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Brew TownCase Study

Brew Town Case Study David Hampshire

Brew town was born out a love of beer, gaming and overly grand ambitions.Created by a small team with a big plan to grow the craft beer community.

The ConceptBrew Town puts you in control of your very own craft brewery.

Create recipes, design your branding, upgrade your facilities and complete missions to become the king or queen of the brewing world!

We made sure that every Brew Town game would be a different experience and just as exciting each time.

We did however agree though that the game would fit a millennial market. The drinker who would spend an extra £1 on their beverage might be enticed to spend some money in our game, and so we strived forward.

Finally we made sure to create the game as a white label product, we wanted to be able to monetise not only various elements within the game but also wanted there to be an option to buy the entire under the hood game.

Market & Audience All ages, sexes - targeting hipster countries initially

Must Haves User centric UI design Engaging experience


CustomisationFrom the start the idea was to allow every player to make it their

own, we focused on several customisation factors:

• Allow users to create their own custom recipes

• Allow users to change naming conventions, from their bar to their beers.

• A fully customisable label editor.

• Real world craft beers, big or small, we wanted any of the breweries we approached to have the option of their beer in our game thus growing the community and making our game more trusted through affiliation.


The Plan

As only a small team we initially worked together following a lean UX approach which was important, we needed to get to the nitty gritty and cut away the fluff, it was all about streamlining in this initial phase to make sure that we all has the same ideology.

We started out by listing out what the key factors of this game were going to be, we covered in our first workshop:

The game would be free to play (Always)The game would be portrait and playable with just your thumbWe would not glorify alcohol but instead glorify the artworkWe would not mock the industry. (This might read odd but initially we were going to make fun of the Heinekens, Budweiser’s and Fosters but we decided that we had no right to, they were doing what they did very well and we’d leave them be.)


“I really don’t like buying a 1-time short-lived boost.I typically only buy premium currency when it’ll give me a boost that is useful repeatedly.”

Research

We believed to understand how users would play out game we also needed to know the full process of making beer. We visited several breweries and created our own brews, learning all about the science and procedure. We made sure to talk to the people who dealt with all aspects of this process from the barman to the head brewer, even the receptionist who didn’t drink.

After collating this initial research we took to local bars and coffee shops to undertake some gorilla research, we would buy people half a pint or a coffee if they’d spill the beans on what games they liked, what they currently played and what they did and didn’t like about mobile gaming.

One early identifier was people were sick of spending money in-game! We worked on a theory that everything in the game should be achievable through game-play, but users would be OK that spending real money would get them to that point quicker.

This was our initial and starting research point.We over the course of the project expanded out our questionnaires to a variety of ages, ethnicities and mobile experience. There is to never be any danger of failure through player skill, as failure is simply not possible, beyond a slower generation of in-game currency.

Instead, players get a constant sense of accomplishment, encouraging them to play even more to see just how high their accomplishment can go.

And with this basic mechanic being so simple, it gives developers more scope to expand, focusing on balancing the economy or adding ancillary tasks to keep players engaged.

James Wright - Tester


Initial UX

The initial UX began almost immediately, mainly scribbles on napkins or doodles on iPad, I started to look at which games were the biggest hitters not only in the world simulation category but in all categories.I took multiple learnings from apps such as, Simpson’s Tapped Out, Candy Crush, Sea Hero. Each of these games I found did something very well, be it the thumb placement zone, game colour palettes, the type of 3D rendering or even looking into how idle, an idle clicker should be.

My initial UX design started off with placements for all the game furniture across multiple breakpoints.

We looked at thumb placement for a variety of phone sizes from the small iPhone 5s to the Google Pixel 2.

Next we worked up several design styles, including Skeuomorpic, flat and material design, from this we did some user testing asking 10 people which initial design they preferred. We did this initially without copy as we didn’t want to lead the user.

After several iterations we settled on a mixture of flat and material, our rationale for this was due to the developing mood-board and experimentation of the game world which we were creating, this was made up low poly models and as few detailed textures as possible not only to keep the file size down but also this was the style we wanted, playful and calming.



This was always going to make or break the project, I needed to hit a range of audiences as well as allow users to learn through play but also not get lost.

