A good game can be a terrible experience if it’s not polished enough.
“Crystal Chip Collector e” by Nekomura Games is a frenetic neoretro puzzle-platformer with a quirky story about a kid who summons an ancient deity (which looks like a cat with a huge head) to fix his computer.
Available on Nintendo Switch on December 7, 2023 for $4.99 (-20% off the first week!).
Also, CCCe is a remake of “Crystal Chip Collector”, released on Steam in 2014. The game is, at its core, mostly the same, but many UX issues and an engine with lots of bugs made it really frustrating to play, resulting in numerous negative reviews on Steam.
For that reason, in this case we have worked hard together with the developer, Nekomura Games, to improve the User Experience and to make this new version for Nintendo Switch much more appreciated and enjoyed by players.
To this end, the following changes have been made:
- Rewritten game code to Godot 4.1
- Enhanced game responsiveness and reduced input lag.
- Fine-tuned game difficulty for a better player experience.
- Revamped control scheme for improved usability.
- Introduced two new game modes: Practice and Speed Run.
- Expanded the game with new levels and improved existing ones.
- Overhauled story to make it more concise, funnier and more engaging.
- Lots of UX related improvements and bug fixes.
Here are 10 examples of our UX & QA work:
1. Improved the flow of cutscenes and the way text is displayed to make it easier to keep the user’s attention:
2. Edited all cutscene texts to make them easier to read and more concise. A few jokes have been updated too:
3. Enhanced many messages, as well as button texts and their icons:
4. Revised a few informational texts and corrected several typos:
5. Added 3 lives (originally, you had just one chance!) and enhanced the visibility of the World & Stage indicators:
6. Centered a few texts and changed Level/Room/Stage previously inconsistent nomenclatures to just World and Stage, making it sound more arcade-y:
7. Changed ‘Paused’ to ‘Game Paused’ and removed the unnecessary text ‘Please select:’:
8. The “game over” splash is shown with a darker background to align the negative connotation of the message. A subtitle has been added to clarify the meaning of the Chinese characters:
9. The ‘Bonus Minigame’ at the end of each world is now fail-proof. Previously, losing this minigame after completing all the stages in a world meant having to redo the entire world!
10. Improved store game icon:
And that sums up most of the improvements we’ve made, in collaboration with Nekomura Games, for this release. The people who have previewed ‘Crystal Chip Collector e’ are really enjoying it, so our efforts in polishing the game further were definitely worth it! 💪
Thank you for your time reading this, we hope you enjoyed it!