A couple of feedback from a UX Designer

[xSkullzZ]

Hi guys.
Thank you for your game, I'm spending good time in it, and in these first couple of hours I would like to give you some impressions/feedback on what I'm experiencing hoping that this could help you to improve the game even more!

UX/UI:
- Moving while having an open menu will close it immediately, this is really annoyingù
- Filters for styles: so I can filter only Scandi, Industrial, Modern, etc...
- Color swatches more in evidence: I found the possibility to give colors to materials really late in the game, while this function could be put more in an highlighted zone
- Better grids: building a modular sofa or kitchen is almost impossible because using the grid you will always have some space between your forniture. Maybe inserting a "snap" function? So when you have two pieces of the same type they will connect together if placed nearby (filling the gap)
- Label for colour scheme and/or: Could be nice to have also the colour scheme label together with the style, so in example a room could be: Red, Scandinavian, Cluttered, or Wooden, Scandinavian, Minimalist.
Also regarding colours could be really effective to have a slider view or a pie graph with the colours/material used, so we can better understand the composition and notice if there are different materials who are just similar but not identical. (Expecially considering the basic interior design rule of 80%/20%)

Game features:
- A lot of coloured staff doens't seem to affect the color preferences of the customers. I know that this is a lot of hard coding, but having also standard coloured materials already counting for the color scheme could be really cool. Regarding changing colour, something, expecially complex wallpapers have only a color overlay on it and not a recolouring of the wall paper (like the pink cloud one).
- Some more missing styles like Japan (I'm a Japandi lover, and I miss this a lot), Boho, Farmhous (I don't know if I have to unlock these, but at the moment I don't have anything with these styles)

Fixes:
- Apart from bugs, some building requests are impossible to fullfil perfectly. I don't know if this was made on purpose to give the "realistic" effect of never satisfied customers or in the random creation of the jobs this was unexpected. A practical example that happen during my last job: "I want cheap/low quality scandinavian kitchen" the problem is that every scandinavian counter or sink has 3 of quality and I had to use 1 or 2 only. So I could reach only a 4 star review ruining my clean 5 star average. He disliked also every other style so I've couldn't use any other counter and insert only scandinavian decors to it to stylish the kitchen.


I will continue to play and try to edit/replying here if something comes up. Hope this could be useful.
Looking forward to any comment regarding all of this.
Have a good one!

[Narcissa]

I 1000000% agree on the snap function. I know you can press shift to show the grid and that sort of makes the items snap, but it's really useless. I don't want to say this game needs to be more like Sims because I understand it should be its own game, but it wouldn't hurt to implement some basic ideas from the Sims. The snap function is definitely one of them. I cannot stand building kitchens in this game. It's impossible to get the cabinets to align and most of the time they don't reach wall-to-wall so there are small gaps between the end of the counters and the wall. Needless to say, as someone with OCD, trying to get a perfect looking kitchen literally drives me crazy. And the cabinets are not organized in the menu whatsoever, which makes it really difficult to build the kitchen because you have to scroll back and forth to find items that go together. One other thing that would be nice is a fill button or hot key, so that I can fill the entire room with the same floor or wallpaper with one click.

[xSkullzZ]

Originally posted by Narcissa:

I 1000000% agree on the snap function. I know you can press shift to show the grid and that sort of makes the items snap, but it's really useless.

Yes, I feel the same whenever I use the snap function. Also I find really annoying that the roofs don't have a grid showing up, so I cannot align perfectly the light with whatever I want in the room (for example with a dining table).

Originally posted by Narcissa:

I don't want to say this game needs to be more like Sims because I understand it should be its own game, but it wouldn't hurt to implement some basic ideas from the Sims.

Actually I would love to grab inspirations to another game called Paralives. It has a modular way to place furniture where you can also drag and enlarge it to better fit your spaces. So for example the same cabinet could be 1x1 or 1x2 to have a large variation of the same counter!
I also like the Color/Material selection from the same game. (It's not possible to play at it, but I saw a video with the concept and seems really good).

Originally posted by Narcissa:

I cannot stand building kitchens in this game. It's impossible to get the cabinets to align and most of the time they don't reach wall-to-wall so there are small gaps between the end of the counters and the wall. Needless to say, as someone with OCD, trying to get a perfect looking kitchen literally drives me crazy. And the cabinets are not organized in the menu whatsoever, which makes it really difficult to build the kitchen because you have to scroll back and forth to find items that go together.

Yes, I feel also this point. OCD players like us could spent literally hours just for align two counters (thing that I've done!). Maybe having folders? So you can choose the main branch and entering you can see the single variations/pieces of the set could be valid to not lose them everytime!

Originally posted by Narcissa:

One other thing that would be nice is a fill button or hot key, so that I can fill the entire room with the same floor or wallpaper with one click

Totally agree on this! Not so annoying in the end, but a lot a QoL improvement for the player!

[HometopiaGame]

These are alot of great points many of which we are working on!! Also to snap press ALT!