Team Assignment 1: Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics

Ian Henderson, Quinton Maza, Dante Odorico, Brian Pisarczyk, and David Sabre

Assignment 2Full Sail University

Game SummarySnow Way in Hell is a survival themed platformer. Players take on the role of a snowball in Hell that becomes sentient and must escape. Players then run and jump to traverse the dangerous landscapes. They must avoid enemies and/or freeze and consume them using snowballs. This game takes place in a cartoony version of Hell. There are a total of nine levels that players must play through, with two bosses to defeat.

Problem There are no meaningful cues about system status.

Rating Major

Description ● There are two statuses: “Frozeness” and “Timer”● There are also no visual cues for death or injury. ● There is no outline to define and separate the system status from the game’s

background.

Solution ● By using the snowball as its own visual cue, the snowball could flash once when it’s hit and flash continuously when the player’s health is low.

● By placing a colored box behind the statuses, they would be easier to read.

Reference Shot

These are the only two cues for the player: a clock that counts up and a “Frozeness” bar that is never properly explained.

Visibility of System Status

Problem The game adheres to basic logic most of the time (gravity, death, enemies, etc.), but there are some mechanics (like flying on steam and eating enemies) that go against what a player might expect.

Rating Major

Description ● By throwing a snowball onto fire, the player creates a fountain of steam that carries them up. This is never explained by the game, and doesn’t seem like an obvious action.

● The player is not notified as to what their limited resources are (health, snowballs, time limit).

● No clues on how to complete the level (arrows pointing in the directions, sound effects).

Solution ● By explaining to players the logic behind these mechanics, they wouldn’t feel so absurd and out of place.

● Place arrows that gives the player hints, or clues, towards a specific task.● Include a message, sound effect, or highlight the specific resource that is running

low.

Reference Shot

An example of the steam that inexplicably forms over fire after a snowball lands on it.

Match Between Systems and the Real World

Problem On exiting the game, there is no confirm prompt.

Rating Minor

Description ● When exiting the game from the in-game menu, one click brings the player back to the main menu and erases all checkpoints.

Solution ● A confirmation prompt that appears when the player clicks exit that says: “Are you sure you want to quit? All progress will be lost.” would prevent a player from accidentally exiting and losing all of their progress.

Reference Shot

When a player tries to exit the game, there is no confirmation prompt or corresponding information displayed.

User Control and Freedom

Problem Running into enemies brings different results sometimes.

Rating Minor

Description ● When the player usually runs into enemies, the player takes damage while the enemy is fine.

● After the player freezes an enemy, the player has to run into the enemy again in order to consume him.

● Walking into a frozen enemy doesn’t trigger an animation or notify you that you’ve accomplished something.

Solution ● By either explaining the difference in strategy, or making the action of walking into an enemy always have the same effect, the mechanic would be less confusing.

Reference Shot

In this shot, a player is between an enemy that will kill him if it touches him, and a frozen enemy that grants the player more life for touching it.

Consistency and Standards

Problem There is no system currently in place to minimize player errors.

Rating Major

Description ● Players play the game without any instruction concerning controls, enemies, obstacles, or even the end goal.

● While playing through, players will inevitably make errors (like walking right into lava because they don’t know how to double jump) that may become very frustrating.

● Players are not given any options after falling into lava or health running low.

Solution ● Context-based clues, whether in the form of on-screen text, audio, or pictogram, would probably prevent most player error due to trial-and-error.

● Players should be given a choice to either restart the level, reload the last checkpoint, or end the game.

Reference Shot

On death, the player is not told how to prevent making the same error twice.

Error Prevention

Problem Since the game never tells players how to control their character, players are forced to learn all the mechanics by trial and error. Whenever a player encounters an obstacle, they needs to remember all of the mechanics they’ve learned so far.

Rating Major

Description ● Whenever a player encounters an obstacle, it’s up to the player to memorize how to overcome it.

● Some mechanics, like using steam to float over lava, are so obscure that some players that come across them have little to no idea on how to progress.

● All controls need to be memorized by the player; there’s no in-game instruction.

Solution ● By including an on-screen cue the first few times the player encounters the given condition, players learn to associate the game’s cues with possible actions. This could then be encouraged further through the use of color or sound cues giving the player hints about similar obstacles.

● There should be a “tutorial” level to teach the player the controls and mechanics.

Reference Shot

Whenever a player encounters an enemy or obstacle, it’s entirely up to the player to try to discover - then remember - the appropriate course of action.

Recognition Rather than Recall

Problem Players have no options to adjust the game’s difficulty or set up the game in any form.

Rating Minor

Description ● The menu does not allow for players to select a difficulty that matches their skill level.

● This game scales way too quickly, this is in part to the lack of description for in-game mechanics, but also the overall difficulty of the puzzles.

● Complex jump patterns and snowball throwing mechanics make for a frustrating time for most players.

Solution ● Create the game to have an “easy” mode accessible for new players, as well as make both “easy” and “hard” accessible from the main screen.

● Alternatively, this game could slowly scale up towards a higher difficulty as the player progresses through the levels.

● The difficulty of all levels could be reduced than they currently are. An example of this could be reducing level obstacles in size and number.

Reference Shot

The only options available to the player involve graphic and audio output. Nothing that concerns actual gameplay.

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

Problem The background is full of irrelevant information and action.The game has little information that is helpful to the player.

Rating Minor

Description ● The game takes on a minimalist design in most of its components, but the distinction between foreground and background is distracting.

● The background serves only as a distraction from what’s happening to the player in the foreground.

● The only information provided to the player are yellow arrows that will enlarge the player or shrink the player.

Solution ● By restricting the role that the background plays to scenery or an occasional event, the player would have less distractions.

Reference Shot

In this shot, you see that the background is hard to distinguish from the action of the foreground. The background is both scenery (a massive chair) and a threat (the rocket launching statues).

Aesthetics and Minimal Design

Problem In the event that the player dies, there is no instruction about what the player has to do to avoid the same error twice.

Rating Major

Description ● After the player dies there’s no feedback for the player telling them what caused them to die or what made them restart from a checkpoint.

Solution ● A brief message on the screen that explains why the player died and how to restart the game.

Reference Shot

On death, there’s no feedback for the player whatsoever, just a blank screen.

Diagnose and Recover From Errors

Problem Little to no documentation.

Rating Major

Description ● The game provides very little online documentation to describe how to play the game.

● The game lacks any page or menu that displays the button layout and overall control scheme of the game.

Solution ● By including a visible in-game control scheme or help menu, players would have a reliable resource to learn more about, and better understand, the game.

Reference Shot

On the pause menu, there is no way to check or learn the controls. By adding a control layout or tutorial page to the pause menu, players could learn more about the game without wasting time on trial and error.

Helpful Documentation

References1. Nielsen, J. (January, 1995). Characteristics of Usability Problems Found by Heuristic

Evaluation.Retrieved from:http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-problems-found-by-heuristic-evaluation/

2. Nielsen, J. (January 1995). 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.Retrieved from:http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

3. Sticks-N-Stones. (January, 2012). Game Design Document for Snow Way in Hell. Document.

4. Sticks-N-Stones. (2012). Snow Way in Hell.Game.