Why are new players not sticking?

Long story short, I have spent a year making this game - which focuses on grappling as a core mechanic. It combines that with Tower of Hell’s round system, if you will.

Since the game is physics-based, I have tried my best to make the mechanic as easy to use as possible and even include a tutorial & Starter Quest to guide players through it.

However, I have noticed that most new players do not stick to the game for a very long time, indicated by the average session time of only 4-5 minutes (very sad). Players who understand the mechanic though - those who have passed at least one stage, play a much longer time than that, with some even having a total playtime of 48 hours.

I assume it’s the difficulty of the tutorial or the mechanic itself, but it’s very hard for me the pinpoint the exact problem as I’ve been working with it for so long that I’ve developed an ability bias.

I would strongly appreciate any sort of constructive criticism or suggestions regarding fixing those issues, thanks a lot! ;D

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Hello!

I’ve played your game and I quite enjoy it. I might even come back to it later because it’s actually well designed.

However, I believe the reason people quite after 4 or less minutes is simply because the tutorial is difficult. There was one stage, “the longer you hold the higher you go” that was very hard. I took a good few minutes trying to complete that stage, and I was definitely a little frustrated. As a new player, I don’t expect the tutorial to be difficult. It should feel satisfying and be easy enough (but not too wasy) to complete in a few tries. Once you pass that level it’s completely fine.

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Thank you so much for your kind words and feedback!

Newly updated tutorial should be out on all existing servers now, if you can and have the time to, please check the new version and let me know what you think.

Once again appreciate it!

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I spent a good while playing your game, and the new tutorial seems great. One thing I would improve is the visibility of the yellow and blue things, as they can be somewhat hard to see at times, especially in the candy levels at night. Also, there are some areas where you don’t really know where you’re supposed to go, for example, after that lollipop in my photo.

This blue one on a lollipop was nicely blending in to the bright colours when coming in from the yellows.

I won :smiley:

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I agree, adding outlines to the rings with “Highlight” instances could improve the visibility.

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Game’s cool i’ve played for like half an hour.

If I were you I would improve your monetization, there’s nothing worth buying in your game, instead of saying prestigious perms etc… for the vip just say what it does, double coins gamepass is way too expensive, i would put it at 399, practice mode seems useless to me but since you’ve scripted it and stuff than I would price it for 79.

The only thing i would’ve bought maybe was currency but putting your first cosmetic purchase at 450 coins that’s way too grindy, i don’t even know what i get when i spend those coins so making it so expensive it just deters me to spend robux for coins.

How’s your payer conversion rate ? It must be low for sure.

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Hey, I saw this game on Youtube Shorts!

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Got it, was wondering if you have any ideas on how to fix this.

P.S. awesome job on getting 1st place!

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Currently there is a highlight effect when the ring is within reach, but that’s all I can do because there’s a limit to how many highlight instances can be used. But if you have any other approaches please let me know!

Got it, that’s true I have often overlooked the prices of those gamepasses, I’ll do more fixes on those, thanks for pointing it out!

I plan to make double coins 449/499, and practice mode 299/349 (mainly because it’s very useful for players who want to practice a certain level)

P.S. Yes I have suffered from extremely low conversion rate

Not entirely sure but a rule of thumb would be that you can see atleast the 2 next slingpoints at any given time in the map. There can be exeptions but if its a tight turn then maybe a big big arrow would help lol.

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I’ve played this game for a few days now, so I’m not a “new” player but I just want to put in my two cents.

I’m not sure what the “Level” means. I initially thought that the higher the level, the harder it was. However, I found some lower levels harder than the higher levels and vice versa.

The gameplay is quite smooth and very satisfying. However, after playing every map, it gets a little stale. In terms of difficulty, most of the maps are easy and some of them are a little harder. I think there’s a lot of lost potential with such a dynamic swinging mechanic. There should be much harder maps that really test your mechanical skills.

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Seemed like it could be a fun game.

The tutorial was good and fun.

Problem for me was the very first section:

I tried 20 times.

I reached the last swing point only twice - but on those two occassions - I could not reach the landing.

The blue ZIP point was the problem. I could not seem to click on it at the right time.

Not sure why I had such a hard time getting it to work. Or, even how I manage to do it twice.

I’m sure you will tell me how, but are you going to be in every game telling everyone “how”?

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The main point of the game is to speedrun each stage as fast as possible, hence there are timers, leaderboards, and a scoring screen at the end of each round.

You might’ve also noticed, there are various shortcuts in some of the levels (those are in red instead of yellow) that really challenge your skills of the game mechanics, and they were there to spice up the difficulty a bit for players who’ve already played the level numerous times before.

In other words, the shortcuts act as a way for players to customize the game’s difficulty.

I would absolutely love to make more challenging things but since the game is a round system, I don’t really have an idea on how to include it in the gameplay without scaring away new players when they first join. However, I look forward to any suggestions that you might have!

P.S. "Level"s are just names to identify a level

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Got it, will get to fixing ASAP. Tutorials aren’t meant to be that challenging, thanks for pointing it out.

Tip: Hold the grapple for longer so you have time to realign yourself

hello

in my opinion this is a very solid game. i believe the reason why people dont “stick” around is because in 2025, people are more used to games with flashy effects and animation (battleground games).

for my critism, all i beg is for the sound when u claim a quest to be changed. it genuienly hurts my ears. i also think the ui deserves a redesign, everything is “way to colorful” and hurts my eyes a lil.
like someone else said its not really worth buying the gamepasses and stuff so yeah.

the sfx for swinging and abruptly stopping swinging was also very annoying to my ears.

overall: change some of the sfx, maybe redesign the ui. 8/10 game. ill still be playing to check out how much it has progressed. good job :smiley:

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Thanks for your criticism!

It’s the first time I’ve heard someone talking about the sound effects haha. Personally I think it’s quite satisfying, but you can always turn the sound effects off in settings!

The prices of gamepass have also been changed since then. :slight_smile:

Let me know if you have any ideas to increase the value of the gamepasses!