When it comes to designing games you think you might know everything, but players are unpredictable.
But players are not the issue. The issue is always a design mistake - because I designed it poorly, players couldn't understand what to do next.
Somewhere around the beginning of Immortum, on the spaceship itself, there is a door leading to a classic psychological mindfuck. You can escape this crazy room, but the door locks behind you.
My mistake was using that door to open another real room, with a key card. But people had already used that door, and most of them didn't assume it could be opened with the newly picked-up card.
And again, I am not blaming users. I was completely at fault here. I am certain I would draw the same conclusions if I were playing Immortum for the first time.
At this stage, I didn't want to introduce groundbreaking changes to Immortum, but I had to do something. Seeing people get stuck or even drop the demo because of it was frustrating.
So how did I solve it?
Each room had a big map showing which rooms led where, but this specific room was just a plain arrow because it was a hallway. So I updated the text on the card title to include the same hint as the arrow in the map - an infinity symbol.
Nope. Too complex.
Since it was too complex, I had to make it simpler. Yellow paint in game development is where you very obviously tell the player what to do. It should mostly be avoided because the entire fun of the game is feeling empowered and as if you figure things out for yourself.
So I added a lock underneath the symbol - quite obvious - it is a locked door so it should be opened up with a key. Right?
Nope.
A player assumed it was just locked and the map got updated.
It had to be more obvious, but I still didn't want to tell the player exactly what to do. So instead of the lock I decided to put a card symbol underneath the arrow. This way it would be obvious to link the card to the map and the exact place where it shows the card.
I hope.
I just added the fix so it wasn't tested it.
The sample size is currently small, but if it becomes a major issue, I will add to one of the tablets text that says that the room can be unlocked with a specific key.
But I want to avoid it because it is too obvious and I don't want Immortum to feel like it is on rails.
If I were to redesign this level, I wouldn't use the same door for two different rooms. I can't think of any other game that really does it. Immortum is supposed to be a bag of crazy, but not the frustrating type.
Hopefully, this will lay to rest this annoying problem that has been my arch nemesis for so long.
At least it is better than bugs haha.