Bonsai Word is my first game and I should have worked on something easier for my first game because the logic involved in this is similar to logic I have to do at work for Medicare software…tedious. I attempted to use Nvidia physx built into Unity but I found it easier to make my own physics (in a sense) with the falling pieces.
But the result is a relaxing and sometimes entertaining game that can pass the time.
I wanted to give this game functionality since I’m not much of an illustrator or artist (although the backgrounds are from my camera). I think I achieve that with the disappearing words and refilling letters, entire dictionary search fast with hashsets Facebook login and leaderboard functionality and if you don’t login, it persists to your device, themes, and EVEN a mute button.
Since the game is not quite finished (should be this weekend) I am willing to accept creative feedback and in return, my dignity.
The photos are pleasant.
I’m guessing the letters disappear when a word is created and then the remaining letters all cascade down?
It’s hard to tell the mechanics without showing.
What are the blue dots behind the words and drawn over the background images? Suspect these are particle pretties to enhance the falling letters.
Would be good to see a video of this to give any helpful feedback.
Animator I looked at your website in your profile, man impressive modeling and animation! I have done some 3d modeling 5 or 6 years back in cinema4d but never animated. I made a droideka model which is decent but it took me weeks or maybe months!
The timer - the background & music is calming so the timer seems incongruous to me. I was thinking more of an endless mode suits them.
If it is a timed game add some juice & maybe upbeat music to enhance that sense of panic. I’m thinking visual juice like Bookworm where things fall, or appear to fall, quicker, things explode & shake etc.
The letters & text was a bit hard to read. This may be an issue with different backgrounds as the colours vary.
Do you have high scores? People like to beat themselves &/or their friends. I know gamejolt has an api you can download & use to incorporate into their system but I’ve never used it.
Of course these are just my opinions, take them with a grain of salt
Ted thanks for the feedback. I agree that the game is a little too calm and relaxed (not very exciting). Bookworm looks like a great twist on the word drop game genre. I might add some secret sauce to the game if there’s any interest in it. The backgrounds may interfere with the game, I may change them to gradient or abstract type backgrounds instead to draw less attention away from the board and add the sprite back behind the letters to help contrast. There is a universal high score leaderboard already hosted with GamesSpark at the end of the game that is accessed if you log into facebook otherwise it persists your score locally. Thanks again!
There’s nothing wrong with a relaxing word game, & an endless version may be fun for those that like to use their brain without the panic/rush. The downside of using linked letters for an endless game, & this happens in bookworm, is that you end up with all consonants at the bottom that you can’t use.
If you changed it to endless but you can use letters anywhere on the board without linking the letters it would change the game totally. This may encourage people to slow down & look for bigger words & scores but then you might need to tweak the letters dropped to maintain some sort of balance (I don’t know, I’m just guessing).
I guess it depends what you were wanting it to be.
There should always be 28% vowels on the board to keep words flowing. And it seems to work great there’s always words but I do see the unused consonants drop to the bottom, good observation. These are some things I will take into mind this week while finishing touches before release.
I really like the idea of an endless game… This encourages play time to increase, which is what I want. Maybe a much longer timer would work as well.
If you wanted to keep linked letters, How much would it change things if you put the letters across the middle of the board & alternated the refills from above & below?
This would add much needed visual stimulation to the game and would be very easy to implement with 2 % x == 0 alternate. Thanks for the great ideas! My creative vision suffers in some areas
My original game was pieces could switch places with each other (cool) and user didn’t highlight but just moved words together but then you have to make sure no words touch at the beginning or they’ll make a word so I didn’t like it, then I thought only allow piece switching when user has x points but never went through with it. Maybe if I can bang these things out before sunday Ill incorporate them.
Try it with scrabble letters on a grid board first. It shouldn’t be hard to prototype the game play as it isn’t constantly moving.
And no worries for the ideas, that’s what this is all for. Plus thinking about them gave me a new idea as well which I was just documenting for another day
Nice droid and thanks for the comments on my old stuff.
I agree with everything ted said and don’t have anything else to add. Well maybe some different sound fx for different number of letters. So pop for a 3 letter word, bubbly pops for 4 letter word, grandiose sci-fi explosion for 5 letter words etc etc
This is something nice. Good work.
The game has been updated to include new features @tedthebug as you and others were suggesting to make it have more excitement. It’s still a word game but it’s at least fun to play against others scores now. It was a bit boring before but I think I’ve included enough things to make it more exciting and I’d like your feedback on it.
Try three 5 letter words or greater in a row to set fire to your words and get x5 points
Doing bad? There’s hints that show (as suggested)
If your logged in with google+ there are achievements like get 5 multiplier words , earn the Zen Place achievement.
You can get it for your android device at link below to get a better feeling for how it plays. Download
Or just watch video:
You can’t hear the music in the video but each theme has music
