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Word game
Category
UX/UI
Illustration
Game
Year
2020
When I was working as a Designer in Playstack (a videogame publishing company) we had a mobile game that was not performing as expected. It was present both in the App and Google Stores and the reviews were good, but was struggling. The game was initially released in 2018, and by 2020 was due a refresh.
The aim of this project is to find the reasons why it wasn't performing better and offer a solution to it
About the game
GetFact is a word trivia game where you get to reveal the hidden words of each level behind fascinating facts. As you start out you’ll be given a sentence with one or more words undiscovered. The missing words are often too essential and irreplaceable for the full meaning of the given fact and that’s the part that can reduce distinctly your research on the subject. You try to figure out the missing words using the rearranged letters at the bottom of the screen to compose the missing word. Users have as many attempts as they need. The game features over 1,000 interesting facts divided in just the same number of levels.
Research
Pain points
Clunky and uninspiring mechanic
Easy to get stuck on a level
Outdated look
Competitors
The word game market on mobile games is very big, some of the most successful examples of games we that compete against are Wordscapes, Word Lanes, Word Guess and 4 pics 1 word amongst many others.
Ideation
Mechanic
Aesthetic
Interface
Test different mechanics, like swipe letters or word search puzzle
More interesting backgrounds, illustrations
Serif font is adding to the outdated look, change to a sans serif font
Make more colourful, relaxing and appealing
Add fact categories, and the possibility to jump to the next level and come back to this level in the future
Testing
After some testing the word search puzzle mechanic got the best results, as well as landscape illustration background instead of photography or more abstract images.
Design
Prototype
- Word search puzzle mechanic, swiping not tapping
- Calmer new aesthetic: whimsical illustration backgrounds, paired with calm background sounds.
- Gilroy Sans serif font and narrower spaces for the letter boxes, makes the word look smaller and therefore easier.
- More rewarding and positive graphics (stars, colourful graphics, encouraging messages)
- More responsive design (when swiping over the puzzle the selected letters change colour and move slightly with the swipe).
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Background illustrations
I had the pleasure to create the first background illustrations too, setting up the style to be continued from now on.
