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[Visionaries]

So, my team and I have been working on a business simulation game and I thought to share with the community, some of the challenges we've faced in developing a User Interface that works for the game, and how we tackled them.

To give you a little perspective, the game is a single & multiplayer, turn-based food truck simulation game. The goal is for players to fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams by building a successful food truck company that sells burgers and drinks. Players begin by choosing a capital city to play in. Then, armed with a single food cart, they pick a location where they intend to start their business. To succeed, players must grow their business by making smart decisions based on weather and economic conditions, customer preference, unexpected occurrences, and stock cost/availability.

Developing a User Interface that would fit the game was tough. As we brainstormed, it quickly became evident to me that this was going to take longer than we anticipated.

The game is part of a series, and due to the goal of the series, we wanted players to focus on the game’s management and business decision-making side. So, we decided to go for a 2D environment within the game. Players can change locations and can only move in pre-selected locations within the game. Their customers, however, enjoy much more mobility.

We sacrificed the typical tycoon style building and extensive 3D navigation for the ability to provide players with an expansive view of the data they would require to strategize and make more business-related decisions.

This sacrifice quickly produced two new and significant UI design challenges.

The first was to ensure that the players don’t get lost or confused with several different decision-making popups showing up on their screens. Although we are aware that our players would probably appreciate a level of complexity in the UI, because games like Stellaris, Oxygen Not Included, and Europa 4 have very complex UI systems, I still thought we should tread carefully.

We eventually decided to streamline it to a very functional UI designed in a way that allows players easily navigate through all the decision-making processes. A pointer in this direction was that we came across repeated requests, during the game’s pre-development research, for a single location where players can see all the data and make all the top-level decisions. We implemented this by creating a stand-alone interface called the Dashboard UI. Here, players can see all the top-level data they require to make quick decisions when the business day closes.

We separated the Dashboard UI from the core gameplay area, where the real action is. In the core gameplay area, players create their recipes, make inventory purchases, buy stands, change locations, upgrade their staff skills, etc. I made sure we balanced the design so that the overall cursor movement is as minimal as possible. I think we managed to crack it because, currently, with just one look, players know where everything is.

Also, because it’s a business game, we wanted to have the accounts section always present. This way, players always know where they stand financially. However, I wanted it to be contextual so that, depending on the view you were looking at, you’d see the relevant financial information for that view. For instance, if you were looking at the City view, you’d see accounting information for your whole City. But if you were looking at a locality, you’d have accounting information for that locality.

Successfully implementing this financial contextualization in the UI is still a work in progress. I am sure sometimes the team wants to shoot me for being so particular about this.

The second significant UI design challenge was how to make the interface more intuitive. The game has so many interactive elements; hence, players need to identify what’s clickable or not quickly. This consideration ultimately ruled out a flat UI for us. Instead, we went for a design style called Neuomorphism. Because Neuomorphism is still a trending design style as at the time of this writing, I am anxious to see how our players react to our implementation of the concept in a business simulation game.

Finally, Icon design is also proving to be a tough nut to crack. We currently have over 120 icons in the game, with more to come. Because it is symbolism, we have to make sure everyone in different countries and cultures can interpret them. The icons are going to be easier to interpret on PC because of the hover detail. But I can already tell it is going to be a challenge in the mobile version. We are hoping to get more feedback about this during the testing phase, though.

I'd love to know what you think and what other approaches we may have tried out. You can also join us on discord for exclusive updates and game asset reveals. Please share your thoughts. Thanks!

[Gamex Studio]

I love mostly all kind of simulation games, and this one was really something interesting to hear about.
Hope you guys all the best on the release day the upcoming February  …and would love to try out your game as well, to leave additional feedback on mechanics, user experience and other stuff... Would you guys decide to run a Demo before the initial release?

[Visionaries]

Thanks alot for the feedback and wishes!It means alot. I am hoping we execute flawlessly too. We have a plan to run a Demo as soon as we are ready. We already discuss mechanics and character development with our community exclusively on Discord, so if you'd love to be a part of that, you could join us there. Members also get first access to game demo keys because there's a private form where they can book for a key. Discord invite link is at the bottom of the article.

[Visionaries]

Hi there, today I will talk about how we improved decision-making in Business Heroes by using dashboards that present essential information, from across your business, to you in one place.

Business Heroes: Food Truck Simulation is a single & multiplayer, turn-based food truck simulation game. The goal is for players to fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams by growing a successful food truck company that sells burgers and drinks. Players begin by choosing a capital city to play in. Then, armed with a single food cart, they start growing their business.

Smart businesspeople understand the importance of having the right information at their fingertips when it's decision-making time. Successful entrepreneurs even go the extra mile to invest in developing unique Business Intelligence systems for their enterprises. Such systems place critical information at their disposal and enable swift decision making.