Design: Colour

I Initially came up with a palette of colours, some of these changed slightly through the project but the main 4 primary colours stayed.I opted for pastel variations of each colour as my vision was a craft beer chalkboard that had been left out in the sun so the colours faded ever so slightly.

I believed this tone was easy on the eye, and reflected the playful laid backness of the game.

#fdaf54 #f66565 #98d42f #b4b4b4

Core Palette

Supporting Palette

#ffffff #000000 #303030 #eaeaea

#3eb3c1 #f58c6e #f4c3b8 #c1855d

My Initial thinking


Design: Font

Finding the right typeface took some time it needed to reflect the craft beer generation but also be tall and narrow so that I could make a long paragraph roll over as few lines as possible. Let alone when localisation began where a simple English word became much longer in German. We ended up with the font MOONSHINER ( which the dictionary says is an illicit distiller or smuggler of liquor). Moonshiner gave us the right mix of a clean, retro aesthetic — but is also bold, so it packs a memorable punch without losing legibility

MOONSHINER

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890!@£$%^&*()_+=-~`{[}]|\”’:;?<>?/.,


Design: Iconography

Behind the first layer of the game are several sub-quests called ‘achievements’ and ‘upgrades’ there’s over 50 icons here which we’re initially just playful type, however it was areas such as these I believed needed extra curation.

Acquiring is often associated with positive emotions, such as pleasure and excitement, motivating individuals who experience these emotions while acquiring to keep acquiring.

Achievement lists that are connected to a community of facilitate this need to point out that “I’m better than you”. Ultimately, it all plays into chasing that sense of fulfilment.

I initially sketched most of the icons out and showed our lead developer, if it raised a smile it stayed in, if he looked confused it was out, after we had our icons I began creating them using a limited 2 colour palette.


Design: Character Design

After initially evolving the Brew Town staff we then turned out attention to in-game customers, we needed to work smart and not hard to create 1000’s of character variations to keep the game unique and not monotonous.

I created a simple man and female figure in white, we then assigned a mixture of hex colour values for this which meant one asset became multiple variations.

We did this for the hair, eyes, nose, lips and clothing accessories as long as each item worked in the same placement it worked.


Design: Placement

Although previously touched on placement within the game of assets was imperative, each button needed to be place in an easily tappable placement. One of the main game mechanics was tapping to bottle which could easily lead a user to deleting the app if the process didn’t feel fluid nor comfortable, we spent a lot of time working out the game world window vs. room for UI assets, we kept all buttons to a above standard size to cater for all ages as well as standard colouring for go / stop / question ( green / red / orange ).

We positioned what we deemed primary navigation along the base of the game and secondary information at the top of the screen.

Left Handed Right HandedCombined

Natural

Natural Natural

Stretching Stretching Stretching

Hard Hard Hard Hard

Hard Hard Hard Hard



Design: Interactions / transitionsand micro-animations

Animation is a big part of the user experience. When it comes to transitions in mobile apps and games, there are a lot of things you can communicate very subtly through animation. View a message, visit your HQ, check the box, navigate to another page — these are all moments of change. I believed Animating a transition would be the best way to reinforce the user’s action as well as keeping the game playful. We did some early testing and realised that animated feedback was the way to go, A couple of these I’ve listed 3 below:

Confirming user actions. Users got an acknowledgment that the game had received their action. When users have visual feedback, this prevents them from tapping on the element again.

Waiting for content to load. Loading doesn’t have to be boring. We made sure to utilise a subtle animation when loading content

New element. When we introduced a new element on the page, we tried to focus users attention on the object and help them answer the question “Why do I see a new object?” - I probably need to do something.

We made sure to utilise the animation not over use but in a powerful, sophisticated way. We found that it solved a lot of functional problems within the interface and helped to make the app feel alive and genuinely responsive to the user. We found through A/B testing that by adding animation it made the telling of the Brew Town story more effective


On-boarding You can’t really do anything wrong in Brew Town, as with most incremental games, you learn as you go and most of the fun comes from figuring out what all the different upgrades do. When your warehouse is full or you can’t ship anymore beers a warning pops up.

