Achievements in Ruzzle

Ruzzle is a mobile game that has had a ridiculous success since the beginning of the year. If you haven't played it, give it a try, it's really fun.

Alongside the "core" of the game (finding as many words as possible in two minutes, using the special letters to score more points), there is an Achievements system that grants you badges for performing various "feats".

Following an earlier post on the topic, and my more recent gripes with the system, I wanted to have a look at what these achievements actually accomplish in the game.

I like to classify them into categories:
- The ones that improve the game
- The ones that harm the game
- The ones that you will fatally stumble upon
- The fun ones

Improving the game

That's what I would actually expect from achievements. Open new horizons, new ways to play the game, hints at how you could play to get better, etc.

However, there is only one achievement in the whole list that fits into this category: the Globetrotter.
To get this achievement, you need to win a game in three different languages. It pushes you to play the game in a way you wouldn't have thought of (a language you may not be comfortable in) AND which opens a whole new horizon: getting more fluent in other languages, change your reflexes, and simply discover a new language.

Harming the game

These are for me objectives that should not be present in the game. You won't accomplish these objectives by playing the game in a normal way, and trying to accomplish them would at least annoy you, or ruin the experience of a match.

These are:

- The Fantastic Four, which rewards you for using only four-letter words in a game. While the concept could be fun, it actually forces you to play with a handicap, that is in no way beneficial to the global game experience. An alternative would have been to offer a variant to the game, where both players can only validate four-letter words.

- The Noob, which rewards you for seeing the tutorial a second time. Seriously, who actually wants to do this?

- On Fire, which you can get by winning 25 consecutive times. This is for me the worst of all, since it incites you play against weaker opponents until you have your winning streak. Fun is derived from challenge, so purposefully playing to win against weaker opponents actually makes the game less fun than it would otherwise be.

The obvious

These are the achievements you are bound to get if you play the game long enough, or if you're skilled enough, and are mostly without interest (except giving you something for continuing to play the game, which is not a good thing because it lowers intrinsic motivation). They are:

- Ultimate move (find the best word in the grid, which is, well, one of the goals of the game)
- Speedster (find words quickly)
- Da bomb (score a lot of points)
- Bookworm (find long words)

- Sky's the limit (find many words)

- Top notch (find a word that is worth a lot)

- Juggernaut (harass a weaker opponent, or simply keep playing with friends of your level - you'll beat one of them enough times at some point)

- Hooked (play many games)

- Checkmate (win many games)

- The Dictionary (find many different words)

- Sweet sixteen (use all tiles of the grid)

- The challenge and Friendly (challenge your friends)

Some of them are a bit more tricky, because they seem fun in a way, but takes something you should be proud of, or amazed at doing, and turns it into an achievement, which, again, is bad.

- Tie. When playing around an evenly-matched player, there is around one chance in 1000 or 2000 to get a tie. So when it's happens, it's actually amazing! But getting an achievement for this simply turns something exceptional into yet another checkbox to tick.

- Close call is awarded when you win by a short margin, turning the "pheew, that was close" into an "achievement unlocked" thing.

- The Underdog, which rewards you for losing the first two rounds, and then winning the whole match, which is very similar to the Close call.

The fun ones

And finally, some are simply fun. They make you smile, or show little hidden things you had not noticed in the game. I like these ones a lot :)

- Going the distance. It turns a "play a lot" achievement into "I swiped words for 5 kilometers already"! How amazing is this?

- Lemon. When I received this achievement, I realized some avatars (the default ones) where not actual faces, but lemons. This made me smile.

- Not now. How pissed are you when someone calls you during one of your best games? This achievements actually turns a frustrating thing into a reward. Nice!

So, if you ever design achievements into your game, please concentrate on the fun ones, and the ones that broaden the horizons of your players.