Visual Saves Eelke Folmer The player needs to find a particular save game from a list of save games. Visibility of system status Players may forget the last time and date that they played the game. Players may have forgotten where exactly they are in the game. Players are generally impatient and quickly need to be able to find the right savegame. Loading a wrong savegame wastes time. Games that allow saving game progress such as adventures and role playing games. Players can save their progress during the game, which may result in a large number of save games. The autosave pattern can also contribute to a large number of savegames. Save games are usually displayed in a list by text, for example a name, text or date, total time played or combination of these. Identifying a particular save game is difficult because a visual cue would be more effective. Provide visual feedback with each save game description When possible try to provide small screenshots of where the player 'is' in the game in addition to a save game's textual description. The visual save should be sufficiently good for identifying it. If the number of items in the list of save games is small, a visual save may be shown for all save games. If the list contains many save games or when the label is important to the player (for example when the player has the ability to specify a name when saving a save game), show a preview of one item only alongside the label of the save game. Players are much more likely to remember the correct save game when visual feedback is provided. The search time for a particular save game is decreased because of these visual clues. Otherwise, first a particular save game has to be loaded before a player would know if it is the right one which takes time. This solution improves performance and satisfaction. Grim Fandango - This adventure games offers visual saves in a small screen on the right side of the list of save games. When clicking on a particular save game the visual is changed correspondingly. Neverwinter Nights - This popular role playing game has visual saves (Implementation the same as Grim Fandango).