Going straight to the point, my game is too hard and too complicated to the majority of new players, but I’ve spent way too long with it to figure out where the main flaws with onboarding are.
The game is a pipe-based hoverboard obby which allows players to create tracks with built-in level editor. That’d is great, but most players prefer to make difficult levels which in turn hurts inexperienced ones.
Lately, I’ve been blessed with Roblox algo which brought in thousands of new players, but it sparks little joy when most of them quit quickly and leave a negative rating. I assume that’s mostly mobile players, since touchscreen makes riding tracks and building them much harder. Lowkey considered keeping the game PC and console-only for a while, but that would cut off a massive part of potential player base.
What I’ve already done:
Made new players spawn in a separate location that is linked to the main build with an easy track (it doesn’t have to be completed to progress)
Adjusted difficulty (hitbox size, speed) depending on the platform to make the game a bit easier on mobile
Added a banner with platform-specific controls
Grouped easy tracks and placed them near the main spawn point
Added a huge arrow pointing to the easy tracks (not sure if that’s enough)
Added a text popup (English) with some notes about difficulty and gameplay
What else could I do? The new player spawn is a bit bland and isolated, so I could build something more welcoming around it. I plan to add a little NPC pet that would spawn near points-of-interest and bring up the help menu. Loading screen tips maybe. Could block harder tracks until players complete some easier ones, but I’m not a fan of this.
Bonus question, do you think the game page describes the game well enough to align new player expectations with what they find in the experience?
How much of the game has scripting with UserInputService or ContextActionService? Because I suggest that you have some kind of scripting done that supports easier gameplay for mobile player. Maybe additional ui buttons with ContextActionService or something happens in your game when a player swipes in a certain direction.
Already done! Mobile controls for riding in the tracks can’t be much simpler - touch left or right side of the screen to steer the board. There were requests for steering sensitivity settings, so I will add that in the future too.
Regarding track building, touch screen UI still needs a lot of work, but that feature mostly used by players that are already “into” the game.
I feel as if the lobby and some of the headers for the new players aren’t really shown well enough? To me, really isn’t a way to know what’s easy or hard, especially if one of the “easy” tracks that are shown are something like this and it seemed really intimidating and was kinda hard to play.
The buttons are really far apart from each other and they’re pretty small, it’d be neat if there was some setting that could make them a bit bigger but that’s probably just my preference.
The workshop was somewhat confusing at first, but I made a fairly hard level with it and everything was well. However I think there should be a tutorial with using the workshop when you want to try and make a track for the first time and how the ratings for tracks work.
The game itself is fun, but some few suggestions I’d have would be:
Having the ability to refresh the tracks that are playable
I don’t know if there is a feature or if it automatically refreshes after a certain amount of time but I wanted to play different tracks from other players after playing the ones available for me
Tutorial for the workshop
Maybe new objects or features for tracks
Like how fast you’re moving in a track, maybe even dual mirrored (similiar to how Geometry Dash is), anything really, all of the levels felt the same and there wasn’t really much variety if some of the player made tracks were just kinda spammed objects all over the place.
Information about anything that isn’t disclosed directly towards the player
You have to figure things out for yourself and really just interact with things and see how they work, It would be neat if there was something explaining to me what this or that really does or how some things work in the game
This is a tricky one! At first I was forcefully reloading track groups every x minutes, but it did annoy people, since it would interrupt them. Now, tracks are begin reloaded, but only if nobody is playing any of the levels from a certain group (Easy, New, Featured, Best Rated), which is smoother, but also allows one player to lock 4+ tracks if they keep replaying one of them. So I will need to rewrite some of my code so I could reload tracks one by one, not grouped up.
Definitely needed, definitely coming. Really wish there would be a way to embed a youtube video…
Also planned, I just need to figure out what kind of questions new players have.
I played this a while ago and I can say that this version is already a big improvement. The easy tracks at the beginning and the inclusion of 360 tracks make the game more fun.
I’m not sure if any of these directly correlate to the poor ratings, but here are some things I noticed:
When I failed the tutorial track, I was immediately put into the main lobby without being able to retry it, which I imagine could confuse some players. I think you should respawn players in the tutorial but allow them to voluntarily skip it somehow if they don’t want to play through it.
Players can jump over the green field at the front of a pipe, which allows them to run around in the pipe freely without actually playing it.
