Creating In-game Achievements to Enhance Player Experience (Part 1)
Hi, my name is Fredrik and I work as a Game Designer here at Resolution Games. My job varies a lot from day to day but the main responsibility of my work is to design the player experience for our games. I create new gameplay challenges and set the rules and goals for players.
We listen a lot to player feedback and part of my job is to investigate the feedback and determine in what way we can improve the experience. The whole team playtests the game so we can balance new and existing gameplay to make sure that players are challenged and rewarded.
In Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale some examples of my work are:
Tweaking the balance of the in-game levels:
What star goal challenges to use and their difficulty
In what order a customer shows up
How many layers the werewolves sandwiches should be
Balance how often thieves steal ingredients from plates or how long rabbits wait before they leave
I also helped design the free update where we added the creative mode - a game mode without time pressure where players can have fun serving what they want, or figure out hidden recipes by combining ingredients together.
I started as a freelance level designer at Resolution Games in January 2019 on Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs. Right from the start I knew this company was special, and at the end of the freelance contract I was very happy to be hired full time. I had dipped my toes into virtual reality, and was hyped to be able to dive headset first into all new challenges and opportunities that VR brings.
Resolution Games feels like a magical place where everyone truly cares about you and is your friend. We have over 100 employees and everyone cares about each other. I really like all my colleagues and miss them, because of Covid 19 I have been working from home for a long time and look forward to seeing them again soon.
Another great thing about working at Resolution Games is that employees are split up into multiple small teams. This makes communication with co-workers super efficient, gives game teams a lot of creative freedom and everyone's opinions can be heard and valued.
Now, back to the main reason you clicked on this post - to learn about how we designed the achievements in Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale. We created many varied types of achievements for players to unlock on both Oculus and Steam. Players earn some achievements from just advancing in the game, other achievements require a lot of teamplay and coordination to complete. Here’s an overview of our thinking behind the achievements.
Give players new challenges
Our goal was to add new challenges for players to complete, here are two examples: Dry Palace and Endless Perfection that really put advanced players' skills to the test.
Exploration and investigation achievements
These types of achievements usually provide a hint in the description. The idea for the “Giant Miniature Radish Dude” achievement came from one of my programmer friends on the Cook-Out team.
When players hit the radish dude five times in a row, it enlarges and teleports outside the kitchen window. The radish dude will appear in a different location depending on what area players are in.
Players are also able to unlock a golden cleaver if they are good at throwing knives and can solve the word pun in the achievement description.
Promote multiplayer games and make friends in virtual reality
Regardless of game type, it can sometimes be intimidating to join a multiplayer room with people that you don't know. In Cook-Out, it's possible to play as a single player with Rob-Bot - this is a great way to familiarize yourself with the game mechanics. But the true Cook-Out experience is playing with others.
A dream of mine is to bring the VR community together even more. It would be awesome if people who played Cook-Out became friends, and the next day they meet up to play video games together, perhaps fighting monsters side by side in Demeo or duel in Blaston.
Looking for more people to play with the Cook-Out community? Our Discord server is super helpful and friendly. It's also the best place for us as game developers to listen to your feedback.
It's rewarding to see players group up to help each other out and all the conversations in Discord about how to unlock recipes and achievements. If we can use the achievements and avatar unlocks to promote players to unmute in-game and start making friends, both inside and outside of our games that would be a huge step forward in VR.
Teaching players game strategies
Another goal for us was to use achievements as a way to teach or remind players about the more advanced strategies in the game. I often see new players that try to make all customers’ plates perfect, wash all plates, grill all ingredients, etc. even though it’s not one of the level goals.
You don't have to make all werewolf's plates perfect if the goal is to only serve one perfect.
If the goal requires eight perfect plates (like the image above), focus on serving the cats and royals plates as they require perfection regardless of the level goals.
Also, if the goal is to 'Serve X customers within a short time' don't focus too hard on serving customers that stay a long time like werewolves, focus on the shortest ingredient list with the least amount of grilled ingredients.
Throwing ingredients adds some risk vs reward. If you can't reach a plate it might be worth throwing the ingredient on top of it, if your aim is good!
It's possible to supercharge the single player Rob-bot by cranking up the bot beyond maximum battery level, which makes it work very fast. You'll see blue sparks once that happens.
The batteries can be charged at any time, so time it when you're low on other tasks. Same goes for the supercharge.
Make sure both you and Rob-bot always have something to do. Rotate the crank to overcharge and speed up the bot, prepare the next ingredient so it's done as soon as Rob-bot places his ingredient, pick up an ingredient from Rob-bot's fridge and help him out.
Even stealing ingredients from players can be a valid strategy at times.
I hope you enjoyed learning more about Cook-Out’s achievements. I’ll be back soon with more insights into how achievements can help with some of your other game goals.