I've been playing Supernauts for the past few weeks and really like a lot of things about this charming game. However, I did feel like the game has confused priorities where it doesn't let me do what it excels at, and pushes me to do stuff I don't care much about. I noticed the creative focus shifting even more so with the recent updates and thought of putting down, well, my thoughts.
For those who don't know, Supernauts is a stunning 3D world-builder game with puzzle-solving missions from new and upcoming, Kallio, Finland-based studio Grand Cru. Goal of the game is to build the biggest civilization in space in your creative impression (a la minecraft).
Supernauts has quite a few things going for them - game is fun, has gorgeous graphics with a beautiful art-palette and, seemingly infinite possibilities for the creative expression. Character art and narrative are charming, with quirky NPCs providing the occasional comic relief. Social is deep-enough with leaderboards, ratings and live-interactions. Monetization premise is simple and effective - you build your world using blocks and they charge you for them. F2P hooks are aplenty and don't feel forced, for the most part. What is it missing then?, you ask.
Nothing, in my opinion. What's holding it from greatness is that it is trying to do TOO MUCH at the expense of taking the focus away from the creative expression, which is where the game really shines. Clutter is evident everywhere from gameplay to social mechanics to UI and UX. Let's take a look.
Supernauts has quite a few things going for them - game is fun, has gorgeous graphics with a beautiful art-palette and, seemingly infinite possibilities for the creative expression. Character art and narrative are charming, with quirky NPCs providing the occasional comic relief. Social is deep-enough with leaderboards, ratings and live-interactions. Monetization premise is simple and effective - you build your world using blocks and they charge you for them. F2P hooks are aplenty and don't feel forced, for the most part. What is it missing then?, you ask.
Nothing, in my opinion. What's holding it from greatness is that it is trying to do TOO MUCH at the expense of taking the focus away from the creative expression, which is where the game really shines. Clutter is evident everywhere from gameplay to social mechanics to UI and UX. Let's take a look.
The Core Loop
The core loop of the game is to build base blocks, refine them into material blocks and use them to create one's own world.
I used dotted lines to connect Missions above because they feel irrelevant to the core-loop, although one does rescue citizens from the Earth-bound missions and generates income from them. Missions unlock with every level up and need significant time to complete and, going by game's release notes, quite a bit of recent development effort is being spent on missions. Time and effort spent on non-essential features, and their complexity in general, forms the crux of my first recommendation.
Recommendation # 1: Focus on the creative expression
In my opinion, primary focus of the game should be on the creative world-building sandbox and puzzle-solving missions should only come as a secondary motif. At the minimum, missions should aid and not take away from the core-loop. In short, Missions in their current state need a purpose that is deeply aligned with the core-loop.
1. Revamp Missions - there are 2 things which are missing:
Recommendation # 1: Focus on the creative expression
In my opinion, primary focus of the game should be on the creative world-building sandbox and puzzle-solving missions should only come as a secondary motif. At the minimum, missions should aid and not take away from the core-loop. In short, Missions in their current state need a purpose that is deeply aligned with the core-loop.
1. Revamp Missions - there are 2 things which are missing:
- Missions are disconnected from the core-loop: Missions are designed to engage players who enjoy longer sessions (more than 5 minutes) while the core-loop of UGC world-creation lacks longer sessions as there isn't much to do after one has collected from machines and set them to build materials. I come back to the game to build my creative world but find myself short on stuff and pushed to do puzzle missions.
Missions would serve well by supplanting the main core-loop of building one's customized world with longer-session closures. Partially built structures in exotic world-wide locations that ignite and facilitate players' creativity will make for a great start.
- Missions feel repetitive yet require significant mental-bandwidth: Missions are fun in the beginning but get grindy very soon. After having the aha moments of knowing that one needs to zap stuff to rescue citizens or eat mushrooms to lift trash bins etc., the satisfaction of solving puzzle becomes mundane.
More importantly, owing to its design, the missions still consume appreciable mental-bandwidth in ways the puzzles of 'Amazing Alex' or 'Bad Piggies' (games from Rovio) do. This is not only a retention issue for the targeted demographic, but also narrows the mass-market reach. Serious stuff!
- Mission design makes it a chore by piling on repetitive stuff. For example, in mission 'Heavy Lifting', I've 3 zappers to pick up to zap bush, window and timber (all needed), have 4 blue + 1 green bins and a car that need to be picked up by eating 3 mushrooms, and require lifting and throwing in a repetitive way to rescue one citizen. Short range for zappers and adjustment required to throw bins in the right direction further tests one's patience and adds to the session time.
