Which level makes you die most?
It sounds like a maniac question... I might be one, as I love to see my little testers... die! Jokes aside, now that I getting an interesting audience of players, I'd like to know in which levels do they die more than in others.
Obviously contacting each of the players would be plain impossible, even if I could contact every one who played Matter, I don't know if they actually would like to let me know how was their gaming experience
Other choice (which I already implemented) would be just to contact certain people and tell them to play my game for free and if they're willing to do a video. It worked, and BTW a big thank you for all those youtubers who played Matter! However I'm having way more players than I had in previous years, and I need to get an average of the majority of the audience.
My answer was Analytics
See, I myself am a Web developer during day work, I usually am asked to add tracking to the website I develop, therefore I set up the site so it tracks done clicks, visited pages, basic info about the people (country, age, etc) and so
What I discovered some weeks ago was that this is possible to be done to games as well! You can track how many players actually started playing your game once downloaded (there are people who download games but never play it, if it happens in Steam, why wouldn't it happen in itch.io?), also you can track which levels have begun, if these have been passed, how many times did they die, etc.
This is nuts! You can analyze how is your game engaging with your audience and know what is right and what is not working, if there is a blocking stuff or if there is a point where stuff is just too frustrating, or maybe if your game is just too boring or too easy to continue playing
Now which analytics tool can do this for games? The answer is: it depends!
For Unity3d you have their native analytics tool and their API, so you just have to integrate it with your code and your events and that's it! Each time an event happens in your game, Unity3d would send data to their servers so they have this for your analytics
I think for indie games, this is more than enough! I am really pleased with this tool and the analysis I can do. Right now I only have 6 levels. but that is ought to change, and more now that I see that this game has potential (sorry for not being modest enough, but I never had such an audience and so good comments even knowing that Matter can be frustrating sometimes)
The only disadvantage from Unity3d: this doesn't work in real time, in fact you have to wait for 2 or 3 days for data to be processed by Unity servers, I guess for that one you'd have to pay.
BTW to answer the question, the level in which most people died is level 5, which summed all up, happened 74 times... yummy blood from naive players!! Just kidding, I need to balance this level for sure
Hope this post helped you with a new tool you didn't know, what do you think? Can it be useful? Also, do you think this is allowed to be used everywhere? Should I tell players in Europe that I'm tracking gameplay data? (I ask due to GDPR)
Also, if you feel brave enough, you can try and see if you pass the excruciating level 5
Files
Get Matter
Matter
Survive in this strange world with only a device that generates matter
Status | In development |
Author | Inti Voxel Games |
Genre | Adventure, Platformer, Puzzle |
Tags | 2D, Action-Adventure, Atmospheric, Exploration, Pixel Art, Side Scroller |
Languages | English |
Accessibility | Interactive tutorial |
More posts
- Making of Sentients in Unity3dJun 28, 2023
- Back in action: Sentients unveiled, apologies given, and the quest continues!Jun 14, 2023
- Matter Open Alpha 0.8.6Apr 11, 2021
- Jump, slopes and matter controlMar 19, 2021
- When planet exploration goes wrongMar 17, 2021
- BUILD! Improved conveyance, added challengesMar 07, 2021
- You will die anyway... new level in progressMar 05, 2021
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