Introducing new progression flow to boost retention and attract new users : Rock Crawler – Voodoo
2023 - research, UX, UI
I worked on a major UX overhaul of Rock Crawler, a mobile off-road racing game, as part of a project to reimagine and scale up the original title. I collaborated closely with the product manager and game designer to explore new gameplay directions, meta game options, define user flows, and improve the overall player experience through UX-focused iterations.
Original Game layout, based on a saga map progression, Garage tab for car modifications (multi-layered), and a leagues screen. Car upgrades were confusing and were not used by players as intended, we needed to boost the upgrades, bundles and mods sales. New cars were also not purchased as often as planned, so our team tried to come up with a more straightforward layout. Our goal was to make a racing game accessible for casual and hypercasual players that are used to simple and clear game mechanics, attracting a broader audience that, traditionally, spend more.
We started with getting rid of the saga map and introducing the idea of a lobby screen as a place where players would see the car setup they take into a current level. This way, we shifted to focus on modifying the vehicle, adding grind mechanic for the chests and allowing players customize pretty much everything, which opened up a lot of monetisation opportunities and organic progression flow for the players.
There was an option to see if the car matches the next level (levels varied by terrain and weather conditions) and change the car right there by swiping, or going into the garage tab and upgrading the specs there.
There were multiple iterations as we worked closely with the PO and the game designer. In the end, we decided to split the car upgrades into core ones that are upgraded per each car in player’s garage and the Mods, that can be transferred from one car to another.
Gameplay changed as well, and we introduced the terrain and weather related mods and power cards that are collected via chests that players need to grind through (common mechanic in casual games).
The new flow offered players different strategies in winning the levels, progressing through the game and collecting cars.
Pre-Game screen was added, but the project was closed before we had a final version of the pre-game selection mechanic, unfortunately, so this is a work in progress flow.
It was supposed to add another opportunity for players to add or upgrade their mods according to the terrain they had for the current race.
Gameplay rework
Our team worked on multiple features at the same time, between feedback loops from the stakeholders. We started to plan our work with the core gameplay and I worked on the flows and dependencies within the in-game mechanic.
Leagues feature exploration
Leagues feature was also not too straightforward, so we started exploring how we could make this complex system clear and easily understandable for the players.
I created a couple mockups where the elements of the feature were moved to respective tabs from one screen, where they were placed together originally.
I also changed the progression layout to make it more visually readable.