Capybara GO is a cute but evil, dark pattern-filled system-bloated dopamine-carousel mobile game. Here are some of the most valuable takeaways from my two weeks spent playing.
Central Progression Focus
All systems support the core game loop: progress through stages to unlock new features and higher idle-earning rates. Most of the player’s time is spent in these supporting systems: obtaining and combining equipment, running dungeons to upgrade their mount and artifacts, opening pet eggs, PvP, guild, and festival events are just some of the systems. To stay optimized, a player has to play at a cumulative minimum of 30 minutes a day, not including time spent watching ads.
When it comes time to more actively play the game by Adventuring, it’s a largely stats-based affair but luck and strategic planning can play a role in helping players progress through challenges their characters don’t have the stats for – or doom them despite their overall power.
This focus on a single core system isn’t uncommon, but some game designers may forget the value of this focus as they expand their game’s scope and introduce new systems. When first starting a new project, I recommend all designers start with a core system and get as many supporting systems feeding into it as they can. Only introduce additional core systems once the player has progressed past a certain point – this also helps keep the game fresh.
Visual and Tactile Feedback (good vibrations)
Capybara GO makes you feel good when you get a rare drop or a super-lucky event while Adventuring. Light shines prestigiously from UI elements, the device vibrates, colors abound; even the text ending in an exclamation point sells the excitement of what you’ve gotten.
Pictured above was an exciting mechanic: you dig for these statues and when you find one, you tap four times to discover the rarity, and each bump in rarity is significant and feels more prestigious. Here’s me getting a rare power-up during an adventure. Just look at the energy in that screenshot!
Most Events Have Leaderboards
When I launched Bean Grower, it was a decent game but what really kept people coming back was the leaderboard. They’re simple to provide, and they serve as both a motivator and a means of showing what other players can achieve: therefore, so can you achieve.
Capybara GO cycles through events and in addition to upping your own personal reward – say, by spending x amount of currency or finding x somethings while Adventuring – you’d simultaneously be ranking up on the event’s leaderboard. This leads to additional, rank-based rewards. Then, of course, this evil game offers packages for you to buy the event’s currency and rank up higher.
Synergized Rewards
Often, earning a currency resulted in other systems triggering their rewards. Pictured above is the chest opening mechanic, and you’ll see there’s a bar at the top that rewards more chests for opening chests. Elsewhere, I’d spend 2,000 runes to upgrade my pet’s build and trigger a reward which gives me more pet eggs, which I’d use to up my egg-opening score to trigger more things. Capybara was an effective dopamine carousel.
Reward synergy isn’t anything new, and there’s a good chance you can apply it to a game you’re currently building. An RPG could offer 3 randomized quests each day, and the player may luckily roll for kill 20 enemies in Spiderton and loot 5 Giant Spider Eyes. Plug that into your achievement system for overarching progression, all the while dispensing commensurate rewards, and you have a pleasant system in which every action nudges the player toward multiple goals.
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And that’s a wrap.