Overview

Autohint is intended to assist Game Masters and make it easier for them to watch multiple games at once. When a hint request comes in, the hint popup will automatically select the first hint for the active objective and have a timer ticking down. Game Masters can change the selected hint, type a custom one, or send the selected hint before the countdown ends. If no one interferes, the first hint (that has not been sent yet) will be delivered to the countdown screen in the room.

You can edit settings for Autohint within Game Settings for each game. You can set the amount of time before a hint will send automatically. This can be overridden from the Game Master page or turned off at any time.

Recommendations for Implementing

Review Hints

We recommend reviewing hints and the order they’re listed in before turning on Autohint. Nudges or smaller hints should be listed at the top, with more specific hints at the bottom and answers last. Autohint will start at the top and gradually work towards more specific hints as hints are requested.

We recommend using Game Statistics to review hints and their usefulness. Select a game in the top left corner to show data.

It will list any unused hints - Remove old hints or unused ones to remove clutter.

You can also see worst hints, these are hints that were sent and then another hint was needed before the objective was completed. Ideally, this section should only have unspecific nudges used to point groups in the correct direction. If it lists specific hints that still needed more information after they were sent, those hints should be reworded to be more helpful.

Most objectives should not need more than 6-8 hints. Some will only have 2-3 and others may have up to 10. If you follow the above steps and your games still have more than that, you may need to split objectives into smaller pieces.

Split Up Large Objectives

Another way to help both Autohint and Game Masters be more efficient is to split objectives into smaller pieces. This may sound counterintuitive, but adding more objectives makes it easier to tell exactly where a group is in a puzzle and what hint they might need. This is also a great way to ensure your Game Masters are paying attention, because they need to be checking these objectives off as players progress.

Example: Players need to assemble a jigsaw puzzle and then read and solve a riddle written on the puzzle. The answer to the riddle unlocks a box. Instead of one objective, this could be split into two: assembling the puzzle and solving the riddle. You can have hints specific to finding puzzle pieces around the room and assembling the puzzle in the first objective, while the second can be focused on solving the riddle and what to do with the answer.

Splitting up objectives makes it less likely a group will receive a hint about things they’ve already done. It can also decrease hint response times and allow for more specific data to be collected on your games.

Using Game Data

Data in Game Statistics includes the amount of time spent on objectives. As a general rule of thumb, players should not be spending more than 10 minutes on a single objective. This is especially true if you’ve split objectives into smaller, task-based checkpoints. At the 10 minute mark, they’ve spent more than 15% of their game working on this one thing, which can lead to frustration.

When objectives are smaller, it can be easier to find the “sticky” parts of games in which players are spending a lot of time. Are they spending more time collecting puzzle pieces and putting them together? Or more time reading and trying to solve the riddle? This identifies areas where small changes could be made to help reduce player frustrations or adjust game difficulty. It also informs what the Ahead/Behind time suggestions should be set to in order to keep player progress accurate.