Snow Way in Hell Review

Reviewed byJello Karaboo Squad

Aaron Christian Austin Steyer

Anthony StewartBrandon Pounds

Justin LelosAssignment 1July 12,2015

Full Sail University

Game Summary

This game is set as a side scrolling platformer. Your character has been in a tragic accident that has placed him in an evil place. You play as Snowball that is trying to escape from hell. You must shrink, grow, fight off enemies and even the devil himself while solving puzzles to find your freedom. Travel through Nine circles of hell to redeem your life and find yourself lifted into good graces.

Problem Button Activation / Feedback

Rating Important

Description Activating a button in the game allows the player to open gates and advance through the level. The problem with this is that when the player does activate the button, turning it from red to green, the game provides no feedback to the player. While the player knows something has happened due to the changing of button color, without feedback telling the player that a gate has opened the player is left without a sense of direction. It can be easy for a player to get lost or confused when no feedback is given especially if the feedback concerns advancing in the level. Feedback for the button itself can also be an issue as the player has to assume that the button was activated based only on the changing of color.

Solution A solution for this problem can be solved by adding text boxes and sounds for each interaction. When the player activates the button the game should tell the player that they have activated the button opening a gate through a text box. Along with the text box displaying feedback for the player a sound should be played letting the player know that they have triggered both the button and the gate.

Reference Shot

Visibility of System Status

Problem Hovering/ Shrinking and Growing

Rating Benign

Description The user in the game can both hover in the air by throwing a snowball onto a pit of fire and will shrink or grow at different points in the game. Neither of these interactions applies real world conventions. The player would not know that they would hover into the air by throwing a snowball into a fire pit without prior knowledge from the game. This also applies to the player shrinking and growing in size, as it is not a convention of the real world. The problem with this is that the player would need to learn these mechanics from the game so it doesn’t come as a surprise to the player. The player would simply not understand that these events would take place.

Solution The solution for these problems would be the game telling the player beforehand that these two interactions happen, either before they happen or as they are happening, A tutorial or text box informing the player that these mechanics are going to be used and are needed would solve the problem of the player finding out on their own. If the game presents the player with something that doesn’t fit real world conventions, the game needs to give that knowledge to the player as they would not know otherwise.

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Match Between System and the Real World

Problem No Way to skip End Cutscene

Rating benign

Description Upon winning the game the user is presented with a black screen only showing the health bar of the player avatar. This blank screen is paired with a long and mostly non captivating piece of audio. The player is given no choice but to sit and through the scene without a way skip past it.

Solution The best solution for this problem is two fold. First the game creators need to make a button that the player can press to skip the cutscene and return them to the main menu. This needs to be represented on screen through text and imagery through. Second The player is more likely to Stay and listen to the information provided if there is some kind of visual on screen to help them care and pay attention.

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User Control and Freedom

Problem Button Mapping/Help Options

Rating Important

Description The player has no HELP option at the main menu. Although the game has an easy to learn control system, providing the proper documentation will allow the player to learn the mechanics of the game much sooner. Also this would make the player experience a lot less frustrating that going through trial and error to figure these mechanics out.

Solution Developers should provide the player with a HELP menu option, this will give the player a reference for button configurations and game tips. The help menu could be 1 page in length, which displays the button map for the game. It would also contain brief descriptions of non-playable characters so the player knows what they are going to see in the game. It could also contain game tips to show examples of the mechanics being used properly. This way it’s a quick reference that won’t take away from game play yet provide vital information that will help the player in their progression.

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Help and Documentation

Problem Errors and Save points

Rating Critical

Description The game has checkpoints which is good if a player dies then the player can start at that checkpoint. However if the game crashes or freezes the player has to start from the very beginning. This can be frustrating to users since they could have been playing for a half hour gotten to a checkpoint and then the system crashes. There is also no error response showing what error happened to cause the crash or stating to the user what happened to cause the problem. An example of an error would be, if the player disconnects the mouse or controller the game does not pause or state that the controller is not there.

