[color=#cc0099]Delicious friends, we are wildly excited to announce that the Fallen London website redesign will go live Tuesday the 5th of June!
After eight or more years unchanged, the Fallen London website has received a full visual redesign. We’ve also used this time to make many general improvements to the overall user experience of the site.
Other updates include:
Making Fallen London responsive so it can be played in mobile browsers[/li][li]Tech updates (it’ll now be in HTTPS, huzzah!)[/li][li]Reorganisation of the Myself, Possessions, and Bazaar areas to make finding info and items more efficient
It’s important to bear in mind that after the redesign goes live, we’ll still be working on making some final tweaks as well as bug fixes. A huge thanks to all the beta testers who’ve helped us along the way! Once live, any feedback or bug reporting will continue to be tremendously useful - these can be sent directly to fallenlondonredesign@failbettergames.com.
A wonderfully new Fallen London is coming your way very soon, delicious friends! If you’re interested, there’s a little video demo of the new site on our blog.
25 MAY 2018 UPDATE:
Anyone wishing to try out the new site early can do so at beta.fallenlondon.com, which is now open to all.
We’re intending to keep the beta site open right up to its full launch in order to test it on our servers. If for any reason you run into any issues, please send them directly to: fallenlondonredesign@failbettergames.com
[/color]edited by Absintheuse on 5/23/2018 edited by Absintheuse on 5/25/2018 edited by Absintheuse on 5/25/2018
Interesting. I am still not entirely happy with the website having a redesign in the first place, but I would not be upset with this design. In my personal opinion, it is an improvement over the last redesign. I like it. And I am sure most of the fanbase will like it as well.
I see that the candle, quote on quote ‘delicious friend’, and somewhat ‘parchmenty’ feeling have returned. I am not entirely sure how I feel about the map, which appears to be from the mobile app. The separation of the Myself and Items tabs is delightful. It is nice to know that you took our feedback into consideration. I thank the designers and the beta testers for their hard work. We appreciate your efforts to make this game a better one.
I still don’t see why the site needed a redesign in the first place, but I don’t mind the new design either. Thank you for all that you have done for us.
I guess according to the video the next exceptional story is going to be "Caught Red Handed"
The Site looks awesome though. I’m not sure if I’m a fan of the roundness f the qualities though… it felt like I was looking at a portrait before. Now it’s like I’m in the app store. edited by lukeskylicker on 5/23/2018
Rounded corners are the bane of my existence and my most hated part of modern UI design, but otherwise it looks okay. From the screenshot, the main window and several buttons appear to have sharp corners; only the stat icons have those most loathed of rounded corners. edited by Kaijyuu on 5/23/2018
On the new map the House of Chimes does actually appear to be in Westminster now, where it ought to be. Bang go all those theories I was told when I asked why it was where it was. Seems that it’s just that the map was wrong. :)
I have to admit I was a bit worried about the redesign when I first heard about it, because sometimes companies seem to change things to the opposite of what users actually want (ahem, reddit). After seeing that video, I can say that I’m pleased with it for the most part. I agree with the others about the rounded corners, but overall I think it looks good and seems to resize nicely for mobile users. Looking forward to trying it out! edited by idyl on 5/23/2018
I admit that the redesign grew on me over the course of watching the video. Honestly, the only issue I really have with it is the color scheme. I liked the red progress bars more than the blue because they’re bolder and more distinctive, and I liked the darker background of the current website more because of personal preference, but I can live with that. I think it’d actually be really fun to have minor customization options like that (switching colors of sidebar text, different shades of brown for the background, etc.), but I’d be reasonably apprehensive of offering too much choice in that regard as a content designer.
I’m excited to try it out on mobile. I actually really liked playing it in the browser on mobile (I tried the app once, but uninstalled it), sliding the screen and zooming in and out because the website wasn’t designed for this.
Anyway, I really like some of the changes since the first preview: the return of the candle and "Delicious friend" are nice and stylistic, as well as the compromise of the rounded box, which I really like. Looking forward to seeing this.
My major complaint is that this is yet another website going the route of “Hey, let’s take our mobile website and stretch it out for desktop!” Everything is more stretched out, there’s useless whitespace everywhere, clickable elements are bigger and farther apart and simpler (for instance, shop icons are gone from the Bazaar tab unless you hover over them). Why? To make tapping them on a touch screen easier, of course. Which has no use on a PC and makes thing take up a lot more space for no reason.
Besides my personal pet pieve, I will also echo what others have said about the fact that new sterile-looking blue colour scheme really doesn’t fit Fallen London, and neither do the “modern” rounded corners. Other than these design choices, I’m looking forward to a more responsive site.
Please tell me we’re be able to have the old skin back if we want it. This looks terrible and far too modern, which is a style I dislike to begin with.
I imagine one of the main points of the redesign is to have to maintain only one (and it being one that works on all platforms), so it’s doubtful they’ll have a legacy version.
Not really–this is outright wrong given there’s a completely distinct mobile version of the site. While I agree with you that some of these changes are counterproductive (especially the lack of space efficiency) the site layout retains the same fundamental structure of the current site. The mobile site is structured much more like the app.
Granted, I only know this because I was part of the beta. The blog post’s mention of the mobile site is rather unclear and there’s no images at all.
I guarantee you someone will make user styles to (at minimum) revert the color scheme, rounded icons, and other simple code changes.
[color=#cc0099]Anyone wishing to try out the new site early can do so at beta.fallenlondon.com, which is now open to all.
We’re intending to keep the beta site open right up to its full launch in order to test it on our servers. If for any reason you run into any issues, please send them directly to: fallenlondonredesign@failbettergames.com[/color]
Um… if I switch between the beta and the "normal" version, will my actions be synced? Or is the beta only for testing, and what I do there has no "real" effects? edited by Amélie Vaincœur on 5/25/2018