2. Kill the 'Sell-ice-creams-to-other-players'-citizens-for-coins' feature: Good features are hard. Retention is even harder and it's quite common to spend a lot of sweat, time and money in building features that don't pan out. It is still OK to kill them because not only does it bring clarity to the core-loop features, but also because this whole thing has this weird propensity to lead and keep devs on the same extraneous path for much, much longer.
I think I can reasonably guess how this feature development could have played out :
Team member A: Let's introduce an ice-cream feature so that people return to their appointment times.
Team member B: Great, it's done but now some players complain about not being able to find citizens with their pockets full of coins.
Team member A: Ok, let's show those turfs on the Featured Turf under Social to guarantee ice-cream trades.
Team member B: Great, it's done but now players are placing their rocket on a tower and zapping the base so that no one can steal their coins.
Team member A: Damn! Anything else?
Team member B: Now real friends can't visit or interact either.
Besides being extraneous, ice-cream feature has other things that are off-putting:
I think I can reasonably guess how this feature development could have played out :
Team member A: Let's introduce an ice-cream feature so that people return to their appointment times.
Team member B: Great, it's done but now some players complain about not being able to find citizens with their pockets full of coins.
Team member A: Ok, let's show those turfs on the Featured Turf under Social to guarantee ice-cream trades.
Team member B: Great, it's done but now players are placing their rocket on a tower and zapping the base so that no one can steal their coins.
Team member A: Damn! Anything else?
Team member B: Now real friends can't visit or interact either.
Besides being extraneous, ice-cream feature has other things that are off-putting:
- It provides an unpleasant "welcome" to the game - when I come back to the game to find that I don't have any income from my citizens because somebody gave them the ice-cream, it creates a bad taste (pun intended) in my mouth.
- It is conflicting as the game is otherwise socially-cooperative.
- It feels tacked-on since there is no good fiction for getting ice-creams (you get them randomly while building other materials?)
Coming back to the subject of creative world-building one more time, not only do I want to have frustration-free fun while building it, but also have a feeling of great satisfaction and pride in my creations while I look at them - and these 2 motivations form the basis for my second recommendation. Despite my reasonable efforts to learn the interactions, I find myself doing-it-wrong occasionally and am left wanting to get that Zen-like feeling while admiring my world.
Recommendation # 2: Simplify
There are a few opportunities to simplify that will all add to the intuitive understanding of the game by taking frustrations away from the interface, and by visually separating the means (clutter) from the end (my stunning creations).
1. User Interface: UI is clever in certain ways and feels cumbersome and non-intuitive in others, specially for a new player. There were plenty of accidental zaps, unintended builds and "can't walk here" taps that were cognitively frustrating. Here is what I believe is reasonably solvable:
Recommendation # 2: Simplify
There are a few opportunities to simplify that will all add to the intuitive understanding of the game by taking frustrations away from the interface, and by visually separating the means (clutter) from the end (my stunning creations).
1. User Interface: UI is clever in certain ways and feels cumbersome and non-intuitive in others, specially for a new player. There were plenty of accidental zaps, unintended builds and "can't walk here" taps that were cognitively frustrating. Here is what I believe is reasonably solvable:
- Have an Undo button while in Zap or Build mode (Undo by placing second finger while keeping the first on the play-space is non-intuitive) Players are requesting it and it is a big deal.
- Combine Makers and Bots: they serve the same purpose and also because Bot UI is beautiful. It will require some UI and numbers tweaking, but it can be done. And I promise, it will be net ROI +ive when you trade short-term monetization with long-term retention. If that is asking for too much, differentiating Makers and Bots in a visually-intuitive way at the minimum, would still be very valuable.
Visual-language: what do these machines do?
2. Missing "Sense of peace": There are a lot of exaggerated animations-for-animations-sake that diminish the sense-of-creative-accomplishment and sense-of-peace that staring and admiring at my wonderful world would gratify me with otherwise. Wobbling icons and HUDs, running counters and jumpy exclamation points also take that feeling away and feel spammy in a zynga-esque way. De-clutter my playspace to bring me that Zen-like feeling while I admire my creation.
One way of doing that would be to put all the means (Makers, Bots, task list NPC robot, Rocket and Life Support Cube etc.) on an adjacent space and have that space be detached from the sandbox play-space, the way the Block Market is currently.
One way of doing that would be to put all the means (Makers, Bots, task list NPC robot, Rocket and Life Support Cube etc.) on an adjacent space and have that space be detached from the sandbox play-space, the way the Block Market is currently.
Finally, don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of things which are great about the game as I described in the beginning of this article. It is doing relatively well in Finland, but I would rather go out on a limb and speak my mind - I do believe that Supernauts is trying to do too much and that it can be a real mass-market success by focusing on facilitating the creative sandbox as its top priority. Good luck to the team!
Supernauts - game screenshots
You can download the game from Canadian Appstore