We thought to implement a similar feature in the game by creating unique dashboards for Stand and Staff Management. We wanted players to have a top-level or holistic view of all their Burger Stands and Employees, from where they could take critical business decisions.

You can see important business performance information from the Stand Management dashboard like burgers sold, location, profit/loss figures, existing recipes, and required upgrades for all your Burger Stands.

So, if you wanted to change prices for your stands, you could easily do it from the Stand Management Dashboard rather than going to each Burger Stand. Or if you wanted to effect a new burger recipe across your business or upgrade your stands, you could easily do it from here.

Similarly, we designed the Staff Management Dashboard to present vital information about all your employees quickly. You can see how much they are all paid, their current morale/happiness, and what training/upgrades they require. 

This way, if you wanted to increase their salaries, give them a bonus, or upgrade their skill set, you wouldn't need to go to each staff's stand. You could quickly implement any of these decisions from the staff management dashboard.

It's always great to have important business information grouped and presented to you in a visually appealing manner, right? Yeah, I thought so too. I also hope you enjoyed reading this.

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[Visionaries]

Discover The Secret to Great Wealth and Ultimate Customer Satisfaction in Business Heroes

How customer preferences, needs, and unique recipes impact your performance in Business Heroes: Food Truck Simulation.

Hey there, thanks for stopping by! Today, I thought to share a little bit about how we designed the customers in Business Heroes and how we engineered them to behave.

Business Heroes: Food Truck Simulation is a single & multiplayer, turn-based, food truck business simulation game. The goal is for players to fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams by growing a successful food truck company that sells burgers and drinks. You begin by choosing a capital city to play in. Then, armed with a single food cart, you start growing your business

When we started developing the customers for business heroes, we kept one goal in mind: to give you a sales experience that was as close to real-life as we could. Business owners in the outdoor food industry frequently interact with a broad range of people with different tastes and preferences. We wanted you to have the same business simulation experience in business heroes, so we designed the customer segments to reflect this.

Customer Segments
Because catering to all tastes and preferences would be impossible, we decided to focus on customer segments that could easily be differentiated. As you grow your burger truck business, you will be selling to Students, Parents, Tourists, Staff, Fit Ones, Managers, Influencers, Foodies, and Environmentalists.

These are not just meaningless labels. We designed them to reflect different tastes and preferences. Each group is particular about what matters most to them, and how your business can provide products and services that match their lifestyle and eating times.

Customer Preferences
For example, students may be more concerned with the product's price than how healthy or nutritious it is. On the other hand, the Fit Ones may be more concerned about the burger's quality than with it being relatively low cost. Parents may prefer a burger package with more sauces because they want more value and would love to have leftovers for future use in their recipe.

Environmentalists generally would be wary about too much cheese and meat. They may prefer to pay more for a burger with more salad that tastes great, even though technically, it costs you less to make.

Because they are on vacation, tourists would generally indulge more. They may prefer more cheese, sauces, patty, and less salad in their burgers. They might also be predisposed to paying more for it.

Location & Customer Segments
An essential part of your success would be your ability to understand your customers’ needs and create custom burger recipes that meet their needs. The game has 7 locations where you will be trading. To make things slightly more manageable, we distributed, quite fairly, the various customer segments among these locations in the game.

For instance, a location like the Financial District has more managers, staff members, and environmentalists. In contrast, you will generally find more tourists and Influencers at the National landmark.

When you set up your stand in a location, some customers get attracted to you. Depending on the customer segment, they will look at your waiting line and decide to leave or stay.

Students who usually have more time than money may choose to wait longer than Managers, who typically have more money and less time.

Unique Recipes & Customer Feedback
You can customize your meat patty's weight depending on the market segment you intend to target. You can also determine the amount of lettuce, tomatoes, sauces for each recipe. At the beginning of the game, we implemented an ecological option to enable players to run a vegan burger business if they wanted. We hope this gameplay option will make the game more inclusive for our vegan players.

After customers buy your product, they give you feedback immediately. If your burger meets their requirement as a segment, then they give you great feedback. If not, their feedback is negative. You can instantly adjust your recipe based on this feedback. Recipe adjustment is one of the decisions you can make during the day. You have to make most of your other choices at night.

Customer feedback will reflect on your overall stand reputation. The higher your reputation, the easier it is to attract more customers. As you grow your reputation and brand, your stands will attract more customers/passersby from farther away. These customers will decide to try out your burger, and depending on how strong your brand/reputation is, they may choose to wait a bit longer if there is a line. You can invest in advertising to boost your brand in the locality.

Successful players will discover how to balance the perfect recipe for their customers with timely investments in advertisement and staff training to reduce customer queues.

I sincerely hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed sharing it. I'd love to read your thoughts, so don't hesitate to share. Thanks!

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