Help pick Facebooks App of the Year!

Oh it's a good idea... For someone who isn't a full-time student with no money to pay for a professional graphics designer.

I agree that the graphics could be improved, but no one has given me an example of how it could be improved. I've taken into account pretty much every single idea that people have given me.

The hardest thing is that the people with the harshest criticism are the ones with no ideas (except for throwing money away - which I don't have).

 

Don't take constructive criticism to heart, I'm saying it for your benefit ultimately.

If you're a student, it doesn't stop you from doing anything. If you want your application to be successful you'll find a way. Success doesn't come in a package of excuses.

I wasn't saying I'm in any way authority on application advice. However, you were quick to dismiss a professional games designer because it's not an "app" I thought you'd take my a statement a little more seriously if I was to make you aware that the advice was from someone a few paces a head of you in the app development / appreneur business.

There's a big difference between feedback and giving you inspiration.

Take a look at some of the more popular games on the iStore , you'll see plenty of tricks and tweaks you can make to make your app worthy of their competition.

You have a great initial idea, I personally think it will be a hit. I just feel you need a kick up your backside to get you there.

 

I've listened to many people's ideas for improvement and am getting a good amount of downloads. I find it funny that you think having no money to invest in a graphic designer is an excuse, especially when I tried to raise money on kickstarter for funds to help my application and no one on Sythe pledged money.

I appreciate you trying to help but I'd really appreciate specific comments about how to improve my game. I understand the graphics need work, but what specifically?

 

Bump!

 

I'm not saying the graphics need work, literally everything design wise has to be rethought out.

The best graphic content I can picture for this game is that which Geometry Rush uses, it would be worth downloading that application to get some inspiration from it.

 

Everything? Like what specifically? How could it be better? Specific examples please.

 

Also Geometry Rush isn't in the US.

 

Geometry Rush has a great graphical UI, you may not want it exactly, but the concept of a the background changing from blue to red as it gets harder is a good idea. Especially if you have a time limit.

The dotted lines and hard black lines between connectors need a bit more fluidity and something more than a black line in my opinion.

Your connection points need to be changed to suit the idea of the lines.

"< Back" "Restart" "Help" buttons with blue padding between them doesn't fit the application as is. And require a clean design to help include them with the application design.

Status bar requires removal imo. ( if your players get lost in your game for hours, then let's not let them know what time it is? )

Menu buttons, having bullet pointed menu options is a big nono. Also, your screenshots are not leaving much space considering it's optimised for the iPhone 5, if you drop to an iPhone 4 does it work? I.e, do you have constraints.

Your menu should include a better logo, a user-interface ( http://graphicriver.net/search?utf8=✓&term=ios+ui ) <- cheap ones.

Facebook button should go or be designer better. Looks rediculous also, what is the circle next to it?

Replace info button with a better UI button that suits your new theme.

Change the way Levels are displayed.

Set iAD to the top and force impressions on each viewcontroller ( if not already ) Nobody will buy your iAP to remove them if they're only impressions on the menus.

Remove your developed by on the settings page.

Change font sizes in buttons on settings page, as right now there's no padding for "remove ads" so therefore looks amateur. Also, replace white buttons with ones from your new UI.

what is the plus button next to game centre & the textfield which is empty?

From the screenshots I can see, that's about as specific I can get.

No I can't tell you exactly what to do, I can just tell you what needs to change. As I'm probably as bad as you are with graphics.

Also your product description requires rewriting. It seems more like an instruction guide as opposed to a description of what you offer.

You also keep saying, " I get 100s of downloads per day" as if that is some sort of defining factor of me being wrong. How can you be sure what percentage of downloads your getting for people who are viewing your product? 100s could be 50% of your view, 5% of your views, .5% of your views..

 

Thank you so much for the helpful and specific advice. Some of what you mentioned will be fixed in the new update, such as the < Back, Restart, Hint is changed to match the UI better and will include iAds on the screen.

I'm going work on the Facebook button, not sure what that will look like.

What do you mean by change how levels are displayed?

A re-write for the description is a very good idea.

How should the menu look without bullets? And yes there are constraints, everything works for the 4.

On the settings page the bar and the plus button are for cheat codes (primarily used for debugging and developing).

All I mean by saying that I get 100 downloads a day is that I mean I still am being quite successful. I don't mean to say that you are wrong, but you make a very good point that it could be just 5% of people who view my app.

Thanks for the help, I'll definitely make some changes will let you know when they are finished (most likely in version 2.0 which will be the next update after the one I just submitted).

 

i.e Level 1, Level 2, Level 3.. Seems a bit.. flaccid.. I can't really give you the answer to change it too, but add some more excitement, or remove it for the unknown factor. And/or add in as I mentioned something a long the lines of an intensity..Intensifier? i.e, going from a fading from a blue background to a red background as the difficulty increases.

