Word games cannot drown players in words

Hello everyone, this time I want to talk about the mobile experience of International Student Simulator.

When making word games, it’s easy to have the illusion that it’s all words anyway, so it doesn’t matter if you write more. One more background, one more card, one more description, one more button doesn't seem to be a big problem. It wasn't until I put the game on my mobile phone that I realized that the problem was not "whether it was written clearly", but that the player simply did not have the energy to read the entire screen.

Computer screens are very wide and people are more patient. Cell phones are different. Every line of text on the mobile phone is like waiting in line for the player's approval. Just a little more, and the screen will turn into a poster for the freshman orientation: everything is included, but people already want to escape.

So in this update, we have broken down the opening process again.

The original opening page wanted to cover too many things at once: you had to choose a degree level, choose a character, read the instructions, and understand how to play the game. It looks like a new kid who has just landed, standing at the exit of the airport, holding in his hand the pick-up group information, rental address, school map, phone card instructions and customs receipt. Everything is important, but nothing fits in the same second.

Now the process is broken down into two lighter steps. First select the degree stage, and then enter the selection type of study. Players are not faced with an entire row of cards on the first screen, nor are they forced to digest all the information right from the start. The game is still the same game, but it has finally learned to let people take a breath first.

Random archive pages are also compressed.

It turns out that I like to break down files very finely. Name, city, major, spiritual pillar, core goals, sources of anxiety, every field should be carefully displayed. The problem is that if you show too much care, it will look like an over-designed resume. The player has just created a character and has already read a bunch of life biographies before starting life.

The profile page now looks more like a compact summary. It retains the most important information, letting you know "who am I in this round", but it will not stand on the podium and read out the entire profile like the class teacher. Life as a student abroad is of course complicated, but the game shouldn’t throw all the complexity in the player’s face at the beginning.

The main game page has also been reprioritized.

On a mobile phone, the most important thing is not to let all the information appear, but to let the information that should appear appear first. So we put the role, five-dimensional status and this week's loss in a higher position. To-dos and logs still exist, but are downgraded to secondary information.

This sounds like a small layout adjustment, but it has a big impact on the pace of the game. Because what players really care about is: Am I okay now? What happened this week? Will this choice make me worse off, or slightly better? A word game becomes a word maze if the answer is hidden behind a pile of folded information and history.

We also removed the original weekly action point processing to allow the weekly process to enter the main random events more quickly.

This isn't because Action Points are bad, it's because they make the pacing drag a bit in the current meta. The most interesting thing about International Student Simulator is not that players arrange their lives like filling out a form every week, but the feeling of "I'm not ready yet, but things have already happened". A small episode at the beginning of the week, and then directly face the main event of the week, which is faster and more realistic.

Of course, I was a little reluctant when making these adjustments.

Many of the things that have been compressed are things that I once thought were "very interesting." But after the game is launched, what creators should restrain most is precisely this kind of "I think it is interesting." Players don't need to see all of my thought process. Players only need to successfully enter that round of life after opening the game.

The essence of this mobile adjustment is not to reduce the number of words, but to return the sense of breathing to the game.

International Student Simulator is, after all, a text simulation game about life in a foreign land. It can be embarrassing, it can be chaotic, and it can have many moments that make people want to laugh and sigh. But it shouldn't put players off by the interface before they actually get started.

I hope that when you open the game, you don't have to fight with the page first.

After all, life in a foreign land is hard enough.

VibeSims / International Student Simulator