Extinction Mode
Designing an iconic and accessible home screen to navigate between game features.
Overview
Extinction Mode revitalizes the late-game experience in Hungry Shark World, addressing the challenges around retaining more experienced late-game players. We introduced a new style survival gamemode with waves of enemies, and gameplay debuffs that apply every 30s. We also introduced a new soft currency for players to unlock even greater sharks with. Altogtether this mode is intended towards power players, who might be looking for less predictable, more challenging gameplay variety.
Game Design
Core Game Loop
The game loop revolves around staying alive as long as possible, as waves of debuffs and powerups come your way, making the game exponentially more difficult. Players are motivated to try again and again, experimenting with different strategies and tactics to see how far they can go. This constant trial and error can lead to a satisfying feeling of progress, encouraging continued play.
The Home Screen Basic Structure
Designing the Re-roll Mechanic
Ads can be fun too! The updated UI overlay in Extinction Mode includes status indicators for various buffs and debuffs. Players can use optional ad buttons to re-roll these status effects, offering a fun way to improve their chances of winning.
FTUE Tutorial
Popup Redesign
During a UX teardown of the game, I redesigned the FTUE process to be more condensed, transforming text-based popups into graphical steps for clearer, denser information delivery. Additionally, I ensured the new FTUE popup is easily recallable from the game UI.
UX Teardown
Feature Score Evaluation Methodology
3
Likely to be a major pain point for the player, the feature does not fulfill its intended function
2
Likely to be misunderstood by players, or subpar UX. It is not immediately game-breaking, but needs to be addressed
1
Works fine, take note for opportunities to improve it in the future.
The UX teardown is a method used to score/review features within a game. We score each feature in terms their pain point severity, in order to prioritize fixing them. The UX teardown becomes a detailed report highlighting key findings, actionable recommendations. Below are the UI enhancements made to improve the understanding of mode switching.
