Review of the game Fatworld created by ITV’s electric shadows
Rating: 
About Fatworld
Fatworld is a free-to-download, single player, sandbox game designed to help the player explore how popular culture, the fast food industry and government legislation contribute to unhealthy living and obesity.
In this game the player takes on the role of a Fatworld resident who can:
- buy houses
- make a living by buying and running a restaurant
- visit other residents
- do exercise
- go grocery shopping
- prepare their own meals.
Whilst this game had great potential, the initial tutorial takes far too long to play and is tedious to complete. There also some bugs in the game. I was religiously saving my game and had one item left to complete in the tutorial. Next time I loaded the game, my progress was gone – I had to complete the 23 steps again!
The biggest problem with this game is a poorly designed user interface. The problem is not that the user interface looks bad – in fact it looks really cute. It is just that it is not very user-friendly or functional. The rest of this review examines flaws in the user interface design of Fatworld.
Above: Youtube video introducing the game Fatworld. Video created by PBS.
Top 10 Flaws in the User Interface Design of Fatworld
1. floating menus obscure your view of the game world
There are four floating menus that can obscure the player’s view of the game world (as shown below). One of these can be collapsed down and moved around the screen but the other three are fixed. These menus can obscure game play and can get quite annoying.
Above: The floating menus can obscure the player’s view of the game
2. user controls that are not obvious
One of the first items on the tutorial is to visit a running course. I walked around the town for a while and eventually found the running course. When I tried to walk through the running course archway, my character couldn’t do it. A little floating ENTER sign appeared over my head so it looked like I should have been able to enter. I tried clicking with my mouse, pressing the enter key and approaching the course entrance from a number of different angles. Nothing worked! It turns out, you have to press the SPACE BAR to activate the floating ENTER sign. Confusing!
Above: To enter the running course, the player has to press the SPACE BAR key
3. confusing and sometimes contradictory language is used
In this section, I have shown some examples of confusing in-game language.
Above: The question asked does not align with the possible responses of yes / no.
One source of confusion is the floating enter signs that appear above the player character’s head. this floating enter sign is provided to prompt the player to press the SPACE BAR to perform an action. In many cases the word ENTER simply does not match the action that will be performed as shown in the pictures below.
Above: To use the exit to this building, the game character has to move into a position so that the floating enter sign appears.
Above: To interact with the cashier, the game character has to move into a position so that the floating enter sign appears.
4. in-world navigation can be difficult
Several times, I couldn’t find my way back to the house or the restaurant that I’d bought. The game marks anything that the character owns with a star but if you are not in the general vicinity of the building, you cannot see the star. There is also an inset map in the bottom right corner of the screen. This inset map marks your house but not your restaurants but once again, you have to be in the general vicinity to see it. I also found that the marker used to indicate where your house is, is quite large and I did several laps of the streets it indicated before I finally found my house again!
Above: Buildings owned by the player are marked with a star. In this picture the player character is standing outside a restaurant that it owns. In the inset map on the bottom right corner, you can see that my character’s house is located a block and a half from where my character is currently standing.
When you click the small inset map, a larger map is activated. It can help you locate all sorts of things but it does not show items that are owned by the player character.
Above: A larger map can help with navigation in Fatworld
5. non-intuitive visual and auditory feedback
The game does not provide appropriate visual and auditory feedback to compliment the action. For example, in the restaurant minigame, the player has to serve as many customers with food as possible. Tables of people magically arrive in the restaurant. These people don’t walk into the restaurant, they just appear in one of the restaurant’s booths. These same people disappear when their timer gets to 0 or the second you serve them food. Once again, they do not walk out, an animation that says the word “plop” plays regardless of whether you manage to serve them their food or whether they leave because the counter gets to 0. In order to serve the food, your character has to go to a corner of the restaurant to pick up their food (by pressing the SPACE BAR). Your character then has to walk to a table and press the SPACE BAR again to serve the customers.
Above: Screenshots of the restaurant mini-game
Some ways this mini-game could be vastly improved by providing better visual and auditory feedback include:
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have the customers walk into (and out of) the restaurant rather than just pop in… and “plop” out.
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have the player character’s avatar show that it is carrying food. At the moment, the only way, the player knows that the character has successfully picked up food to deliver to its customers is by the “Ready to Serve” sign on the top right corner of the screen. If the avatar were able to carry the meal in its hands, that would make this part of the game much easier to understand.
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have a simple sound effect play when the player successfully picks up a food item to serve and a different one when they successfully serve a customer. At the moment, it is difficult to know whether the character was positioned in exactly the right spot to pick up the meal or to serve the meal to a customer. Simple audio sound effects would be helpful. At the moment, the only audio that is heard during this mini game is the annoying game soundtrack and the sound of your footsteps (also annoying) in the restaurant.
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use a different animation for when the customers disappear because they got tired of waiting to when they leave because they have finished eating. At the moment, they both display the same “Plop” animation. To be honest, I’m not sure why “plop” is a useful descriptor for either behaviour! At the moment, the only feedback that the player gets that they have served customers, is a counter at the top of the screen.
6. cannot access information when required
Since this game is about healthy living, when the player character is in its house, the game asks the player to plan the player character’s meals. In order to make the meals, your character has to visit the grocery store to buy groceries. The idea is that you plan your menu and then go to the grocery store to buy the items on the menu. There’s only one hitch – once the player character gets to the grocery store, I couldn’t find any way to access the list of meals and recipes that I had created. Either I could not find the appropriate section on the user interface or this functionality does not exist. The menu contains far too much information for the player to remember. It would be better if the player could either access this information whilst at the grocery store or if they could compile a shopping list whilst the player character is at home.
7. difficult directional movement
A fair portion of this game is spent walking around Fatworld. Walking around Fatworld is tedious because the streets are positioned at an angle (rather than vertically or horizontally). This means that in order to navigate down a straight street, the player has to toggle between two arrow keys (eg. UP + RIGHT) just to walk up the street.
8. character moves extremely slowly
The game character moves slowly. This coupled with the difficult controls, makes game movement quite tedious for the player. It should be noted that the player can move the character faster by holding down the SHIFT key. Players can also buy vehicles for their characters but I haven’t managed to do that yet – largely because there is a glitch in the save games and I lost all of my progress. I didn’t have the heart to do it all again!
9. some text in the game is written in a hard to read font
Besides your character, there are other “Fatworld residents”. Your character can enter their house to view health information about the people. This information is provided in the form of an “index card”. The font used to create this index cards is quite difficult to read.
Above: The font used to create the index cards is difficult to read.
10. screen scrolling is not smooth
When the player character moves to an edge of the screen, the screen automatically scrolls. Many games require scrolling screens. In this game, I found that the scrolling distracted me from the game. The scrolling was not smooth and I found that I was quite often waiting for the screen to scroll so that I could see what was next. I found that this disrupted the immersive nature of the play experience.
Image Attributions
All images used in this review are screenshots taken from the game Fatworld. These were used for review purposes. If you are the copyright holder of these images and wish for them to be removed, please leave a comment on this blog entry.