Project Overview
Design of Skyweaver's Season Pass and Daily Quest systems to boost retention and daily activity. Skypass set guided goals with rewards, while daily quests added incentives to increase engagement.
Skyweaver is a TCG that blends deep strategic gameplay with a visually striking high-fantasy world. Players collect, trade, and battle unique cards in a competitive environment. The game stands out with its rich mechanics, flexible strategies, and blockchain integration.
My role: UX/UI Design, User Research, Animations, Art Direction
Ux tools: Competitive analysis, personas, usability test, heuristic evaluation, and interactable prototype.
Time frame: 6 months (before handoff to development)
Ux tools: Competitive analysis, personas, usability test, heuristic evaluation, and interactable prototype.
Time frame: 6 months (before handoff to development)
* To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Vivara or any other partners involved in the project.
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Exploratory Research
We began with exploratory research, interviewing users on broad topics to identify key focus areas. Questions included: "Why do people play Skyweaver?" "Are they interested in season passes/cosmetics?" and "Do they understand the current rewards system?" The team then shared the findings to determine priorities.
Exploratory User Research Interview Reports - 8 users were interviewed.
Defining the problem
We identified the need to improve retention and daily activity. After studying user behaviour and feedback, we found:
💡 The core game loop lacked sufficient gamification elements to sustain ongoing engagement and player progression.
The flow reveals a disconnect between in-game activities (Ranked and Conquest matches) and meta aspects (shop and deckbuilding). With incentives for the shop or deckbuilding, players can gain opportunities for deeper engagement and monetization, limiting the overall experience.
The graphs indicate that player retention drops significantly after the first few days, highlighting a significant challenge in keeping players engaged.
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Solution 1: Skypass
Skypass is a guided progression system for new and current players. It illustrates a clear path, what the player needs to do next, and what they can look forward to receiving as a reward.
🔍 Phase 1 - Research
We did a competitive analysis with other battle passes to see the common patterns and best practices regarding UX and what kind of content these battle passes would give players.
Competitive Analysis sheet for Season Pass
👥 Phase 2 - Planning
Our analysis of other mobile games led us to choose a 28-day pass cycle. We worked with the art team to create a backlog of assets, ensuring we had at least three months' worth of content ready before launch to handle potential delays.
✏️ Phase 3 - Early sketches
Early wireframes helped align the team on flows and ensured a shared understanding of the design direction.
Early wireframes for the Skypass
📐 Phase 4 - Prototyping and initial testing
After thorough research and team alignment on user flows, the next step was to design high-fidelity prototypes and test them with select players to gather feedback on usability, design, and content engagement.
🎨 Phase 5 - High-Fi Handoff Designs
We created a handoff document to provide developers with clear guidance for implementation and testing in internal beta environments. Using the Skyweaver design system allowed for rapid component implementation.
🚀 Live Prototype:
[ See live prototype here ]
🗣️ Phase 6 - Early tests & iterations
We launched a live version for beta testing, gathering feedback through direct and moderated sessions. This data was reviewed in planning meetings to assess necessary changes.
People couldn't easily see the difference in rewards that gives more than one card, so we made the thumbnail wider to show it's a bigger reward clearly.
Players expected to be able to earn rewards even after completing the initial 50 levels, so we decided to add more rewards later for power users.
Users couldn’t tell when a reward was a tradable NFT, so we added a “Tradable Reward” badge to highlight premium rewards.
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Solution 2: Quests
The Quest system enhances engagement by offering personalized daily, weekly, and seasonal goals with rewards. Early Skypass feedback indicated a demand for additional quest types to align with the 28-day seasonal cycle.
🔍 Phase 1 - Research
We analyzed games like Hearthstone and Legends of Runeterra to identify trends in quest systems. A successful system should offer variety, clear rewards, and enough progression to keep players engaged and motivated.
👥 Phase 2 - Planning
We implemented a data-driven framework to improve the company's UX maturity, ensuring our PRDs included hypothesis statements to measure outcomes and gather insights for future initiatives
Hypothesis Statement for Quest System
Daily quests improve onboarding by guiding new players, keeping gameplay fresh with varied tasks, and motivating Skypass progression through XP rewards. They also boost the game's economy by encouraging premium players to re-roll quests, increasing Skypass purchases and monthly revenue.
✏️ Phase 3 - Early sketches
Early exploration UI of how the quest component would look and where the quest section would live within the game menu.
Wireflows on Figma for the Quest Stem
📐 Phase 4 - Prototyping and user testing
We created a prototype on Figma to perform an unmoderated usability test using Maze to spot possible UI/UX tweaks before implementation.
Key takeaways included users' desire for more interactive tutorials, the ability to revisit quest instructions, and a less cluttered interface.
User onboarding unmoderated testing for the new Quest System
🎨 Phase 5 - High-Fi Handoff Designs
At this stage, we would make the final tweaks to the flows and ensure there is enough documentation and specs for flows and components so developers can implement them properly.
🗣️ Phase 6 - Early tests & feedback gathering
We created a handoff document to provide developers with clear guidance for implementation and testing in internal beta environments. Using the Skyweaver design system allowed for rapid component implementation.
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Measuring impact & user insights
We gathered extensive feedback through our Discord channels, where most of our player community interacts.
Positive evidence
The Skypass effectively created a consistent flow of content and incentivized the community to engage. It also set expectations for the rewards players would see the following month. This approach fostered a sense of engagement as players eagerly anticipated the next month's rewards.
Additionally, with each Skypass, we released a patch introducing new cards that slightly shifted the meta. This monthly schedule created a sense of novelty, as players knew that every 30 days, there would be new combos to explore and cards to collect.
Challenges and opportunities
Many players believe the Skypass is overpriced compared to other games, even though it includes tradable blockchain assets that can be resold. To address this concern, we are exploring adding free, non-tradable rewards to offer additional content for premium Skypass buyers.
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Learnings
Asynchronous Collaboration
The team was primarily remote, so strategies were implemented to overcome communication challenges. Loom was used to create video walkthroughs that clearly explained design handoffs to developers, and all tickets and tasks were continuously updated with the most up-to-date specs to ensure the team was in sync.
Enhancing Game Feel
I learned the importance of game feel in driving immersion and player engagement. By refining feedback animations and sound design with the team, we improved player interaction and enjoyment. These subtle details made the mechanics more intuitive, enhancing learnability in complex systems like card games.
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