to the axe part, I don’t know how to use the axe and clicking on trees with it on doesn’t work.
As an update I just found out that I can only cut smaller trees.
When you cut down the trees it doesn’t show you to click the X so it points at empty UI, it can be confusing for your target audience (or at least stump them)
Items/Interactions
Something I don’t understand is why interactions have proximity prompts if you can just walk up to them?
Using items can be a little confusing on when/how to equip them. I just found that it’s somewhat clear but a little confusing.
The sell button is very stretched
Nitpicking
The tutorial is alright but maybe make it so it’s in a separate world where’s its just you without other players.
The tutorial covers the basics but doesn’t really have much text or greeting it’s more pushy and do this and that
The tutorial doesn’t cover more important/social things:
For example;
Thanks for the detailed response! You bring up some good points.
Just a convenience added based on player feedback, so that if you close the UI, you don’t have to walk back and forth to open it again. Also some people prefer using a button to open UI, e.g. on desktop, but on mobile it’s easier to just walk up to it. I don’t think giving the choice is necessarily a bad thing?
It’s not actually stretched, it’s meant to be a coin seen at an angle, not straight on, hence why the sides are showing.
Interesting. Curious to hear what the benefits of this would be in your opinion? Right now you don’t have to interact with other players at all during tutorial, and they can’t do anything to your farm so it’s essentially like your own separate world until you level up enough to use the market.
Actually it did have a bunch of text with a character and dialogue to guide you through each step. But through testing and analytics I found that people are getting further into the tutorial if they don’t have to read, rather just be pointed on what to do. The data is clear on this point, and anecdotally it’s almost always true that players don’t like reading.
TBH at this point you’ve made it further than 90% of people who try the game. I don’t think the people that are disliking the game are getting all the way to this point and getting frustrated because of the lack of tutorial here. What I’m seeing in the data is that if a player got to this point, they’re likely to play at least once more.
These are just decoration buildings. Storage upgrades are done through UI and prompted when storage is full. So it’s not really anything important to teach up front.
So all in all, from your experience, what would be the most likely cause of someone quitting the game and deciding to dislike the game?
From all the points you bring up, nothing really stands out as super serious… I agree that some things could be clearer, but do you think that is really what people are finding so frustrating?
I played your game yesterday and I don’t think it’s a bad game, but I think I know why it’s getting so many dislikes. The style of gameplay is nearly identical to Supercell’s Hay Day, but Hay Day is much more user-friendly since it’s a mobile game. Maybe some people don’t understand that your game is meant to be played like that, but regardless, I think some updates would help.
For example, having an aerial view option might make it easier for people to view their farm. A “help” button might assist those who don’t understand the point of your game.
I would also recommend giving your game a unique element so people who see the resemblance between the two games will have a reason to prefer yours.
Yes Hay Day is one of my favorite games on mobile and Farm Star was my attempt at “what if Hay Day but in Roblox”. But I’m not entirely convinced the majority of negative ratings come from that comparison. My previous game Dragon Blade was also very clearly inspired by another, much better game, and people didn’t seem to mind the inspiration and still has a good rating, since the whole point is that it’s “X but in Roblox” which means you get to play with your friends, with your avatar, etc.
So in Farm Star I tried to play up the social aspect, having up to 12 farms together in a town that you can visit, with a central plaza and trading hub, etc. Also there’s a lot less waiting for things to be ready in my game, since that’s my least favorite part of hay day!
I brought this up as if you get to do a basic run of the game with everything cleared out or at-least simplified so you can get used to the mechanics and how things works without other players talking to you, or them having their finalized plots close to you.
I think you should make it slowly pop up at about the average mind reading per second, (like the text slowly types) and you click click to skip it to the end or skim through it.
The text it my recollection wasn’t very clear or in my face I mostly only saw the arrows pointing me and followed that.
Something I always find is the following:
Lack of engagement/entertainment (SCPF Genre)
Lack of progression/hidden progression
For example: Side quests/Side tasks for extra money
Lack of fitting theme/development | sloppy/unfished development.
These were a few issues I discovered with my experience.
There is actually a roblox youtuber that goes over why games fail:
If you’re interested there’s their playlist.
I do believe that it can be a factor to this but maybe you’re either reaching the wrong target audience or the target audience isn’t enjoying the play style.
