Bloxikins, my most recent game, is bleeding dislikes like crazy. I am unsure of why the dislikes are rolling in and would appreciate if anyone could take a look at the game and give a guess at why this is happening.
Some possible reasons maybe:
Bad time of day?
Ads are brining in the wrong audience?
This happened to my game, too. I had tested it thoroughly for bugs, and to this day am not sure of why the game got so many dislikes.
This is a very fun game. The only thing I can of is:
At the start, when I select my racer and click to join a match, there isn’t any sort of count down or loading bar, or wait time presented. This may lead to some players thinking the game is broken. Besides that, when the race starts waiting for all the cheering and stuff to end is a bit of an annoying wait. Also a quick popup telling me to not step on the bananas and green stuff would be nice. Besides that, maybe add a front flip animation when jumping just to make it look cooler?
Someone could be using bots to mass dislike a game.
So, I played it for a little bit and noticed a few things.
1. First Impression
Once you load in, and press play, the first thing you’re greeted with is a pretty shameless promotion of a product/gamepass. Although I get the desire to make a profit off a game, pushing these kinds of ads in people’s faces every time they join gives off the wrong idea. It makes the game feel pay-to-win before even attempting to play it.
I suggest not pushing an ad right when the player presses play but incorporate them where they fit. For example, many simulators push their gamepass (or product) ads when a player runs out of storage space, or when they lack a sort of currency to buy an item.
2. Being Clueless
It’s generally pretty unclear what to do and how to play, it took me a few minutes to find out how to start a race and where to find certain features on the map. The tutorial in the main menu does little to help, I was pretty lost in the map itself and the “Race” menu. I was clicking the tabs like “Matchmaking” only to find out the blinking “Racer” frame was glitching out when pressing “Record” right after it. There was little to no information on how to play the game overall.
3. Matchmaking
Currently, there’s no matchmaking, I raced a few times and was always put against players who were way faster than I was. This isn’t an issue in most games (like combat-based simulators) because you can progress without solely relying on winning. On your game, however, it’s the main way of progressing (if not the only way).
Implement a matchmaking system, place players in games with similar stats/advantages. And if that’s not possible due to the game lacking a player base, then give newer / disadvantaged players a sort of boost to make it fair.
4. Place Switching
One thing I found highly annoying was the switching between places, you should try to keep all your gameplay on one place and server. Other games can get away with it (like royale high) because they’re different themed areas with unique purposes. For a round-based game, it’s nothing more than bothersome.
This is especially annoying since after each race you’re greeted with the whole pushing-ads-in-your-face issue again from the first point I made.
5. Audience
Running ads on the platform will get you views and clicks from all sorts of audiences. I have a feeling that a lot of people expected a different game than what they received as there’s no indication of what to expect. The game seems to be a racing game with simulator-esque features. But there’s no way of knowing that. A lot of people might expect a roleplay game based on the name and icon. The icon kinda looked to me like an adopt-based game.
6. User Interface / User Experience
The user interface lacks some primary features, like the ability to see your stats without having to go into menus. It was pretty weird to me that I had to press Q to open a menu to see my coins/gems when in most games you can see it on the left. There’s a lot of space on the left side of the screen, why not fill it up with some live stats?
Disclaimer: I am not saying my opinion is necessarily shared or righteous, I am just pointing out what I personally saw/think.
So I noticed an error, when I tried to load into a race solo… I was stuck on the Loading Map… GUI and it would not move by. It was just me and the map so I don’t know what was going on. Otherwise, the game is quite fine. You’re probably getting all those dislikes from bots.
Thank you for the feedback. I implemented some of your suggestions and its turning out much better.
Thank you for your time and suggestions. I have been implementing a lot of stuff as well as editing the game based on your review. It has really helped me as the game is now climbing out from the depths into much better territory and doing much better as well. Thank you!