About
<Love Choices - Merge&Makeover> is a merge dress-up story game. Read on the main mechanic and game loops that will provide context to the analysis of the retention issues with casual and midcore/hardcore players and suggestions to combat retention loss.
Merge Mechanic
On a board with limited grids, every item takes up one grid and players use Energy to dispense an item.
Players drag and drop an item onto another of the same type and level, resulting in the two items merging into the next level item (eg. L1 Ring + L1 Ring = L2 Good Ring).
Thus, the item requirement for merging is exponential (eg. one L4 Best Ring = two L3 Better Rings = four L2 Good Rings = eight L1 Rings).
Core Game Loop (Merging Items)
Secondary Game Loop (Selling Items, Unlocking Story)
Retention Issues with Casual Players
The dress-up story is the main appeal of the game and money is the only way to advance the storyline. However, while the amount of money required for each story segment increases too steeply, there are no new or improved methods available for the player to earn more money.
This results in longer and longer gaps between each story segment and as there are no other key gameplay features available, the casual player becomes unmotivated to keep merging and stops playing.
More player engagement is needed outside of the merge gameplay to improve retention rate.
There are two plausible solutions to this:
1. Add new unlockable gameplay features that either allow players to earn more money through challenges and leaderboards or allow players to dress-up outside of story mode such as a creative mode. This will appeal to socializer/achiever player types of the target audience.
2. Different stories are currently placed in the same storyline as seen from the in–game screenshot below. After the end of a story, the next (unrelated) story starts abruptly, affecting player experience. Along with the increasing amount of money required to unlock the next chapter, this can decrease player motivation to continue the next story.
Rather than placing different stories into the same storyline, stories should be split up and made purchasable. Players should be able to choose which stories to purchase and change between purchased stories.
An example of Story (S) Chapters (C) before and after being split using fill-in data.
Before
S1C1 ($100) > S1C2 ($150) > S2C1 ($200) > S2C2 ($250) > S3C1 ($300) > S3C2 ($350)
After
free first story
S1C1 ($100) > S1C2 ($150)
$50 to purchase
S2C1 ($150) > S2C2 ($200)
$50 to purchase
S3C1 ($150) > S3C2 ($200)
This solution will also allow designers to write stories that cater to player preferences better based on stories with the most player unlocks.
As well as create new possibilities for monetisation (eg. special stories can only be purchased with in-game purchase).
Retention Issues with Midcore/Hardcore Players
As the game goes on, merging becomes too complex and tiring to do, causing midcore/hardcore players to become frustrated. This is caused by an imbalance in the amount of merge levels as well as different merge level items looking identical.
This imbalance issue is similar to the imbalance of cash required for story segments as mentioned previously. The Energy required to merge an item to the next level is exponential as explained under the Merge Mechanic section. A solution would be to give more item dispenser upgrades as players advance in the game. The upgrade will increase the chance of dispensing a higher level item.
The other issue where different merge level items look identical can be observed from the images below, but I will not go into detail as it is more art related.
Last but not least, many hardcore players complained about the lack of Energy. As Energy is the core resource of the game economy and only hardcore players have complaints of the lack of Energy, this should not be rebalanced. I would suggest making in-game purchases more enticing to boost revenue instead.