1. There's so much happening on the screen between your app's UI and the fake UI with the dark patterns that it's confusing. IMO you should show the objective first, and then let the user click to reveal the fake UI and challenge. For example, simply show, "Challenge #1 — Find the button that actually lets you cancel the subscription." Then have a button that says, "Start Challenge." When that button is clicked, then reveal the UI.

2. Give me some context. If you just say, "Find the button that actually lets you cancel the subscription," that's not really enough. You should set the scenario. "Imagine you're subscribed to an app, but you don't want to be subscribed anymore. So you sign into the app and click the cancel button. It loads a new screen. How do proceed from here to finalize your cancelation?"

3. Don't tell me the answer in advance. Naming the first challenge "Color Confusion" tells me the answer.

4. Don't auto-advance steps. I had no idea that I auto advanced. I changed tabs, then came back, then was scrolling down looking for the next step button. Just let me manually click to the next step as a user. Preferably at the bottom, near the pattern explanation.

  I wish to opt out of receiving exclusive promotional offers and updates about products I might be interested in.

  What this means:
  When checked: They will send you marketing emails. Uncheck to stop promotional emails.

  How it tricks you:
  They use 'opt out' and 'wish' to create a double negative - saying no to opting out means saying yes to emails

The first two levels want you to click the non-misleading option and then the third requires you to click the misleading option, which then has a "Report as Deceptive Marketing" button. This feels counterproductive if you're trying to teach people to not fall for dark patterns, you've just rewarded them for falling for it and punished anyone who didn't!. Then, a later level has the opposite, you see (almost) the same dialog from level 3, but you need to click the other option.

The instructions for Level 3 do say you're supposed to "find the hidden truth", but that's not necessarily what clicking the "Activate Premium Features" button would do in real life. I think it would work better if it stuck to one side of things, probably having players always try to avoid getting misled. At the end it says one of the outcomes should be "Improved muscle memory", so the goal should probably be no clicking on bad things.

This also makes it confusing what it's supposed to be simulating to me. I've never had a site offer to let me report their own promotions as deceptive (or as a later level has, "Report Bait and Switch Tactic" when you go to check out).

The "Trick Questions" level had only pre-checked checkboxes that you should uncheck (and the button tells you to uncheck all of them, there's no thought required here), I think it would work better if some needed to remain checked. It ties in to the same "muscle memory" issue, unchecking isn't guaranteed to be a good action. Similarly, it might make sense to have Basket Sneaking include a coupon code or something that you shouldn't remove from your cart, so players learn to read closely.

I was also just about to complain that you shared something to Show HN that is behind a subscription - then I realized that was part of the experience!

1. Switching between mobile and desktop modes resets the progress

2. When I complete a lesson, an explanation is given but I'm given just a few seconds to read it, and then the game forcefully continues to the next lesson. Sometimes I could miss the explanation.

Also, I didn't really understand this one, where the phrase in question is "I wish to opt out of receiving exclusive promotional offers and updates about products I might be interested in." How does unchecking this result in an opt out? I can't figure out how to read this to make "[x]" mean anything other than "opt me out of offers and updates."

>

What this means:

When checked: They will send you marketing emails. Uncheck to stop promotional emails.

How it tricks you: They use 'opt out' and 'wish' to create a double negative - saying no to opting out means saying yes to emails

Edit: oh I see. I got confused by the triple negative! The "correct" answer is indeed to keep it checked, but the instructional aspect of the page as a whole implies that you need to uncheck the box to have succeeded (aligning with the mistake). I think starting with the box unchecked might be a little more clear for the purposes of demonstrating.

BTW something on the game is making my CPU go 100%. I'm on Firefox, Linux and in the JS console I can see "Unexpected value translate(52.460687992082626%, 52.24894125700998%) scale(1.0398801892701597) parsing transform attribute." warning being printed nonstop.

After opening the site I had to "fail" a couple just to understand what the user goal even was. I recognized the fake/misleading UI but still wasn't sure what to do with that information.

I think you should take this exact concept, do some user studies, and come out with a V2. There's a market for this. My grandparents are getting to the age where I don't really trust them with access to their own credit cards / operating the web, I frequently come over to fix their computer and it's just extensions they've unintentionally installed. If this was iterated on & repackaged as either a educational course or a "test" to see if they are "safe on the internet", I would pay money for it.

And on the other end, it's well-proven at this point that tech literacy for the average person peaked somewhere around people born in 1985-2000. Before then, people grew up without as much access to tech. After that, people grew up in an environment where common tech problems were already solved. (A 10 yearold in 2012 wasn't dealing with corrupted disks, they were playing on an iPad). Offering this concept as a course targetted at the age range could be good.

    I wish to opt out of receiving exclusive promotional offers and updates about products I might be interested in.

Other than that, fun project!

From a technical point of view the page scrolls a little slowly. I'm on Firefox for Android and it's usually faster than that. However for those scammy sites slowness is par for the course. It adds to the realism of the experience.