Thanks for exploring with us!

Bottle World: Explore has, for now, come to an end. Thank you to all our players for making it an amazing experience!

We ended with 95 players, 5 adventures completed, 53 emails sent, and 3 surveys. We couldn’t have run this game without you! A lot of you signed up at conventions, and it was extra special meeting the real people who would end up playing the game.

Without further ado, it’s time for a postmortem. This was some highly experimental storytelling for us, and we learned a lot.

The format

The format of the game was something we had never seen done before: a choose-your-own-adventure game run by email. We used Mailchimp to manage emails, and they support “poll” links within emails. So each email contained a set of links, and clicking on a link would record that option as your “vote”. Mailchimp’s system could record one vote per email per user signed up to the mail list.

We liked the idea of this format because everyone has an email address, and using a mail list would allow for a very easy signup process (no passwords required). Many people check their email at least every few days, so checking for game updates wouldn’t inconvenience them. Once signed up, a player would get an email, make a click, and sit back and wait for the results. Not too complicated, but a fun little thing for your inbox – and sometimes you could download wallpapers, music, and even recipes as rewards.

Feedback

We sent three surveys throughout the game, between adventures. Through this, players had the opportunity to leave us some interesting feedback! Although we didn’t solve all problems within the span of these five adventures, we did hear what players had to say.

Rewards

Music and recipes were consistently fan favorites, with wallpapers and lore/information close behind.

Recipes were some of the harder rewards to do, because we had to make sure they actually worked. We tried to stick to a small list of ingredients, a simple process (“combine all”, in most cases), and ingredients that could be found in any store that sells groceries. These were some of our favorites too, though, and we want to implement working recipes into future Bottle World projects somehow.

Music wasn’t too difficult, but we definitely had a learning curve. We ended up making a lot of short tracks for the game, and while there were no complaints about the quality, we want to keep working on more music – both for Bottle World and other stories. Some of the tracks we made actually helped us pin down mood and other parts of the game.

Wallpapers surprised us; we weren’t sure about them, since they have somewhat limited application, but we kept throwing them in because we could also sell the art for prints. It seems these rewards were appreciated, though! Thanks for putting Bottle World on your desktop.

Lore and informational documents were the other surprise- it showed us that players actually wanted to know more about Bottle World. This was reflected in some of the player suggestions, as well – more on that later.

Email frequency and game length

This was all over the board. We asked in each survey what the ideal update schedule would be, and got everything from “daily” to “weekly” with no clear-cut preference. Players essentially wanted to play at their own pace – some were overwhelmed by the frequency, while others were bored.

Most agreed, however, that the adventures were too short. With the exception of the first adventure, backtracking was not an option. We did this for the sake of staying sane and organized on our end, but truthfully it wasn’t realistic. In the true spirit of adventure, players wanted to leave no stone unturned, and were disgruntled that they couldn’t. We want to work around this if we do more adventures in the future, and support those truly adventurous players.

Other

Other points: most players were pretty clear about the idea of Bottle World: Explore before they joined. That’s a good sign for us!

A lot of emails ended up in spam folders, especially for Hotmail and Gmail users. Sorry about that! We’ll be looking into solutions to this.

The consequences of decisions weren’t always clear. Sometimes this was intentional – Adventure 2 started with a perilous decision to make, and not knowing was part of the excitement. But other times, options like “turn left” or “turn right” left players feeling unsatisfied. Not knowing what exactly is around the corner is part of the fun, but players didn’t want their decision to feel totally up to chance. We’ll design clearer paths in any future adventures.

Ideas

Players left some great ideas, and we had a few of our own throughout these games as well.

Player idea: user accounts

This was a suggestion that came up several times. Some players enjoyed the game but hoped for a proper user account.

We didn’t have any means to implement this at the time, but with our recent memberships feature and other updates, we can now definitely look into this. Perhaps in the future users can integrate an existing Azdion membership or site account into the game, and some rewards can affect your site experience. Someone suggested a “spirit” character you could customize, which would be amazing.

Player idea: community

Related to user accounts, one player suggested a forum where players could get together and discuss their options. This is a a great idea to go with user accounts, should we implement that idea in the future.

Player idea: personal adventures

Some players found the “popular vote” aspect annoying, especially when the adventure ended quickly. Relying on others’ decisions can be very frustrating and take away a player’s sense of agency.

We like the idea of more personalized games, but it may not happen in Bottle World: Explore. At this time, we’re just not sure how to manage it in email. It would probably work better for a more traditional computer or web game, which we hope to look into someday!

Player idea: rewards

Rewards ultimately had no impact on gameplay. Players could keep playing without claiming a single thing, and all the rewards were purely for your enjoyment. However, one player wondered early on if the rewards would affect later gameplay.

We played with the idea of the adventurer finding items that would later come in handy later in the adventure. However, we didn’t connect it strongly to player rewards.

Our idea: inventory

This would take some more organizing, but the adventurer would have a limited inventory in which they could store items – and players could see at a glance what they’d picked up so far. This basically extends the above player idea.

Our idea: interactive challenges

User accounts and community forums would make this one easier to do. In future games, we want to include puzzles and challenges that users must work together to discuss and solve.

Our idea: advertising

Nobody truly wants this, but we’re considering ways to make the game more sustainable. We would want to work with other independent storytellers when possible, allowing them to place a small banner or something within game emails for a fee. We wouldn’t allow anything that’s obnoxious to players. Storytellers could have their work seen by players, players might discover a new story that interests them, and we could continue running the game for free.

With dozens of rewards, hundreds of images, and just as many emails to write and code, Bottle World: Explore is very time consuming to make and this would be the best solution we can think of to keep it going in the future. We don’t want any sort of “pay to win” or similar features that make the game less accessible, nor do we want to charge money to play in the first place.

In conclusion

This isn’t the end of Bottle World: Explore. We want to run more games in the future! If you have feedback, comments, or suggestions, let us know in the comments or send me an email at bottle-world-explore@azdion.com.