Laser League Update
Laser League – User Experience by Sprung Studios
Laser League. Frenetic multiplayer mayhem set in a futuristic 3D arena marked by nodes emitting lethal beams of light. Each team must claim control of every node to eliminate their opponents. This is a fast, challenging and deadly game. It may be easy to pick up and play but it’s a game that’s difficult to master. In the genre of arcade-style battle games, Laser League is one to watch.
The team at Roll7 were keen for their game to break new ground and here at Sprung Studios, we were keen to meet that challenge and step it up a gear. We are immensely proud of the User Experience we have created. The Menu System is intuitive and responsive, dynamic and beautiful, helping to keep the players fully immersed in the game.
Menu System and Player Customisation
With all the many combinations of gameplay available to the players, Local/Online, AI/Player, Single-player/Multiplayer, we knew it was important to create a User Experience that flowed smoothly. This was the heart of our design. By meticulously planning each and every combination available to players we were able to visualise all potential problems that might arise.
We worked extensively in the Player Customisation area of the gameplay designing a Menu System that is easy to pick up and use but rewards those players who commit to mastering the controls for improved gameplay strategy.
For all players, the ability to move from the arena to customising their team quickly and easily was a key component of the Menu System so all customisation menus were made available from the top level of play. Another important characteristic for us to facilitate was enabling the players to be able to dive in and out of the game at any point.
With all of our careful analysis and investigations, we were able to create a system that resolved a final important issue for the client; keeping players playing. The goal was to have players saying: ‘Let’s just have one more game, just one more’. Too much time moving between each screen meant creating too much of an opportunity for people to say, ‘Oh okay, we should probably stop now’.
Complex scenarios
With the more complex game scenarios involving five to eight players, we needed to find a way to prevent the screen from becoming too crowded with long identification names and full-length avatars. We resolved this by adjusting the visual of each character; we made them easily identifiable reducing their avatar to their helmet and limiting their name tags to twenty characters. These small changes help to keep the flow of play moving along quickly while still enabling all players to identify their characters easily.
Sprung Studios and Roll7, a great collaboration
Roll7’s purposeful decision making and swift feedback loop were hugely beneficial to the team here at Sprung Studios. The speed at which they were able to do both helped us to resolve issues within the design quickly keeping the project moving along at an enthusiastic and consistent pace.
Everyone on the team had a clear knowledge of the game which allowed us all to have thorough discussions about functionality and their strong opinions never got in the way of them being able to reach a mutual agreement before contacting us.
Ultimately we all had the same purpose in mind; to create the best game experience for the players.