The menu just really needs a UI designers touch, graphically I'm on about the same page for creativity. However, I know when it doesn't quite look to scratch. My best way to describe it would be your app needs to have a skin/theme and everything UI based needs to be formatted to that theme, matching the right colours with colours, sizes with sizes etc..

I'd remove the ability for cheat codes, and just have a variable you can set in the model part of your MVC when and if you're debugging. It's not something to be used in a released product.


I'm glad you're considering the changes and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.

 

Thanks! Definitely going to look into completing these changes in the future!

 

Bump!

 

Bump!

 

Bump!

 

Here is my input on the design without having read any of what Smokehut said yet.

1. Get a new logo. There is way too much going on there (way too many colours). From quickly glancing at it, maybe I just have bad eyes and am wrong, but it looks like the symmetry is off. Could just be the colours making it look this way. Either way I suggest just keeping your logo simple. I look at this and my first impression is that it wasn't a professional that made it which would kind of discourage me from installing the app in the first place. What your logo looks like is actually a bigger deal than you may think. Some companies pay a ridiculous amount to perfect their logo because they know that is what potential users look at first. Some users will equate a bad logo to a bad game and not bother installing.

2. Now i'm inside the main screen. The same logo is in here, just enlarged. Except now it looks squished which (no offence) looks really crappy. The padding between the top of the image (the logo thing) and the info bar with the time is basically none which doesn't look very good. At least put a bit of padding to match the bottom padding, which means you will probably have to space your buttons differently to get enough room to do so. I suggest scrapping that image altogether though because as I will get into later it has nothing to do with your theme (in terms of colour).

3. I don't think bullet points on buttons is ever a good idea. I think you should make your buttons with a background to make it more obvious that they are buttons (rounded corners).

4. The "Invite Friends" button appears black for me (I am assuming because I don't have my phone set up with Facebook and am not logged in). I don't think the font of this black text looks good. Black on black is generally never a good idea In my opinion if you are going to disable a button, you should hide it completely. I get that you are trying to encourage users to advertise your game on Facebook but if I was a regular user, I would probably not see that "Invite Friends" black button and say "oh its black, I need to sign in to Facebook to invite friends". Even though it will say to when pressed, if a user sees a black faded text like that chances are they won't ever press it because they are expected it to be disabled in the first place. Keep in mind these are users and not developers, they don't see things like us. I know how integrating social media works and when I see that black faded text saying "Invite Friends" my first thoughts are I need to log in to Facebook or twitter first. But do you really expect a regular user to connect the dots here? A non developer probably won't recognize that the button is only available when you aren't logged into Facebook. In my opinion best to just hide the button completely to save space on your UI so it looks less cluttered.

5. I think you should invest in image buttons. For example for the best times button you could instead use an image button of a high scores table and it would save so much space on your UI. Imagine if you did this for all of your buttons, it would save a lot of room and would look better if in theme.

6. The Facebook button near the bottom at least needs some left and right padding so the letters aren't literally touching the sides.

7. Can't for the love of god figure out what that red circle button at the bottom does. It keeps disappearing on me. It would definitely be confusing to all users as to what it does. A red circle doesn't really have any universal meaning. If it isn't needed in your app just take it out.

8. Not sure about the info button since it isn't really an info button if it leads to your settings. I am pretty sure iOS has a universal settings button you can implement (that gear looking icon).

9. Your button placement at the bottom is kind of borderline breaking the TOS in terms of getting people to accidentally click the ad. You probably didn't do this on purpose but i'm sure you can see how people would accidentally click the ad with your buttons so close to it. Placing components in anticipation that a user will accidentally click your ad is against TOS but they probably blew it off because you don't really have anywhere else to put it Your UI is already cluttered.

I now pressed the "Play Game" button and can see the Play Pack buttons.

10. There are a lot of spacing problems here. The spacing from the top of the top button to the green spot should be equal to the spacing from the bottom button to the ad.

11. The green doesn't really match your theme to begin with. Personally I think even just leaving the green spot all black and changing the text there to white would look better since it would better match your text from main menu. I looked a few other places and don't find this green anywhere so it really is a theme issue. It is not consistent with anything.

12. Maybe i'm blind but it looks like the text in your 3 buttons isn't vertically centred? Looks a bit above the centre mark.

13. Why is one button orange and two are red? Does colour indicate difficulty? If so this isn't really clear to me, so i'm sure it also wouldn't be clear to other users either

Went into Play Pack 1.

14. I am guessing green is easy, orange is medium difficulty, and red is hard? If so, you should at least change orange to yellow to make it more obvious. Green is universal for easy, red is universal for hard, but orange really isn't universal for in between I would say yellow more so is. Think of a intersection stoplight.

15. Personally I am not a big fan of the sliding transition that seems to be used throughout the app. To me it gets annoying after awhile but this is probably more of a personal preference. Maybe look at other similar games and see what kind of transition animations they use (if any).

16. Thinking back to the previous page, if the colours determine difficulty, why is there no green Play Pack? Kind of confusing

17. I think the numbers should rise horizontally before vertically. To me it is awkward that the levels increase vertically.

