900 seconds with My Perfect Hotel - Game Design lessons and challenges
Can you learn anything insightful by just playing 15 minutes?
My Perfect Hotel is currently trending as one of the very successful hybrid casual games as I found out on Two & a half gamers podcast #78. The visuals and theme of the game got me interested, so I gave it a try to see what all the fuss was about.
Anytime I try a new game, I’m a bit worried for myself. If the game is well designed, I can easily spend a lot of time even in the first session.
To keep myself in check, I decided to put a strict timer for just 15 minutes and turn it into an exploration of game design.
So the question is: Can you learn anything insightful by just playing 15 minutes? Let’s find out.
You can find more about the game in the AppStore or Google play.
GAME DESIGN LESSONS
Reminder: Game design (GD) lessons follow the principle of the Design Breadcrumbs newsletter which is to provide easy-to-digest insights.
1. Rewarding Micro Tasks
Straight from the get-go, the game gives you a lot of simple tasks to complete.
As opposed to real life, these tasks are done in a matter of seconds. They are really quick.
Every single task FEELS rewarding. The sense of accomplishment is achieved by carefully crafted interactions, feedback animations, and timing. Well done.
Lesson: Rewarding micro tasks keeps you engaged during the session. Having such rewarding micro tasks always available makes it really difficult to turn off the game.
GD Challenge: What kind of rewarding microtasks does your game provide? How do you execute these microtasks?
2. Automation of tasks vs Manual tasks
To expand your hotel, your hotel needs to be running so it generates dollars. However, these dollars are not automatically added to your balance. Instead, collecting dollars is another micro task you have to do.
After a couple of minutes, the tasks to maintain your hotel become overwhelming and they create a bottleneck in your hotel progression. They will start to feel repetitive and mundane as well.
That’s where automation comes into play. To get rid of repetitiveness and to speed up your progress, you can hire hotel staff.
You can hire maids, receptionists, and maintenance men to help you with the chores of running a hotel.
However, the dollars still need to be collected manually by your character. And every single collected dollar feels rewarding.
Lesson: Rewarding parts of the game are done by the player, the mundane tasks are being automated.
GD Challenge: Think of the “reward experience” in your game and how do you work with it? Does it happen automatically or manually? How often does it happen? How does it happen?
3. Video ads done right
Even though I’m not very happy about the current state of hyper-aggressive ad monetization in the gaming industry, “My Perfect Hotel” is the exception. The execution of the ad monetization is done really well. They provide great value to the player and some of these ads even customize the player’s experience with unique speed-up skins.
1. They are part of the game environment cleverly.
2. They offer great value to the players, so it is difficult to resist them.
3. Speed-up of the player's character is done in a quirky entertaining way. Instead of just boosting the player’s speed by 50% for a limited time, it activates the character “skins” such as a unicycle, wooden horse, or Aladin carpet. These skins even change the way how character interacts with the hotel.
Lesson: Rewarded video ads can give you more than just an economic value.
GD Challenge: If you are designing Rewarded video ads in the game, don’t forget about the REWARD part. A lot of game developers think about the placement, but the actual value (reward) from the ads is low.
4. VIP GUEST - free dollars video ad with a twist
Another video ad that deserves a separate column.
Occasionally you can get a visit from a VIP guest who promises to give you a lot of rewards. However, you have to watch the video ad. Once you do so, the VIP guest is accommodated just as any other of your guests with a small twist.
As the VIP guest moves through the hotel, he drops a lot of green dollars on the ground creating a “dollar route” which you can collect.
This dollar route basically invites you to engage in a small “mini-game” where you are shadowing the VIP guest and collecting the dropped dollars.
The total amount of dollars is not very different from a regular video ad dollar chest, but the overall experience is vastly different.
Lesson: I consider VIP guest as an engaging creative mini monetisation feature which delivers variety in gameplay experience.
5. Clear sense of agenda and future expectations
The pacing of the game and the implementation of the new mechanics have been done sensibly. In my first 15 minutes, there were no daily quests and not even a hard currency implemented!
As a player, I never felt overwhelmed and I ended my session with clear expectations from the My Perfect Hotel.
Lesson: The pacing of the mechanics should be aligned with your audience. If you are targeting a wide audience, then it is probably not the best idea to show all the game mechanics from the beginning.
Even though this last lesson is a fundamental one, it is important to keep the pacing in mind and revisit it from time to time. I am fully aware of how easy it is to fall into the common game designer’s thinking where “everything is important for the full game experience”.
Wrap up
So yes indeed! There are many game design lessons to be learned in just 15 minutes. SayGames did a really good game design job. I will be definitely watching them in the future.
Perhaps the best proof of the design of this game is the fact that I probably played a little bit longer than originally intended 15 minutes. ;)