Solution Some fixes that we could do to fixes these issues that would take little time to add, and not cost that much to add. We need to add a quick save feature. Any time a player hits a checkpoint it should save in a extra folder on a computer that can be overwritten with new checkpoints. This would save players time and frustrating and would not take much more space on the device. We also add a continue button in the pause menu or main menu that would allow the player to jump to the most recent save. This would be good to have especially after a system crash. We would also need to add some pause feature if the controller is disconnected with a pop error report stating what the problem is. If an error that is non recoverable a new screen should appear stating that the game needs to restart, and be add a restart button to the screen. This would save a lot of issues with players starting all over from the beginning, and from losing customers.

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Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Problem Checkpoints ambiguity

Rating benign

Description When playing through the game the player can make there way through levels and reach checkpoints where they will be revived at. The problem that players are running in to is that the checkpoints have no identifying markers. There is a small audio clip that plays but if the player misses it or is hard of hearing they have no idea they have reached a checkpoint.

Solution Placing a little icon where a checkpoint is or marking them with a light would let players know that they are at least halfway through the level and going the right way. A safe point could also be added to the checkpoints that might give the player some rest.

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Recognition Rather Than Recall

Problem Game Difficulty / Game understanding

Rating Important

Description No matter how many times you play the game it's the same game. When a player finishes the game there is no veteran mode they can play, or difficulty settings in the menu. There is no introduction to the users making sure that non-experienced players understand the button layout or understand how to play. If you look in the Game Design Document, it tells you a little bit on how to play the game. However, in the game itself you have to press buttons to figure it out.

Solution There are two fixes that we could do here. We can add a little bit more to the beginning of the game, like a tutorial stage or an introduction section. This can be skipped by the player if they have already played the game before. After the introduction stage you could be able to set your difficulty settings. The Second thing that would need to be added is a difficulty setting vender. The difficulty does not have to add more to the level design just need to add more enemies and take more damage from enemies. This would give the feeling of a more difficult level.

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Flexibility and Efficiency of use

Problem No end game splash/transition

Rating Critical

Description When the avatar loses all its frozenness to the demons the game does nothing to advise the player that the game is over. Based on Consistency and Standards of platform games the player is notified when their game is over with a splash screen or an animation to show that the player has lost all of their life and to end the game. Since players expect to know when their game is over, this would be an important problem that would need to be rectified as quickly as possible.

Solution Place an animation on the avatar that shows they have run out of frozenness and the game is over. The animation could be the player melting from the heat of the enemies. Then display on the screen that the game is over; by providing this feedback the game is keeping platform convention for the player and also can provide other help like error prevention, in case the player doesn’t want to play again ask if they would like to restart.

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Consistency and Standards

Problem No saving or warning

Rating Important

Description When quitting the game there is no dialogue that states that the player will lose all progress the player quits. As show below the pause menu only says play and start. When hovering over quit and pressing quit there is nothing that shows up.

Solution The solution to the problem would be to have a message appear either saying “ Are you sure you want to quit” and or “ Progress will not be saved”. This is a very easy fix that could make a world of difference for players that need a break or even accidently quit the game by a mis-click of the quit button.

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Error Prevention

Problem To fast of a loading screen

Rating Benign

Description There wasn't much dialogue but the loading screen did have some. Unfortunately no one can read it since it comes by in an instant. The picture below is the loading screen. The information isn't very important but the player should be able to read the small hints on the screen since there is also no control menu.

Solution The solution would be to leave the load screen for a longer time or to have the player click to continue off of the loading screen. Since the player may want to know what level they are currently on or just plainly be able to see what is on a screen that flew by.

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Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

ReferencesPs4 error report/PS4 CE-34878-0 crash error Bug/community page/by funnyangrykid/September_2014http://www.reddit.com/r/PS4/comments/2cs48k/ps4_ce348780_crash_error_bug/