[Case Study] Alien Paddle Breaker

Bumping retention numbers from 5% to 15% through design review and rapid prototyping

APB Description

Alien Paddle Breaker is a brick breaking game with a twist, where the bricks come to life as invading aliens. Your mission is to defend your lab by using a paddle to bounce a ball and defeat alien invaders. Dropping the ball means game over, so stay sharp!

Problem

Alien Paddle Breaker’s initial implementation proved to be very difficult for casual players (to get past the first few levels). Its user experience is confusing and frustrating because of how the mechanics and features are introduced. This resulted in a drop-off of players during the initial market testing. 

Solution

Overhaul the entire user experience of the game

We start off by accessing the current game flow and see where the pain points are–alongside data that shows where players drop off. This will give an idea which feature or mechanic are working well with the concept and which is causing frustrations in the game

Parts of the overhaul went to reworking the level map, tweaking the level design per level to make the easier for casual players, and to simplify some features implemented to make them easy to understand. 

Old Level Map

New Level Map

Introduce Boss Mechanic

Apart from overhauling the game, we added a new feature in the game called Boss levels. These are special levels where there will be a giant alien acting as the boss. It comes with special abilities such as spawning minions of aliens and generating shield to prevent being damaged. This adds to the fun factor of the game, making it more appealing to casual players and act as an “application” level where they can utilize the powerups and gadgets to defeat the boss. 

Key Decisions

Overhauling the game

The game itself is “unplayable” in the sense that players tend to drop off at the first few levels. Once the first few minutes of the game is less stressful and more achievable, players can finally reach the other features and mechanics of the game. 

• Removing Environment Obstacles - Initially, there are walls and barricades in different levels. While it is a good challenge for the players, introduced early into the game feels very frustrating, especially with the added challenge of tanky enemies and moving enemies. We removed it in the early levels but are tagged to be added back in later levels – around level 15-20.

  
  

• Improving the Gadget system – The Gadget system has been one of the primary source of pain points for players because of how it was introduced. Before, it required a secondary action in order to activate its effect, something that breaks the flow of the player experience. Since majority of the time, the attention is focused on the middle-to-lower part of the screen (paddle, and ball), there is no mental space to conduct a secondary action that uses a different control from the primary one. To solve this, we just made the Gadget to trigger automatically as soon as the Fever meter is full. This removes the strain of trying to activate it while keeping an eye on the ball’s movement. 

Adding the Boss Mechanic

Apart from fixing the game’s issue with player experience, we also decided to introduce a new feature to make the game more fun. By adding Boss levels, this tests the players of the things they have learned in the levels leading up to the boss fight. It also breaks the monotony of the levels and to introduced something new. 

Impact

The result is an increase of Day 1 Retention Rate from 5% to 15% in two weeks. This is based on the market test done in the Philippines for Android. 

Learnings

• Sometimes, taking a step back and assessing the current state of the product opens up new ideas on how to make it work. 

• Don’t be afraid to remove features that aren’t working and are just causing confusion to your audience

• Simplicity is practical.