18. The padding and spacing of the buttons of the levels looks pretty good here (on my iPhone 4s at least). The white banner with the Select a Level doesn't look bad either, however it is still inconsistent from any theme you used in earlier view controllers. (You went from your green header to this white header). And when you used the green header you didn't leave any additional space at the top which leaves it even more inconsistent with any theme.

19. I think your actual game graphics and transition between levels is pretty good. The only thing I see that is bad is the bottom buttons. I am on an iPhone 4s. On an iPhone 4s and the 5 (any phone with width 320 pixels) the text would be too large horizontally. There is not enough room for example between the Back button and the blue line.

20. The blue line spacers really don't match good.

Going back to main menu and got into your Settings.

21. Take out your Draw Me That text and logo... really no need for it here. You would have so much more room to space your settings stuff without it cluttering the view.

22. Take out "Developed by Wyatt Mufson". All it does is clutter the view, it does nothing. Personally I don't see the point in putting this anywhere in the app since the developed by label is already on the app store when they are going to install it, but if there was a spot it would probably be the main menu under the game title in much much smaller text.

23. I think the buttons here would look better all spaced vertically on top of each other (you will have room once you remove your huge logo thing).

24. There needs to be more padding between he front and end of "Remove Ads" text. It is literally touching the edge. Maybe my eyes are acting up again but is the size of Remove Ads button different then the others? If so make sure they are all the same (if stacked vertically).

25. The functionality to remove Ads isn't all that obvious. Until I pressed the empty text box I didn't know that it was to apply some kind of code.

26. When I press the text box the keyboard covers up the text box so I can't even see what i'm typing. I suggest just making a whole new view for removing ads and putting the text box at the top of that view so the keyboard doesn't cover it. The user has to see what they are typing...

27. Is the i symbol necessary? I get that it gives credit to the artist but if it doesn't have to be there (unless you need it there for copyright issues) remove it.

Went back to main menu and now in Instructions view.

28. Centre all of the text in the black area. It is a bit above the centre.




You need to establish a theme and be consistent with it. This is hard to explain because not everyone knows what goes well together.


A game I made is far from a perfect UI also but I will show a few pictures to try to demonstrate what I mean by theme characteristics.


Here is my main menu:


Notice how I use a lot of image buttons. This saves a lot of space and looks nicer in my opinion then just plain text buttons. Also notice how the theme of the buttons are all similar (in regards to what they represent).



Here is game screen:


Notice how it is similar in theme to the main menu. The background colour is the same. There is a lot of red in both views. Buttons are very similar. All of the text in a given view should be similar in general.


So yeah once again i'm not the best UI designer this is just my personal opinion so take it with a grain of salt. I got all of my graphics for like $30 on Sythe so "budget" isn't really an excuse. I'm also a student eating ramen so just sacrifice a few nights out with friends to make that $30, do what you got to do lol. Graphics really do make a different substantially. It is kind of a shame that your graphics aren't the best (no offence) but the game is good. No matter how good a game is eventually people will get turned off by graphics

 

Thanks for the suggestions!

1. Already found a graphic designer at my school, expect a new icon in a future update

2. Going to redesign the main screen. FYI there is no padding on the bottom, that's the 50 px space required for iAds to appear.

3. Going to redesign the menu don't worry.

4. This has already been changed

5. Going to change this with the graphic designer

6. Agreed. Might change the whole button though.

7. It's a log in indicator (red when logged out of Facebook, green when logged in). Didn't realize that it disappears if you click it... Shouldn't be impacted by a click... Just taking it out.

8. Yeah, probably a gear would work.

9. On the 5 and the 6 the UI isn't cluttered but it definitely is on the 4. The buttons don't violate the rules since they are all the standard distance from the ad.

10. I agree, going to redesign this page

11. I'm going to remove the green part from the entire app and go with the same design as the level selecting page.

12. Yeah you are right!

13. Orange means unlocked, red is locked. Green is beaten, yellow is skipped. This format is true for the level buttons too.

14. See 13

15. The sliding method is the default. Once I get more of the major problems sorted out I will definitely check out some better transitions.

16. See 13

17. That makes a lot of sense, will change.

18. Going to go with the white header for all pages.

19. This is changed in the newest update

20. See 19

21. Will do. Going to redesign the settings page.

22. It's actually a button that leads to all of my apps, it's not a label. Will definitely consider taking it out when re-doing the settings page.

23. Agreed

24. Agreed

25. This is unrelated to the remove ads feature. The command line / cheat codes are mainly for developing. I'm probably going to just take it out.

26. See 25

27. Have to have it

28. See 21

 

How much are you paying the graphic designer? Keep in mind that there are people on this forum who are probably just as talented and will probably work for a lot cheaper

 

It's a friend so it's probably going to be free.

 

Keep it up. Nice to see a sythe user developing apps.

 

Thanks!