When I first released my game, it was relatively hard for toddlers that came from sponsored ads. Didn’t really think it would be hard since I could pass it without any effort, even on mobile.
But whatever, I made it easier. And now it’s so easy that you can beat it without much thinking nor skill. Well at least until the last few stages.
But stats say otherwise! Even after the many changes I’m still getting dislikes and below average playtime and other stats.
And now I’m just stuck on what I can improve.
Or am I just supposed to ignore the stats that Ad players bring? (Of course not completely but should I not worry about Ad players when it comes to getting home recommendations?)
Thankfully I am getting some home recommendations which I think bring better stats? At least they do play longer than Ad players.
I’m just confused as to what makes games get players since clearly UI is not the deciding factor (example one and two), game design feels subjective since some games are not something I’d play but still get a honorable amount of players (I understand that kids like different things compared to teens or adults), and some games feel like they somehow got exclusive access to the roblox algorithm!
(I’m just making this last point because I feel like I made a game which is same or even better in some aspects than your typical obby game.)
If you got any advice for improving a game I’d appreciate it.
While playing your game, I noticed a lot of players ragequitting.
I feel that the game’s vibe becomes more serious when there’s no music playing. Have you thought about adding music to lighten the mood and make it feel more fun and clumsy rather than some standardized test or competition?
Past that, my only other guess would be that players feel bored. Between the time you join and the time you get your first gift, it just feels like a standard obby. You should probably make the game more interesting by adding some new mechanics that arise from the auto jump, like a trampoline that sends you higher and higher before auto-killing and flinging you, or a way to climb walls with auto jump. There’s plenty of ideas to expand on what you have right now.
I don’t think music is an issue? The game I directly got inspired from has no music. And in my eyes they have way worse everything, but somehow got 1.6k CCU.
(Additionally can’t add music due to religious reasons, unless it’s like sounds of nature or like brown white black noise, but that feels weird in an obby?)
And the boredom of players is what also confuses me, I don’t really know what makes an obby fun since other obbies look like they have less quality but somehow more players. I do remember playing obbies as a kid with similar bad quality and enjoying them, so maybe I have to make low quality stages also?
I do have to thank ROBLOX for adding the Feedback section, but man I’m mostly getting feedback on how the obby is hard (which I don’t know how it is after going through so many iterations). There were 2 comments saying that the game is boring (nothing else) which is maybe the only decent info I got, but what are obbies meant to do, be on par with an AAA game? And that just confuses me so much more since obby1obby2obby3 for me are way more boring for me but have so much more success…
And I completly understand that I’m responsible for the players fun, but this is seriously challenging since I’m not getting any good feedback from players, nor from other games (design of other obbies).
Frustration = dislikes
Make it fun before the gimmick overcomes the gameplay
I noticed players resetting & rejoining. It’s amazing how some people can’t read for the life of them. You’ll need to convey the gimmick to the user upon joining as well. (Perhaps make the jumping tied to walking only, not when idle)
I’ve spent 30 minutes on your game and honestly, there isn’t much to say. Obbies are all relatively the same, they’re all platformers and the market competition is pretty big. I would say it just comes down to luck on whether your obby out of the millions on the platform gets noticed. Your obby is also quite new compared to other obbies, which could explain why it isn’t in the top recommendations amongst the other gazillion obbies, but don’t take my word for it since I don’t really know the algorithm too well but it’s just an observation. Other than the fact that your game just had no luck in getting the attention of other players, here are some changes you could make:
Although you mentioned that music is against your religious principles, perhaps you can somehow add more effects to make the game feel more lively? With the lack of music it feels quite empty (Personal opinion)
Checkpoints should heal you, it makes the flow of constantly completing stages feel more fluent (at least for someone like me trying to speedrun it but still taking small damage and end up dying once or twice lol)
The obby itself is relatively short, perhaps you could try adding more stages and actually make the difficulty increase slowly in the much more later stages. Like you said, the obby itself ISN’T that difficult, I can see many players averaging end-game stages in most servers. Perhaps by adding more stages, you can create longer playtimes?
Due to lag or some other reason I’m not entirely sure of, but a lot of people are getting stuck at the slide stage. (Disable shiftlock area), I don’t know if they just didn’t disable shiftlock but I see a good chunk of players missing the end goal somehow or some way and just decided to ragequit.
just some small feebdack: probably the ones who dislike are the mobile users. Completing obbies on mobile is harder than on pc, and probably some stages on your game are very difficult for some of those mobile users. also some stages are easy, then the next stage is very hard, and viceversa
This is a really good idea that I’ll go test as soon as I can.
Besides the other good points, this might be just due to the server you joined? In my analytics only 1.6% people leave before beating that stage, so you might have just joined a very unskilled server.
And speaking of lag, analytics show like avg 36ish fps which kind of worries me a lil bit since the game really isn’t intensive.
Could anyone reading attest this with their games, would appreciate it!
And this I can confirm that most dislikes are from mobile users, although I don’t know how to properly scale the difficulty of stages since I can’t really feel the difficulty of any of the stages even when I play on mobile. My only go-to method is to spectate players and that’s about it.