I began a sponsored campaign this morning for my experience (Digidroid) and so far it looks like I’m spending about 11.2 Robux per play.
About 0.8% of my impressions are turning into Clicks, and about 15% of my Clicks are turning into Plays. I attribute those numbers to ‘marketing’ on my part, i.e. How does the thumbnail look? etc.
So far 0% of those Plays have turned into a purchase for a Developer Product, and I think the reason for that is ‘game design’.
I’m going to let the campaign run to completion, but I’m already starting to learn ( or suspect ) a few things, namely that :
If the player can’t figure out what to do in the first 30 seconds, they leave.
If the game mechanics are sufficiently complex to entertain a 14-year old, the 7-year olds are not going to be able to play.
More is not better. Overwhelming players with a million things going on is less likely to cause a sense of wonder than it is causing their mobile device to choke and the game to be laggy / unplayable.
So I think … maybe going forward I’m going to cut about 80% of my game out. I’ll just reduce it to a basic concept, simplify and optimize the heck out of it. When I get ready to do my next game, same principle. Digidroid took me about 4 months because I was learning LUAU. If I were to make it again, it might take me 1. I think going forward though nothing I make should take more than 2 or 3 weeks.
The pitfall for me on this first game, really, was knowing that Roblox could handle a game of a certain complexity / number of objects and triangles, etc but not realizing that I shouldn’t create to up to the level of what my own PC/GPU could do, and secondly, over-estimating the age and patience of my target audience.
Does your game have a tutorial? If you shove everything at the player’s face of course they will get confused.
Does your game have a way to progress? .I.E: tutorial → beginner quests → slowly introducing new mechanics
You don’t need to do that, but only show the fun part at first and maybe a 10% of the game, then slowly show the rest.
For players who want more content show them that there is still a lot more locked content to motivate them to continue playing. Be it badges or a level up system that tells you what unlock and at what level.
Portal 2 example
you start in a room just looking around and getting to know the controls even if it is only moving your mouse
then the game shows you a portal that you can pass through to get out of the second room
then you learn that you can interact with buttons and grab boxes
Not a lot of games on roblox do this, the only good example that i can remember is Parkour, they have a fun tutorial and a good trailer that shows you the gameplay.
A semi-bad example Elemental Battlegrounds, i remember the tutorial being juet click click and done figure the rest by your self while getting killed.
A very bad example that you can try your self is Wizard West, a very good game that i was about to leave if i didn’t smash my keyboard to figure out how to fly.
Want to know how to earn coins? What a spell does before you buy it? How to stay alive outside of the safe zone? Good luck figuring this out (last question = you can’t,sometimes you can’t even live inside the safe zone).
I am not an expert, but someone who likes learning game design.
Sorry if I didn’t write a lot of useful info, I’m learning English without a tutorial.
As yousefyamen3 said, a game can have many layers of complexity, yet it can be enjoyed by a wider audience than you might think. The trick is making mechanics easy to understand and allowing the player more freedom.
Take ULTRAKILL, for example. To an outsider, it seems like a very complex and fast-paced game with the load of weapons given to the player. What makes the game so enjoyable to thousands of players is not just how simple a weapon is introduced or the hands-on experience when you obtain the weapon, but the ability to customize how you want to play. You are not constrained to a fixed arsenal or keybinds. The game allows you to equip and unequip weapons, reorder the way you switch the weapons, and even have assists, such as auto-aim, health modifiers, etc. The point of this is not to make the game easier; it’s to make the game more fun for less skillful players.
This is merely an example from an FPS game, and your project may belong to a totally different genre, but we can learn a thing or two from it. You shouldn’t make the game overtly complex right off the bat, IF you want the game to be universally enjoyed. You know your demographics are everyone, so make your game fun for everyone, even if it means having options for lower graphics or easier difficulty options.