Well, I finished it. I could have finished slightly faster but I noted down some observations during the playthrough that took time. Also, the annoying pop-up box kept coming up.

Here are the observations I made while playing the game:

 

• Some of the font is hard to see due to having similar colours to the background, or just being a dark colour. 

 

• The first page is confusing as it looks like there are many options to continue to the next page

 

• If you have ADHD, you are going to struggle in this game because there is a lot going on at once on the screen

 

• When filling out information, you have to manually delete the text prompts in the box. Strange and tedious

 

• I actually read the terms and conditions this time (I usually skip them). Scrolling through the terms and conditions  was really slow until I read that I can hold ALT to scroll faster (although it said that that was cheating. Oh well).

 

• The constant ticking time pop up box encouraging you to finish  was annoying

 

• On some of the pages, the “cancel” box is highlighted and not the “next” box, tricking people to click on the wrong option.

 

• Basically, everything is designed to be impractical and annoying to the user. Hence, User Inyerface.

 

• I thought that it was an interesting but terribly impractical way to choose the country, difficult because there is no colour or names but pictures of flags that show colour when you hover over them.

 

• I also felt weird putting in my personal information into a website that I do not trust, so I put in fake information.

 

• When choosing a birthdate, the months are out of order,  and the slider to choose the age is a terribly designed slider because it is so sensitive.

 

• the year starts from 1900… nobody born in 1900 is still alive…

 

• You have to choose age AND input your birthdate? That is annoying.

 

• Gender is the unhighlighted selection, not the highlighted section. If male was highlighted, then you were actually stating you were female.

 

• Asking users to select the bow is ambiguous because all of them are technically bows.

 

• The select boxes are above the pictures, not below as it would seem as shown.

 

Overall, an annoying, terrible, frustrating experience. 0/10 would not play again. However, it did help me appreciate the efficient, streamlined user interfaces that we use a lot more. Despite this obviously satirical approach to the game, I have experienced similar cases of dark patterns and general user manipulation on websites and games. 

 

One recent experience that came to mind was when using the Instagram search feature. It is quite subtle, but it has happened to me so many times that I feel that it is on purpose. When searching for an Instagram user, when you type in the username it starts to suggest users as you type. I would go to tap on the suggested user and then the autocomplete suggestions would come up and I would tap on the wrong thing. 

 

Mobile games also are nefarious for having scummy user interfaces, by making things purposefully complex to navigate through and also for having the “amazing deal” microtransactions constantly popping up on your screen and having them be the biggest and most colourful options when looking through their store.