Design Musings about “Stock Shock”

1) Probably should have been obvious from the beginning but people don’t read when they are in a time sensitive situation, so the stock ticker probably can’t provide more than flavor

2) ”Juicy” effects like tweens and screen shaker DO go a long way to making your game enjoyable to play

3) Color certainly makes things visually exciting, but changing a background color can make it difficult to design a UI that works with all possible backgrounds

4) The timer bar communicated effectively as a game over timer, esp with the countdown and screen shake. Most players understood that activity replenished it as well. Don’t think most people understood the transaction cost

5) Big wins are the exciting part of a game like this, nickel and diming your way to success isn’t that fun

6) The best moment stock shock creates is when you buy a lot for $1 and sell for much more. Did a good job of having the achievement text tweens and additional SFX tied to this moment

7) @codemedicine on twitter suggested that it might be better to have the stocks auto scroll. The difficulty here comes from selling. Maybe the ownership buttons are the sell buttons, and the stock window has one big buy button. (see terrible mockup) might be a problem where you just don’t have any good moves most of the time/less frantic

8) Even this fairly simple design might have too many rules for its frantic nature, as it seems to tend towards a bite sized-mobile experience. The title card was good at communicating what was needed, but some nuance was lost in translation. (i.e cost per transaction).

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