Case study · Ultimate Sackboy

Designing the Cloud Save Flow

Designed the front-end flow for cloud save, down to which of two saves survives.

The game

Ultimate Sackboy is an endless runner built by Exient around Sackboy, PlayStation’s knitted hero, on iOS and Android.

Role: UX Designer
Date: March 2023 – April 2023
Skills: Competitor Research
User Flows & Edge Cases
Wireframing & Prototyping
Design Documentation
Cross-Discipline Collaboration
Tools: Figma
Adobe Photoshop
Unity
Confluence
In-house localisation software

The challenge

If a player lost their phone, they lost everything on it: costumes, upgrades, anything they'd bought. I designed the front end for backing all that up, and for getting it back on a new device.

What Five Other Games Do

I installed Marvel Snap, Clash Royale, Love & Pies, Talking Tom Hero Dash and Subway Surfers on two devices and recorded every screen, from first boot to a restored save.

Marvel Snap asks twice. Sign-in is on the loading screen and you can skip it, then a Protect Your Account popup comes up again after your first three matches. Clash Royale's account alert names the save it found, King Level 24, before you choose. Love & Pies doesn't prompt at all: connecting is in Settings, behind a Save/Load Progress button.

Talking Tom Hero Dash finds your old save, gives you OLD GAME or CURRENT GAME, and then one YES wipes whichever you didn't pick. Subway Surfers does the same job without that risk: you connect to Game Centre and your save loads. I took the two asks from Marvel Snap, and spent most of my time on the conflict screen.

Subway Surfers' second device install flow, showing the post-FTUE home screen, the settings connect options and progress loading in after signing in. — Subway Surfers connecting to Game Centre

First Install, Second Install, and the Rest

I went to the backend coders first to find out what our cloud service could do, then mapped the scenarios against it. Two of them cover most players: a first install, and a second install on the same or a different device. I listed the edge cases on their own so none of them got missed.

Outline listing the final scenarios covered, split into first-ever install, second install and additional edge cases like incorrect emails and lost connections. — Every scenario, including the edge cases

On first boot, sign-in is on the login screen next to the language picker, and you can skip it. If you do, the Protect Your Account popup comes back after the Daily Duel FTUE, by which point you've won a costume. Skip that as well and you get a Progress Not Saved popup once, and then it stops asking.

Flowchart mapping the first-ever install scenario, covering first boot sign-in and updating cloud save settings from the settings menu. — The first-ever install flow

Wireframe screens for the first boot sign-in flow, the post-FTUE protect your account flow and updating cloud save settings from the settings menu. — First boot sign-in, and the popup after the FTUE

Apple and Google both link to the same account, so signing in with either one brings your progress back. Add the second provider later and it links to the account you already have. I wireframed all of it in Figma and prototyped it before writing the document.

Flowchart mapping the second install scenario on the same or a different device, including linking accounts and resolving old game versus new game conflicts. — The second install flow

The wireframe scenario groups annotated with connecting arrows showing the clickable prototype flow between first install, update settings, delete account and second install. — The scenario groups, linked up for clicking through

First install, accounts linked

Two Saves, One Account

The hard case is a player with progress in two places. They sign in, and only one of the two saves can carry on. The Old Game vs New Game popup puts them side by side with their power level, coins, tickets and gems.

The confirmation takes two steps. You tick a box agreeing to discard the other save, then type BYESACKBOY before the OK button turns on. It's the same confirmation as deleting all your data, and it can't be undone either.

There's a second case. If you sign in with Google and that Google account is already tied to a different Sackboy account, the two can't be merged. The popup shows the stats on the account it found, so you can tell which one it is, and lets you sign out or leave it. Neither deletes anything.

Design document page describing how players sign in to a first or second ID provider from the Settings menu and how accounts get linked. — Signing in to a second ID provider, as specified

Progress already linked to the account

Accounts that can't be linked

What Shipped

Then I wrote the design document for Art, Design, Code and QA. My Lead Designer reviewed it first, then the full stakeholder group, and both rounds changed the flow and the document. I stayed with Code and UI through implementation to keep the build matching the document, and tested it with QA as it came together. Players reach it from the Connect section at the top of the Settings menu.

First boot after a reinstall

Signing in from the Settings menu, in the shipped game

The edge cases got designed with the main flows, not after them. That only happened because the scenario list came first. It is now how I start anything a player can arrive at from more than one direction.