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(2 edits)

Hi, thanks for the comments. We agree that our UX is being not intuitive enough to let user know whether top left or top right is mapped onto the W key.

However, at this moment we believe that isometric is a better representation then others. Please have a read at our game page FAQ for the reason, in case you haven't read it.

You can also see a considerable amount of games in the jam also use isometric + WASD combo. What they are doing better then us is that they have an "isometric" picture of WASD printed on the UI, indicating the W direction. It helps a lot if one keep forgetting which side is W.

On the other hand, clicking on the ground may not work nicely, because it seems difficult for user to click on the exact grid as there are many things blocking the UI/Raycast. What are your suggestions on providing a user-friendly mouse control? (Like a huge transparent overlay of wasd button to click?)

(1 edit) (+1)

I think the main issue with yours controls compared to others is that people in left-to-right reading countries perceive up and right as "up" and not up and left (i could have sworn there is a Poynter institute article describing this, but I cannot find it), and this makes the number of errors go up a bit. Scott Klemmer calls this category of UX problems a "mapping issue". In the old times where 3d camera was not a choice, game devs often solved this by making sure there is a clear "face" and "tail" to the character you are moving, and that the "face" always faces up, but I would suggest you try to solve the issues and at least try mouse control (having ground as a separate layer and raycasting only against that, with highliting tiles on hover will help, if not solve the issue). 

It is not a game-breaking issue, don't get me wrong, just something that made me make a couple of mistakes, so my daily job as a UX consultant started creeping in the conversation. Great game and a very nice effort.

(1 edit)

Really appreciate the free UX consulting session, haha. That explains why most of those isometric games in the jam map top-right movement to W. I will definitely look into more grid-based isometric games :D