We wanted users to discover and learn as well as work through problems on their own, we found that too much on-boarding could have a huge drop off in players.

We started our on-boarding experiments with 10+ screens which took up to 120 seconds to progress through.. This was way to long, but through A/B testing we found that we could get to the same end point touching on all the main on-boarding objectives in 5 screens, this dramatically improved our retention rates.


IAP’s

We have several IAP’s in Brew Town, these are non intrusive but a worthy reward,

• TV Van (Watch an add for a cash reward)• Speed up time (Watch an add for a decrease in time)• Hops farm (Watch an advert for more hops)• Themes (Users can pay to unlock limited edition shapes and decals for

the bottle editor)

• We also included the “Piggy Bank” which is also available, which increases by one gold cap every time you buy a new building, vehicle, or piece of research.

This doesn’t sound like much to start, but before long, as players advance and reset their research progress, the amount of caps pouring into the Piggy Bank increases dramatically. - All of which can be unlocked for a real world cost.


Augmented Reality

Staying current is tough, users are expecting a never ceasing amount of ‘new’ all the time, and to satisfy these hungry fans we have brought hundreds of new building upgrades, bottle shapes/deals, themes and cans but there was another market we wanted to tap into, Augmented Reality.

Augmented reality games are becoming a front-runners of the gaming industry. Nowadays, this is not just the fantastical concept users are expecting an element of AR.

Using unity’s AR kit we set about experimenting with the best way to use it in Brew Town, we looked at simulating and placing the entire Brew Town game on to your kitchen table so that users could explore the town from all angels, we looked at mini games and even users explore inside the buildings!

However we realised we were over complicating the opportunity and what was really wanted from users was to place their beautifully designed can or bottle in real life, we again tested scenarios and how users would want to interact with this feature, an early lesson was users didn’t want to augment just one of their designs but they wanted to augment all of them and share their experience. We created the tools to allow users to do this.



“This is an awesome game. 5* What you guys have here is the start of something great and hope you guys see it through.”

Beta / Full Release and Reception Initially we launched a beta version to a small number of play store users, the plan for this was to gain initial reaction, we monitored the analytics’s which allowed us to keep track of retention / drop off and bugs. We found multiple edge-cases that had never occurred from our internal testing.Slowly we squished all the bugs we found as well as followed users feedback and reviews on our social channels, being close to our fan base was important, these users wanted Brew Town to be a success and we’re doing what they could to help, by testing and telling us what they liked and what they didn’t.

One user suggested that users should be able to send bug reports through the app, which was exactly what we did suddenly we had hundreds of suggestions, bugs and feedback, our 6 eyes went to literally 1000’s.

After a series of sprints we set about a lunch date and released, although not initially featured on the release date we had spoken to all brands involved in the game so on launch breweries all helped push the release through their vast social networks.

On Friday Apple featured us as in their new games we love weekend feature, from this sprang a multitude of websites, reviewers, newspapers and even Sky News started pushing Brew Town, this snowball effect helped us immensely without any paid for advertising or user acquisition spend we were gaining huge traction.

The reaction to Brew Town was fantastic, not only did we get a countless number of 5* reviews but we also we’re highly recommended and commended by the likes of Touch Arcade, The Guardian Games, and Pocket Gamer.

iTunes Review



Stats and Figures Brew Town stayed in the top 10 new games for just under a week

Brew Town stayed in the top 5 new simulation games for a week

Brew Town stayed in the top 3 for stickers for over 2 weeks

It was the number one game in over 10 counties

We have over 400,000 play users

Over 500,000 iTunes players

We have over 2,000,000 unique game labels

With a 4.5* rating on the Playstore and iTunes we have over 3,000 reviews of Brew Town, almost every single one positive

Every brewery involved has spoken of the positives, not only have they spread their brand awareness across the world they have also been proud to talk about Brew Town and the impact the game has had in this growing market.

Touch Arcade 4.5* Pocket Gamer 7/10App Spy Sky News Meta Critic 77%What to Play 8.79148 Apps 3.5*


Thank you

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Brew Townthetaleofcuriosity.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Brew-Town-cas… · Market & Audience All ages, sexes - targeting hipster countries initially Must Haves ... focusing on