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FTUE: The Walking Dead: No Man's Land
Key insights
6 takeaways- 01The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land utilizes a multi-layered FTUE to bridge the gap between turn-based combat and base-management mechanics, specifically targeting a mass-market audience drawn by the intellectual property.
- 02To mitigate high churn rates during the first ten minutes of play, the developer, Next Games, employs a comprehensive, step-by-step guided introduction to complex systems like character attributes and crate unlocks.
- 03The onboarding sequence prioritizes early retention by maintaining a 'light touch' on monetization, focusing instead on player mastery of core strategic systems.
- 04The FTUE begins with an immediate prompt for push notifications, a standard mobile strategy tactic used to encourage ongoing engagement from the start.
- 05The combat tutorial emphasizes mission objectives over direct engagement, teaching players to manage action points and evaluate the risk-reward ratio of fighting versus reaching exit points.
- 06The game incorporates a base-building meta-layer inspired by Clash of Clans, introducing resource management, time-gating, and character progression to establish a long-term core loop.
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Transcript
hello and welcome to Pocket Gamer lock biz today we're looking at something which we call the first time user experience so when we load up a game for the first time and just see what the kind of first ten minutes of that game experiences looks like so we're going to file this one up it's the new Walking Dead game so walking dead no man's land so first time user experience is it's a term that's used in the industry and its kind of looking at what we would kind of call the tutorial it's not just the tutorial there's lots of other things that happen when someone loads the game up for the first time and something that obsolete developers look at in quite a lot of detail because what turns happen is people load up games and then and then a lot of them never play them again so this is interesting so it's asking us to or push notifications it's kind of
it's kind of surprising I guess to get that straight road not played the game or anything I even see the ailing of the game I guess maybe within the walking dead they kind of people the developers think people will know something what they're getting into offices being based this game being based on the walking dead TV series so fairly high-profile kind of franchise but a lot of games now I'm moving to ask that push notifications prompt they often do that after you've gone through a tutorial because obviously the reason is this there's no point getting people to ask for push to do a push notification alert if we don't know we don't know whether we like the game you know how much we're going to play it so in that case a lot people going to choose not to have push notifications actually push afghans a very powerful way of communicating with your audience if I hadn't switched on which they sometimes I'm awfully in this case step so um okay we'll just skip this so just guess it probably lot people doing partly because you can't be
um do you want to see the video you want look at the end of IDEO I'm choice on YouTube somewhere so let's see so here we go restrain to the game so it's a turn based game are we gonna that's my own game center logging in there so come on click click click click think okay so strange the actions as some walkers so this guy Joel I'm going to you're going to get him and he's going to work that nasty zombie / / / so you can see the ExCom bitless we kind of blew you using action points to move these people around with our characters around and then the zombies will have their turn into a do damage back to us it looks
like we've killed all the zombies learners more coming but we're going to move out there so this is how kind of other missions play out your kind of trying to get to the end points bobbing attacked by hordes of zombies I think um sums it up really so yeah we can go to skip this as well in the idea so if you say this is a free-to-play game nope we're going to go into her bit of actions that it's interesting we've had a very simple bit now so the mission is to get to the exit so darrell has got a gun but we're not in control of Daryl so he's come over put your dog empty talk to do so hope you're not going to get killed because they forget too much
trouble Darryl with big gun it's giving her he's going to help us out there we go and Haley come this again so this is the walkers term I'm gonna get rushed other than that she's not doing a mattress down was going to take a few them down so i assume terrorists and they're not going to get I know we can just do ourselves there we go yuck no it's okay then so now you're just hurting to the exit I can select them no no that wasn't rigged
it so there were Wars left thank goodness but you can see now I can't actually get to the exit too far too far away just have to enter and competence of the dent in the tutorial from me maybe maybe the game that I didn't think anyone could possibly be that incompetent to run in the wrong direction that's the jaws of front demo again so here we go this is the so there's two parts the game there's kind of that mission thing that we've seen and then we've got the camp so obviously games like clash of clans kind of thing this is pretty straight for it for for a strategy game gonna be some farming stuff going on okay where that is it's going to take some time to do so we're going to be gated by time this is good
