Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics“Snow Way in Hell”

Bloodhound StudiosJesus Olivares, John Miniel, Jerry Rauhuff,

Cody Rinehart, Wayne WorkAssignment 1

Full Sail University

AbstractThe usability of a game is dependant on many different factors. In order to assess the end product of a game, the game is tested many times over to locate, and solve, the problems that may plague it. In “Snow Way In Hell”, we viewed many problems, in the game as well as the menus, that could be improved with easy and quick solutions.

Game SummarySnow Way in Hell is a simple platformer that attempts to play like such games as the original Super Mario. The player controls a Snowball trying to escape the grips of Hell. It uses a constantly diminishing lifebar to push the player forward through the level and forces them to kill enemies to replenish their life. The player must also interact with buttons to open locked doors as well as use snowballs to help boost them through the air to various platforms. The game is fairly linear, with only one path for the player to follow minus a few small detours to find door unlocks. Enemies are largely painless to defeat and prove little more than an annoyance to the player. Overall, Snow Way in Hell is nothing more than a standard 2D platformer with no bells or whistles to note.

Problem There is no indication that larger enemies are taking damage from the player

Rating Moderate

Description The player’s attacks do not show any damage numbers or indication that a hit has been made. This is seen specifically on the larger Fire Elementals. The player does not know if the Fire Elementals are damaged by snowballs at all until one randomly turns into snow.

Solution Add an animation or sound effect for when the enemy is hit. (100% of the time). Also add a visual Damage Indicator above the enemy’s name when one is hit.

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Visibility of System Status

Problem Fire in the game is used as a tool to reach higher places instead of harming the Snowball player

Rating Moderate

Description The player must throw a snowball at fire pits for them to push smoke out and ride the smoke into the air. While this may work mechanically, it does not fit within the confines of a real world situation where fire would melt the Snowball and confuses players.

Solution Make it so that the snowballs put the fire out for a short time and create the smoke instead of keeping the fire burning while the Snowball is flying above it.

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Match Between System and the Real World

Problem There is no Level Select or ability for the player to choose where he wants to go.

Rating Important

Description The player always starts from Level 1 at the very beginning of the level. Quitting the game removes all checkpoint saves and there is no way for the player to go back to somewhere they were before. This dissuades the player from ever quitting the game and is disappointing because the player must start over from square one if they do quit.

Solution Add a Level Select option to the Main Menu so the player can jump between levels or return to areas he/she has been before.

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User Control and Freedom

Problem Active enemies and static obstacles look exactly the same

Rating Important

Description The enemies that you actively fight in the game (Fire Elementals) are also used as a turret type enemy that shoots projectiles at you. This can cause some confusion for the player, making it somewhat difficult to distinguish between active enemies and background obstacles.

Solution Switch the projectile mechanic to the actual enemies themselves to better distinguish the active enemies from background objects. Most of the background enemies aren’t within the normal path of the player anyways so they are largely useless.

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Consistency and Standards

Problem There is no “reset” that allows the player to return to the previous checkpoint if he/she gets stuck.

Rating Important

Description In the screenshot below, the player shrunk and went into the dragon head. The player then fell down from the ledge above and grew large again, which caused him to get stuck in the gap. This occurs in several other places with the Grow/Shrink mechanic in the game.

Solution Give the player a menu prompt to press a key that restarts them at their previous checkpoint.

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Error Prevention

Problem There is no indication of controls or a control structure for the player to use if needed

Rating Important

Description The game has no control scheme layout for the player to see at any point during the game. There are no indicators in the game that would show the player where to use certain abilities and no way for the player to know without trial and error of random buttons.

Solution Provide a small control scheme/layout directly on the Main Menu, on the Pause Menu, or as a sidebar in the game itself so the player can refer to it as needed.

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Recognition Rather than Recall

Problem No control remapping possible

Rating Moderate

Description For advanced players, there is no way for them to remap the keys to better suit their playstyle or hand placement.

Solution Add a remapping capability to the Options Menu to allow players to customize the control scheme.

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Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

Problem The Pause Menu comes up in a poor location and is hard to find

Rating Moderate

Description The Pause Menu comes up in the lower right hand part of the screen instead of the center of the screen as two small white boxes with white text. This causes the player not to notice it and/or makes the UI itself hard to read once you do find it.

Solution Place the Pause Menu in the middle of the screen when the Esc key is hit and darken the background so that the buttons stand out against the game itself.

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Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

Problem There are no indicators on the player for any enemy or obstacle damage.

Rating Important

Description There are no indicators when the player takes damage from any sources and the player does not know if he is dieing from enemy damage or from the normal tick of time-based life loss.

Solution Add some sort of visual confirmation that the player takes damage such as a sprite animation or the Snowball losing bits of snow.

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Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors

Problem The player has no idea of what to do or what objectives to accomplish

Rating Important

Description There is no objective list, task list, directional arrow, or any other indicator as to what direction the player should go or what objects/tasks are important in the level.

Solution Add a simple “Goals” list to the Pause menu or in a sidebar in the game itself so that the player can reference it at will.

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Help and Documentation

ReferencesIsbister, K. (2012, February 25). Game Usability. CRC Press. Retrieved from http://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/game-programming/9780123744470

Nielsen, J. (1995, January 1). 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved from http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/