Web/Mobile App Critique

The App I chose is a video game I like to play called Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow.  Here is the description of the game just to add a little clarification.   “Collect all your favorite characters, build your own New New York, and explore unfamiliar planets in a mission to save the universe! Download the new mobile game that captures the heart of one of TV’s best animated shows, brought to you by the creator of the original Fox series, Matt Groening, and co-developer David X. Cohen! Relive the show in this thrilling and hilarious space adventure and simulation game that will have you crying in tears” (Jamcity, 2020).   Some of the features include: Build your own New New York, Battle in epic 16-bit combat, control the story by making your own choices, customize your character with crazy outfits.

First here’s my first screenshot of my city.  Basically you send your characters on missions and you collect experience points and Nixon bucks by tapping on the check mark or red planet icon.

You can also send them on missions.  There’s story missions or missions that you just collect items.  These items then net you experience for your character.  There’s a suggested crew and their level but you don’t have to follow it unless the mission tells you otherwise.   Once your on the mission.  You can see your characters hit points as well as the enemies.   

This last screenshot is in the part of the story that you get a choice.  A wrong answer gets you negative health points but right answers net you experience points and/or money.  Now there are plenty of in app purchases as well that can help you along. With the basic description and functionality being covered it’s a very addicting game.  The design of this game is beautiful and it truly captures the heart of this great animated series.  There is close to every character and every world they have ever been on in the series.  The usability here is very simplistic but that is what makes it great.  It’s easy to achieve your goals and getting from one screen to another is extremely simple and quick.  It seems as though they’ve managed to incorporate two types of games in one and that’s an RPG combines with a city building game.  

My critique of this game and things I would improve upon would be that first there needs to be another way to heal the characters after battles other then buying healing packs from the store. Which is how they monetize this game.  As you can tell they are quite expensive from the screenshot and range anywhere from $1.99 up to $99.99.  Even if the enemies drop them it would be better than nothing or all of these little micro-transactions.  

Next, the further you get into the game the longer it takes to unlock new areas of the map.  That basically means longer missions and harder enemies.  We might be able to fix this by letting the user have control over the overall level of the game.  We can also cut the length of the missions and possibly add another character to select from the roster.  Lastly, the leveling system is a little flawed. You literally have to get certain badges in order to accomplish leveling past ten. It’s easy to level up in general but it’s not easy to level up your characters.  They shouldn’t have instituted a level cap to be honest, so that would be the way to fix this.  Change the level cap and make it easier to level up your characters.   

All in all, I’m assuming they rely on the users making heavy in app purchases here in order to proceed because otherwise you can get stuck very easily and it could prove a frustrating experience.  Don’t get me wrong this game is super fun but can be improved by some if not all of my suggestions to this highly addictive mobile game.   

References 
“Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow.” Jam City, www.jamcity.com/futurama-worlds-of-tomorrow/