Feedback/Suggestions on how to improve my game

Hello, everyone. I recently finished up my first game and released it. I ran ads on the website for a day to see how it would do. My ads did okay, not too great but not terrible either. So, my game got some plays, but according to Dev Stats my game didn’t get a very long average playtime. My average playtime was only about 3-4 minutes, so I would like some suggestions on how to improve it.
Here is a link to the game: The Obby Lobby - Roblox
Please leave any thoughts you have below.

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Why are you surprised that you only have 3 - 4 minutes of playtime, there are literally dozens of other obbies people could play; what sets yours apart from the others

Sorry but not sorry if thats harsh but thats the reality man

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Starting this off, similarly to what @IProgramForFun said, this game is not the most original game I’ve seen. If you’d like to improve your gametime, you’d have to compete with games like Roblox Ninja Warrior and Roblox Ninja Warrior Evolved. Even then, you’ll have to make a game better than that to attract more players.

Off the bat, when I joined, I was prompted with this “DataStore error” and I had to rejoin. While it did work the second time, it is best you find a way to limit these errors as much as possible, as it can get irritating. At the least, please make a backup system instead of kicking your players for these issues.

When I first joined, I was greeted with a very bright world (too bright). The build looked a bit low-quality and blocky, and the UIs could have been improved significantly. I could also see that the BillboardUIs were off-centered and cut off when you’re a long distance away from someone.

Example of This

image

While I was playing, I was a bit confused on where to go. Yes, there were signs, and people telling me what to do, but there were too many. An average player will feel overwhelmed. Once I went through the correct portal, there were a lot of other portals I had to go through as well and it felt a bit inconvenient.

When I first teleported to an obby, it was very bright, neon, and hard on my eyes (and I’m sure a lot of others can agree). There were no original aspects, and most of the jumps were simply done by holding space and W. It would be fun to see some wraparounds or some headhitters, or some more original aspects of the game (explained in the first paragraph).

On a more positive note, I like the idea of your game. Please take my criticism into consideration and I hope you can improve your game for the better. Fix some things up and I wish you the best of luck. Good job!

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It’s all a case of distinction and your target audience.

  • Distinction:
    Creating a succesful obby is difficult. It is an extremely popular genre, equally with developers and with players. Your game has various courses to choose from, but their themes are all very basic (a.k.a different shapes, and trees with leaves coloured differently.) You need the player to remember your game, and want to come back for X reason. Thinking outside the box is key in this situation.

  • Target audience:
    From the genre to the style, I can assume that your target audience for marketing was kids. The problem is, your game’s layout is sorta complex. You have to go through 2-3 portals to play your desired obstacle course. If I was 7, and I wanted to play an obby, I would want to hop into the game and start right away, not find and pick which one I like.

Now don’t get me wrong; the game is well-made, and it seems planned out. But you’re currently stuck on the marketing part. I’d highly suggest hiring testers to try out your game, so they can give you feedback on how entertained they are, or how long they would be willing to play the game.

This issue is patched, a simple typo was causing the problem.

Not many obbies have a pets and trails system and have multiple obbies to choose from. This is basically an obby with a simulator aspect.

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Yeah, I understand that is reality. I thought my game was unique because it has trails and pets, as well as multiple obbys in one game. Most obby games are like one single obby in an entire game, such as “Escape From Jail obby” but my obby features a whole lot of different obbys in one game.

Thank you so much for your feedback!

That has been fixed, thank you for bringing that up.

I tried to model my builds based off of other obbys builds, which seemed to be bright. I made all the UIs myself with no experience, so sadly they aren’t the highest quality. I would like to improve them but I don’t have the experience or the money to hire someone yet to make them better.

I’ve gone through several different spawn layouts, so it’s really difficult to find a good one. I thought that one separated out by “genre” would be appealing, but I can see how the portal system would be confusing.

I haven’t made a lot of obbys before so this was a first time for me. I did make some basic jumps. I could in the future make more difficult jumps and obbys.

I tried to make some of the obbys different, but there are some that were quite similar because of design choices. I do see that as an area that could be improved.

I was generally marketing to kids, but I really didn’t care overall which age the players were. I made the obbys to be for all ages. I am considering changes in the portal layout system seeing as several people have said it isn’t quite good.

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If i am to make an obby, I would always ensure that the direction that the player is facing when they spawn is always facing the next checkpoint that they are gonna reach.
No offense

Not sure why that would be offensive? Were you trying to say something offensive? That has been a bug since the beginning of the game. I assumed it was a ROBLOX/Studio error. Do you know some way that can be fixed?

for example,force setting the player’s CFrame according to its spawn-location, or to rotate the spawnpoints yep