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Réalités Parallèles

Ergonomie et conception de jeu vidéo

A game usability review of Amazing Brick

Amazing Brick is a very simple mobile game about making a cube pass stages by tapping the screen on the left or right side to make the cube jump up in one direction or the other and get as far as they can. And here’s its short usability review.

Tested on Android / Samsung Galaxy S3

First thing you see after launching the game: sign in screen and ads to greet you.

First, the game asks to connect to a social account, then the mobile (a Samsung Galaxy S3 in my case) also asks to connect to an account registered on the device. This is a bit intrusive to ask the player while he hasn’t even tested the game yet.

Next, the game displays an interstitial add. I haven’t started playing yet, the game already want me to leave the game and go see if the one from the add isn’t better. It’s a bit awkward.

From the menu, one tap to play, with a fairly brief tutorial which requires the correct interaction to start the game - but only confirms players understood the input, not how to use it correctly.

Despite this, the game starts up really fast, and gives the player immediate access to actual gameplay. This is great, since it only takes a couple of seconds for players to decide to leave the app before even trying it out, never to return.

When starting the game, the first screen the player sees explains it all: tap left or right to jump left or right. The game’s goal isn’t clear at this point, but the player will quickly figure it out. If he’s familiar with this type of gameplay (like Doodle Jump or Flappy Bird), he’ll soon figure out he needs to go upwards when the level design appears above him.

Screenshot of the game over screen.

If not, he will enter a trial and error learning process. Since a session can last as little as a couple of seconds and it’s really fast to restart the game, it is not too bad.

Posted by Cornelia on 2015-02-19. Last updated on 2020-12-21

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