Piñatas Smash Simulator

GAME INFO

CONTRIBUTIONS

DESIGN GOALS

Create a clicker game-like progression system that feels rewarding and fulfilling.

Create a game that can easily be expanded on with constant and regularly scheduled live ops updates.

REDESIGNING THE GAME

Piñatas Smash Simulator is a redesign of a previously released game called "Piñatas Smashlings". Piñatas Smashlings was a game released on Roblox that unfortunately didn't reach the KPIs that the team was looking for. However the previously released experience would give our team key lessons and insights that would influence the second version of the game.
The biggest lesson our team learned was that we needed to design a game built for our platform. Roblox as a platform values simplicity; players want to be able to join a game and immediately feel familiar based on design expectations established by other popular games on the platform. Compared to our competition, our game featured more complexity and required more onboarding and tutorials. On Roblox, this is especially detrimental when you consider that players can quickly leave an experience and then see thousands of other free games to play.
Moving forward we had to look at other successful games in our genre and see how we could "cut the fat" and help simplify the experience. The game loop was dramatically simplified across the board and the amount of numbers/stats to track were dramatically consolidated.

THE CORE LOOP

On the Roblox platform this type of game is considered a "Simulator" which can best be compared to clicker games in the mobile/PC market.
The core loop of the game consists of the players entering a zone, swinging a stick to gain power, and breaking piñatas to receive currency. Currency can be spent to purchase new sticks to increase the power gained per swing, or on pets called "Smashlings". These Smashlings apply a multiplier to the power gained per swing and may also come with an additional passive bonus.
As the player upgrades their sticks and pets, they are able to break piñatas faster and destroy larger piñatas to gain more currency. Once the player has acquired enough currency, they can unlock the next world, where stronger piñatas can be found and better sticks and pets are available for purchase.
The core loop is designed to be simple and addictive, ensuring the player is always gaining more power and always has a clear goal/milestone to strive for. Additionally, the player has various daily quests and rewards to encourage retention and reward players for their commitment.

PROGRESSION AND ECONOMY DESIGN

Progression and economy is a huge focus for the "Simulator" genre on Roblox. Ultimately, it effects the pacing of progression, and impacts the longevity of our game's content and determining whether players will be incentivized to spend money on our monetization options. Our in-game economy needed to balance accessibility, ensuring players never felt they hit a progression wall, while also keeping them invested long enough to allow our team time to create more content in live ops.
To visualize our economy, I created dynamic spreadsheets and equations that adjust the various variables and aspects of the economy. The progression of our game features massive exponential growth with numbers reaching the trillions, making it imperative that we had a strong understanding how all the variables were going to interact with each other. The spreadsheet would also be invaluable during testing, as I could make an adjustment based on feedback and see how it would impact the rest of the game.
However, since spreadsheets and estimates have their limitations, the game required extensive testing from both myself and the QA team. I would need to play through the game's different zones multiple times to get a strong understanding of time required to beat it. We had time estimates for what we wanted the five release zones to require from players; starting off easy to empower players, then incrementally slowing the speed of progression after each subsequent zone.

LIVE OPS

On the Roblox platform games are a marathon not a sprint. Games in the "simulator" genre have significant potential for monetization and retention, but only so long as content updates can keep up with the demand of the community. Our game had to be scalable and have a clear path forward to releasing meaningful content updates for players.
Content updates can be categorized into two types: new zones and new features. New zones introduce a new level to the game, featuring tougher piñatas to break, while also offering players stronger pets, sticks, and increased currency earning potential. These content updates are great because they require minimal engineering support and primarily rely on art, level design, and economy design. Additionally these content updates directly extend the length of the game.
New features focus on adding new meaningful progression avenues and allow us to gradually sprinkle in more complex features into the game for experienced players. These features are not be required for new players to interact with but provide dedicated players with more meaningful ways to invest their resources.

CONCLUSION

Already our team is seeing positive results as our game's analytics feature stronger retention and more consistent CCU (Concurrent Users). As a team, we're fortunate to be given a second chance from the client to recreate the game, and it's very rewarding to see the lessons we learned having an immediate impact on the game's success. For me, the experience has been an invaluable lesson in understanding the audience of the platform for which we're designing, and I'm excited to see how the game will continue to grow and evolve through live ops.

Michael Benavides