Overview
Minecraft Lost Legends UX Design
Minecraft Legends is an RTS genre game in the Minecraft franchise, built through a collaboration between BBI, Mojang, and Microsoft. It is available on PC and various consoles, including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
There are many different Lost Legend games inside of Minecraft Legend, and the company plans to release a new game every month. I revamped the Lost Legend marketplace and also contributed to improving the UX, and user engagement of the Lost Legend games. There is only one level in Lost Legend, but it allows players to play solo or in teams of up to four. Therefore, it's important to balance the game so that it's neither too easy nor too difficult. As a UX designer, I conducted numerous play-tests to identify issues and provide solutions through Notion and Figma.
Role
UX Design
Tools
Figma
Perforce
Every time I start a project, I follow the same design routine: understanding the project, conducting research, exploring designs, polishing, and performing quality assurance (QA).
Therefore, I began by understanding what the game designer wanted to explore in this version of Lost Legend. When the project started, there was no game; we only had the game designer's documentation. I read the documentation and left comments on what was of concern and which things were not feasible to implement on the UI side.
After the game designer started building the game, I reviewed and playtested it and provided feedback primarily related to the user interface. My main goal was to ensure that users wouldn't be confused while playing the game and that there would be enough information available. Additionally, I aimed to enhance the user experience, encouraging them to return with friends for future gaming sessions.
User Engagement
Minecraft Legends sales amounted to almost $1 million, with almost 40,000 copies sold during the same time period. We observed a significant number of users consistently enjoying Lost Legends. However, it's interesting to note that while the company initially encouraged users to collaborate and tackle challenges together, it turns out that many users prefer playing solo.
What is Next?
What We Can Try to Increase Lost Legends User Engagement?
As UX designers, consider this user behavior and adapt our approach to enhance the Lost Legends gaming experience.
- Solo Play Enhancement: Recognizing that many users prefer to play alone, we should focus on optimizing the solo game-play experience.
- User Feedback Integration: Continuously gather feedback from our player community to understand their preferences and pain points. This data will help us make informed design decisions and prioritize features that align with user needs.
- Community Building: Foster a sense of community among players, even if they primarily play solo. This can be achieved through in-game forums, events, or leader boards, creating a shared experience without mandatory collaboration.
- AI: Lately, I've been very interested in how AI can solve classic UX challenges. I was reading about how survey responses can change depending on where you ask the question, which can skew the data. It made me think about the projects I've worked on. We have a huge, untapped resource: player chat logs. Instead of just relying on surveys, we could use AI to analyze those conversations in real-time. The AI could automatically tag comments for sentiment—like frustration or excitement—and group them by topic. This would give us a much more authentic view of the player experience, helping us pinpoint exactly what to fix or what to build next.