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Progress is clearly communicated
An important aspect of understandability in board games is clearly communicating progress to the players. If players can’t track progress throughout the experience, it can leave them feeling like they are getting nowhere. Steady progress toward the end goal needs to be shown to keep players engaged. Games that lack progress indicators or even totally…
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The game doesn’t rely on memory for exceptions
Exceptions in game rules are those annoying moments where the patterns you’ve learned suddenly don’t work anymore. You know the drill—”most of the time you do X, except when Y happens, then you do Z instead.” These special cases force players to keep a running mental list of “yeah, but remember…” situations. The real problem…
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Labels, elements, and actions are consistent throughout the game
A major consideration of UX work is whether something is understandable. That is, can users understand the system and the way it works? A key aspect of this is the consistency of labels, elements, and actions throughout that system. When we apply this to the world of board games, it’s pretty much the exact same…