After a little while of playing, all of the pipes started to feel the same. The pipe is always straight with the same visual theme and the different types of obstacles are all one colour each. I wonder if giving players the ability to customize the appearance of different parts of their pipe in the workshop could make it more interesting.
Heh, that’s the most commonly reported bug which is… kind of intentional. If a player wants to look around the track to check for sneaky turns and traps - they should be able to, I think. Although, I will have to add some kind of note or something.
Good points about the intro track respawn and the lack of variety. I’ve been postponing new obstacles for way too long, but it’s also tricky to think of something unique that would work in a closed off environment of a pipe.
Okay, I finally got around creating a new screenshot-based tutorial for the building and put it inside of my popup system. It will appear when player claims their first workshop and will be easily accessible via in-game menu.
I’ve played the game a few times now and I think there needs to be some tracks which are made by the developers (you) just so it is actually easy and not too hard for beginners. I’m not sure if that’s already in the game and I apologise if it is.
Oh, so that what it was for. Pricey… Wonder how well it works, are there any games where it’s live?
There are a couple of tracks like that in the rotation where EASY tracks spawn, but they got mixed up with low quality player builds and I will be working on sorting it out. Plan is to move easy tracks closer to the spawn, but that requires quite a bit of rebuilding.
May I suggest that in the long run, as the game gets bigger. You should add an interface where you can view every single track that’s been created, search for it by name, sort it by easy - hard, newest to oldest, best rated and vice versa. When you click play, the player would be then spawned into a pipe further away from the map, so it doesn’t occupy the main ones.
Great idea! That’s going to be pretty technically challenging, but some kind of “track search/browser” is in my plans for the next year. I’ll start with favorite or bookmark system, so people could access tracks they enjoyed (or hated) later.
I have played your game for around 6-8 minutes, here is my experience and conclusion:
First impression, I personally found the name a bit confusing, mostly by the lightning emoji. It took me 3 or 4 seconds (too much by today’s attention standards) to realize that the game’s name is just Pipe Dash. I understand the addition of “snowboard obby”, but I find the name alone a better idea as it would stick more to the player. It’s also a bit weird to see the icon and the title side by side: the icon shows a scooter while the title says snowboard obby. If I were to find this on the sponsored page, I would assume it is yet another clickbait (flashy “NEW” on icon) game, and the (truly unjustified) like/dislike ratio would be the final screw in the coffin;
For the gameplay it self, I was pleasantly surprised by the originality of it. I don’t have much to say except the following remarks:
Having played it for the first time ever, I was a bit overwhelmed by all the information given on each pipe. It wasn’t directly clear whether something’s hard or easy. An easy fix would be to place those flaming skulls that indicate the difficulty somewhere more in the player’s field of view, having them not required to look up constantly. This is mostly an issue for mobile players, and if those aren’t happy then you can expect such like/dislike ratio.
I’m not sure how difficulty of community made tracks is decided, but I’ve encountered 1 skull tracks which were pretty hard. On the other hand there were also long tracks where you’re able to place your character on a certain trajectory where they are untouchable for the rest of the pipe.
Completing pipes doesn’t feel very rewarding. Due to the overwhelming amount of information on the screen you don’t directly see what you’ve gained from completing it, other than some statistics.
My suggestion for the latter 2 remarks is having some preset tracks, which new players are encouraged to try first, so they have a welcoming experience. Chances are the first “easy” pipe they find and try is actually a very hard one, usually leading to a frustrating leave and sometimes even a dislike.
Altogether, this is a very solid game so far. Very original and well built, in terms of programming (things feel very smooth and thought about). With some improvements in terms of convenience, you can get far.
Thank you very much, that is some briliant feedback!
The name is confusing, indeed, it’s mostly me trying to get some organic traffic from search (my mobile gamedev is showing) and hint what the game is about (for better or worse, since I’m not fully sure association with “obby” is best). However, there’s no excuse for not updating the icon to match it.
I didn’t even think about the amount of info and was planning to add even more, so good that you mentioned it. Will try to hide less important stuff and showing difficulty in a better way is already on my list. Difficulty is a mess and a major headache. It constantly changes depending on the completion rate and needs more granularity.
More “pop” on completion is definitely needed and definitely will be added! I might need to find help on designing it, because my mind goes blank when I try to figure out what would look good there.
