PC, Console, Steam & Mobile . 2025
Redesigning UX for 60-Player Real-Time Racing.
Applying mixed method research and iterative design during a 12 week sprint to improve the player experience in Stampede Racing Royale.
Project Overview
Stampede: Racing Royale is a large scale battle racing title from Sumo Leamington. Think Mario Kart’s speed meets Fall Guys’ chaos, with 60 players simultaneously racing through elimination rounds until one champion remains.
Seasonal progression and deep customization kept the game evolving, but before launch something was quietly hurting long term engagement. Players were arriving, racing a couple of rounds, and never coming back.
Problem:
Early Xbox Insider playtests revealed a critical retention crisis. 38% of lobby wait time
was being converted into churn, with players leaving before the race even started.
Mobile controls were uncompetitive vs PC in cross play.
FTUE left players unprepared for 60-player chaos.
Power-ups felt cryptic no catch-up, no hope
Goal: Research-led redesign across 12 weeks
Vertical slice FTUE with real gameplay from minute one.
Mechanical milestones before entering live lobbies.
Fixed joystick anchors with calibrated dead zones.
UI safe zones to prevent accidental navigation during races.
My role:
UX designer leading player experience feature design for Stampede: Racing Royale.
Responsibilities:
conducting research,
Cross functional collaboration,
paper and digital wireframing,
iterating on designs,
making high-fidelity prototype
Outcome
Steam Rating (post-launch)
87%
Very Positive - players loved the redesigned experience
Day 7 Retention
+31%
It's a challenge to select seats in apps in quite easy and clear way.
Sprint Duration
12 weeks
High-intensity development cycle to hit the June 2025 window
Usability Studies
We ran a multi seat Round 2 study, a mixed-methods comparison of the PC and mobile experience.
The methodology was intentional: two distinct player personas, two platforms, and two control schemes, all tested in a controlled 2.5-hour session.
Finding the Friction with right crowd
User Personas
Personas were selected by conducting user research and identifying common pain points, that frustrate and block the user from getting what they need from a product.
Pain Points
The Advantage Gap
PC players dominated cross-play. Mobile users struggled with clunky, oversensitive controls and obstructive UI.
The FTUE Gap
FTUE covered only basic steering, ignoring competitive mechanics like boosts, firing, and reversing, leaving players unprepared for 60-player chaos.
The "Fatalism" Effect
Confusing power-ups and missing catch-up mechanics caused in-race abandonment.
Storyboards
The series of hand-drawing frames that visually describe and explore a user's experience with a product.
I began with drawing storyboards to focus on just the most important parts of a user’s experience with the game. It's a story that was told through the panels revealed their frustrations.
Big picture storyboard, which focuses on the user experience. It's about how people will use the Voo's app during their day and it will be useful.
User Journey Map
It is the series of experiences Carlos has as he achieve a specific goal. It was built on the his experience.
I developed a user journey map of players experience with the game to highlight potential pain points and identify areas for improvement.
Goal
Choose a good movie in a cinema theatre nearby and select seats in an app in a fast and clear way
Some important screen shots from the usability testing in regard to the findings relative to pain points and more
Feel of the incorporated mechanics across different schemes - Classic, Refined and PC
The proximity of the drift and steer buttons to each other implied they needed to be pressed simultaneously
Player experience overall playing on the mobile trying out different mechanics and experience
Half the powerups lacked intuitive ness and did not behave the way it was expected to.
Starting the Design
I created various diagrams and storyboards to clarify and analyze the game information architecture. Afterward, I sketched paper wireframes and then transitioned to digital wireframes, building a low-fidelity prototype to conduct initial usability studies with stakeholders.
Card Sorting
The series of hand-drawing frames that visually describe and explore a user's experience with a product.
Card sorting was used to understand how players naturally group gameplay features and menus. The insights helped structure the game’s navigation and information architecture to align with player expectations.
Big picture storyboard, which focuses on the user experience. It's about how people will use the Voo's app during their day and it will be useful.
Information Architecture
Next step: creating the application map. My goal here was to make strategic information architecture decisions that would improve structural flow of the feature.
From Insight to Action.
With three distinct problem spaces defined, the design sprint focused on prioritising solutions by retention impact. We worked in close collaboration with the engineering and QA teams in Unity, with weekly playtest cycles to validate each change.
Wireframes - FTUE flows (Flows presented here are part of a structured, continuous branching system. The flows shown here represent a limited glimpse.
On this step I used the Figma design tool to create digital wireframes of all the pages. Then I bonded all of them into the clear and smooth structure. The goal is to show how all the parallel structure interact with each other.
Homing Projectile Power up - Wireframes
Presenting one type of powerup flow here - that by itself requires individual flows and actions
High fidelity Wireframes
Note: Not all flows are included. This project involved multiple iterations, continuous testing, and countless branching flows. The visuals here highlight only a small portion of usability testing and key interactions.
Refining Design
For Stampede, the design process was highly iterative. At this stage, we have few high-fidelity mockups that incorporated insights from earlier usability studies. These mockups provided a clear vision of the next iteration and served as the foundation for subsequent rounds of testing and iterative refinements to enhance gameplay and user interactions.
Mockups
These are a high fidelity design that represents a final product
I created all the app pages mockups, incorporating the right design elements such as typography, color, and iconography. I also included captivating and visually appealing images, and developed all the necessary components and elements.
The goal was to demonstrate the final Voo's app in as much detail as possible.
Mobile Controls?
Closing the Input Gap
Mobile controls were the deepest technical challenge. We needed to close a competitive gap without giving mobile players an artificial advantage. The goal was parity a “snappy” feel that felt native, not compromised.
⚠️ The mobile version was temporarily put on hold to focus on refining the PC and console versions for launch, ensuring a polished and balanced core experience first.
The project schematically :
Outcome
Designing for a 60-player real-time game at cross-platform scale is a fundamentally different challenge to typical product design. The margin for error is tiny one broken input interaction affects every single player in every single match.
Steam Rating (post-launch)
87%
Very Positive - players loved the redesigned experience
Day 7 Retention
+31%
It's a challenge to select seats in apps in quite easy and clear way.
Lobby Waiting Churn
↓ 38%
Players were no longer abandoning during the queue , onboarding confidence carried over
Takeways
Impact:
The game saw a real burst of positive energy at launch. Players enjoyed the races, praised the controls, and the reviews reflected that the experience finally matched the ambition of the concept.
What I learned:
Research has to be platform specific. Observing mobile and PC players separately not in aggregate was the only way to see the real input gap. Aggregated data would have masked the severity of mobile friction.
Next Steps
Conduct follow-up usability testing on the new iteration.
Identify any additional areas of need and ideate on new features.