Game Flow Study

This post is a quick visual experiment to observe UX flow for the following three games.

• Dad n’ Me
• Cannon Bods
• Portal Defender

Dad n’ Me

Dad n’ Me (DnM) is a multi-level, side-scroll, smash and bash game from Dan Paladin and Tom Fulp. Wearing a white mask, one plays as the purple biped beating and bullying kids. The player can interact with the environment like picking and throwing elements or exploding them by punching it. DnM also features a  mini-soccer game which provides good game-play variation. As of today, the game has received over 15 million game plays and has been well received by the Newgrounds community.

Studying the user-experience flow of DnM, this game has a large number of stopping screens. This is probably because the game art assets were updated later to accommodate new information. The updated splash and end pages of the game serves as a callout box to the release of the console game by the same creators. Both the intro animations and the death animation are well integrated into the story.

Cannon Bods

Cannon Bods is matching game at heart, where one has to shoot matching pirates out of a cannon to the parachuting pirates raining from the sky. Use the mouse to control the angle and strength of the cannon shots and create a chain reaction with well placed pirates that rebound off the edge causing more damage. The game is filled with a few surprises and is worth a good casual game. As of today, the game has received over 186k  game plays.

Looking at the user-experience flow of Cannon Bods, the starting experience contains two advertisements and the gamer previews the splash. The game requires at least three clicks to get to the game-play.

Portal Defender

Portal Defender is a hack-n-slash side scroll game that pays homage to Castle Crashing the Beard and Pico Blast. One gets to play as Tom Fulp, Dan Paladin or unlock any of the remaining four players. Using a variety of moves, fight a large range of bad guys and mini bosses. The game has received over two million game-plays.

For a game with a well-deserved long play, Portal Defender can be justified for it’s relatively large number of screens before game-play. The end animation is very simple and gives the user the choice to jump back to the character selection page. This offer the gamer a variety of choices with these mixed game variables.

Studying these there games, we can point out that all the three games have a bunch of screen stoppers that serves as a marketing/ad-revenue generating model. This is a necessity as it is one of the many ways to monetize  indie-based web games. I guess the big challenge for game designers is to find a good balance of UX and screen stoppers.The basic need to fulfill this requirement would be to create a smooth and uninterrupted game UX, yet be profitable to the developer.