Designing Your Game
Here are the patterns and techniques we’ve noticed in the most commercially successful games on Dorian, and how to optimize your game to match! These aren’t hard rules, just what we’ve seen work already– so if you have a new idea, try it!
Completion Rate
Your completion rate is shown for any of your released episodes, and is the percentage of people who finished your episode. It’s your most important stat to tell if your game is meeting reader expectations– and your Episode 1’s completion rate is the most important of all!
Make an Incredible Episode 1
Your episode 1 is the hook that’ll tell players if they should keep reading or not. Your completion rate for episode 1 matters the most! Here are our top tips for ensuring players that read your episode one turn into devoted fans.
Exciting hook - Open with a clear, exciting action moment that sucks players in and grounds us in the world!
Have an early compelling & easy to understand choice - this is an interactive game, so players need to interact early! Let them make a fun, clear choice within the first 15 taps.
Avoid lore dumps - Readers don’t have a reason to care about reading lore. Stick to character intros & actions and only spatter in lore in small bits later once players are hooked.
Show your LI faces - Readers are here to gaze at your beautiful characters! Rather than long stretches of narration, make sure you’re mostly showing off LI dialogue to highlight them.
Set a clear player goal - Player goals that tie plot to interacting with the LIs are often the most successful! You can tell players their goal by making an in-game mission statement, or even break the fourth wall to tell them they need to earn a certain amount of points by the end of an episode.
Premium tutorial - Teach players about bonus content by giving them an example for free, and making it an excellent one.
Relationship system tutorial - Show players how to increase their bonds with LIs, and the bonus content they’ll get when they do.
Lead up to one great premium - Sell players on a LI by the end of the episode, and show off one tantalizing paid premium choice.
End with a cliffhanger! - Write something surprising or dramatic that’ll make readers desperate to find out what happens next!
So you’ve launched an episode 1– how do you optimize?
You can check your analytics for each episode in Live Episodes to see dropoff percentages at every node. These are the moments where your players are losing interest or are frustrated. On the left— see the dropoff rate at the top, and the percentages of people choosing the premium option vs not.
An example player goal screen when it’s set within the narrative (left) or when it breaks the fourth wall (right).
Why do readers drop off?
Very long nodes without choices - this is an interactive medium, and players want to engage!
“Unfairness” in story or game– for example, if it’s unclear why a choice they made missed out on increasing LI bond
Reversal of expectations what they expected from the choice was not what happened
Long narration without character art
Lack of action - give the player main character energy!