to give us resources okay mission car so guess is the other resource which come limits what missions being dupe so Daryl obviously from the TV show is going to be kind of our guiding us through so we're going to ever go back into a mission so when I six minutes in now from from loading up so we can see pretty strong tutorial we're not being kind everything's going through we've gone through the basic mission we understand that now don't send this team structure where we've got this kind of character section three characters we're going to have obviously the different characters are going to have them as we go into the game will have different color attributes will probably end up you know look normal RPG kind of group like a tank he'll error rate ranged fighter and using the strategy between them they've
gotta get to this next mayor here here so it's not super strategic little what knives so we kind of do exactly the same as before can we get in so we can get to him oh that wasn't so sensible so he's gonna wait no wait no for the kids so this one we don't have to kill all the walkers we just need to get the exit but Ann's gonna get so we could just probably just run to the exit after the point of zombie so she's getting hit along the way by does attack so she stopped um so given she's made to the exit we probably will not even kill those guys lobsters problem maybe some moral come when if they go after the
part of this kind of gave it to realize what the what the mission is rather than I did in this case we can all get in but we could have perhaps if I'd be more to take we'd could have just bypassed killing them all and got straight to the accent and then again between seven seas there's a time we're going on it's somebody's refreshing so they've got the gas and we've got the got the points I'm uses a train up our guys something to see but if you get injury but they were carefully hidden that this is the first time user experience thing like I've got some crates so we've got three unlocks of the ninth Ellis is like a randomization thing so what's it going to give us so we're going to get some points and some house and all my stuff
they're gonna train survivor council this is the storage so this is telling us we can speed it up do it for free the beginning instead of using the current hard currency you need the training ground to supply to our training so he's getting I me not with complex so if you pay for you play games but this is all kind of fairly standard kind of mechanics but obviously you know tutorial that's quite a lot of people to learn some people particularly in a game time game Frank that's likely it's mine all played a clash of clans and so you kind of quite an information and this actually tours quite long running is quite lost off the quantum information being given so I think we'll kind of
leave it there really um looks going to go for too much in the game it's about 10 minutes into the game so you can kind of see what the tutorial is so we've gone without gradually quite long missions we have done too much on the camp building stuff it's taking this very clearly kind of through what we need to do it's not really about but currently rather than anything like that yet which is a light touch and I think particular for a game with a mess with the mass-market appeal you probably want to be sharing a lot of the game to begin with and obviously this would be focused tested a lot by next game dozen types of people people who like the walking dead people who've never had it before people who have played mobile games before people to play a lot moma games before so yeah pretty interesting and that's the first time user experience for The Walking Dead come back subscribe to the channel come back and we'll do we're looking into it in some more depth later on CZ x
Summary
The First Time User Experience (FTUE) for the mobile strategy game The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land demonstrates a structured, multi-layered onboarding process designed to acclimate players to both turn-based combat and base-management mechanics. The game, developed by Next Games, leverages its high-profile intellectual property to engage users immediately, though it employs industry-standard practices to balance tutorial depth with player retention.
The onboarding sequence begins with an immediate prompt for push notifications, a common but debated mobile strategy. The gameplay tutorial introduces turn-based squad mechanics, utilizing action points to navigate characters through zombie-infested environments. The design emphasizes mission objectives—such as reaching an exit point—over simple combat, encouraging players to weigh the risks of engaging enemies against the efficiency of completing the level. Following the initial combat phase, the game transitions to a base-building meta-layer, mirroring successful titles like Clash of Clans. This segment introduces resource management, time-gating, and character progression, requiring players to balance fuel and mission points to sustain their squad.
The methodology behind this design appears to prioritize clarity for a mass-market audience. By providing a guided, step-by-step introduction to complex systems like character attributes and randomized crate unlocks, the game attempts to mitigate the high churn rates typical of the first ten minutes of play. The tutorial is intentionally comprehensive, acknowledging that while some users may be familiar with strategy tropes, others are drawn primarily by the franchise brand. By utilizing a "light touch" on monetization in the early stages and focusing on core loop mastery, the game aims to convert casual fans of the television series into long-term players through a carefully paced introduction to its strategic and management-based systems.
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