Want design feedback for your new game? Then you’ve found the right thread! Post it here to see what others think. Discuss to your heart’s content, until next Friday, when we’ll lock the old and start anew.
How To Get Folks To Checkout Your Game?
Show - Be Interesting! Pics, videos, or best of all, a playable game!
Be Concise - Who’s got time for Wall 'O Text? Less is more.
Wondering how it plays to someone new, I know there’s bugs and such but the overall feel and fundamentals is already there so I’m curious what someone new coming to it thinks it feels like… First Impression, i guess?
What Worked
The aesthetic was pleasant. It was sort of Tron-like, which was really cool, and easy on the eyes. The laser-sight on the guy’s weapon made it easy to know what I was interacting with, even if my aim with the pistol sucked. The WASD/mouse controls were responsive.
What Didn’t Work
First, the combat didn’t quite work. You start with way too little ammo to do anything that matters; I wasted it early on one of the orange cubes that moved menacingly towards me, and when I did that I couldn’t do anything after the fact. Right clicking the ammo hidden in the completely walled-off cell had no effect, other than letting me know that my vacuum tool works. The red console on the south side of the map completely confused me; I tried every button on my keyboard to interact with it, but nothing happened. Finally, the white mass at the north end of the map confused me equally - I couldn’t find a way to interact with it either.
Also, what’s the point of this game? Is it survival? I couldn’t tell from my playthrough; in fact, I don’t know what genre the game is, or what is expected of me period. I know there was text, I spacebarred through it as quickly as I could because it wasn’t that interesting, and the text scrolled too slowly; I didn’t want to wait around for text while giant enemy orange cubes were hovering near me!
Also, the giant enemy cubes. As far as I can tell, they move purely in fixed patterns, they don’t aggro on the player. They seem to move slower than the player does, so it should be simple enough to outrun them, and I’m guessing that’s a intention at some point, given that they shimmer menacingly (they are obviously not friendly.)
Suggestions
Keep the art style for #1GAM, certainly; it’s minimal but pleasant.
Don’t give the player text in situations where they can consider themselves in danger. We’ll just ignore it, because danger.
Cut down the amount of text, your stuff is way too wordy. By the second sentence I honestly didn’t care. I’m here for the game, unless you can find a way to interest me in the lore.
Give the player a clear goal. As it was I wasted ammo for no obvious reason. I’m not sure if using my gun on anything would have had an effect.
Give the player an interact button; you had stuff that it seems obvious is intended to be interactable somehow, you just never gave me the tool to do it.
Consider revising your first level’s design to ease the player into the game. Sure, telling the player that WASD moves you, LMB shoots, MMB manipulates matter, RMB vacuums immediately is useful…but instead, create rooms that force you to use these powers in a safe, risk-free context first, before increasing the challenge. A player should understand their powers, before you ask us to use them in interesting ways.
It’s always fun to throw boulders around! I like idea of the text that moves the narrative along, but make sure to pop it up where it’s safe for the player to stop and read. Maybe give the content of the text a little more of a subjective voice, a little more character, and more motivation or explanation for why the player is here and, especially, what he should do next.
Visually, it’s nice and clean, with a good color palette. Don’t add any more visual clutter, but consider adding some more liveliness to it – more visual bounciness of objects, more effects, maybe even screen shakes, plus some more variety in sound. Some music wouldn’t hurt either.
Frames per second were inconsistent for me – as low as 13 fps, as high as 60 fps.
Do you plan to add more powers or more ways of interacting with the level? In other words, what kind of progression? If those are the only powers, consider introducing them gradually rather than granting them all at the start.
I also like the intro text on the floor at the beginning of the level! I hope you’ll post an updated version next week or whenever it’s ready. I’m looking forward to seeing more.
Nice polish! It’s a simple mechanic that’s easy to grasp. Playing in a browser, it reminded me of an old school Flash game. It would be a nice puzzler on mobile, too. The web resolution was a bit unusual, though. I use 1920x1080 resolution on my main monitor, and the game was too tall to fit in the browser.
This is where I was basically heading with it, I started a couple of weeks ago so with these 3 levels I had to get them done to get some idea of how the systems feel.
Agreed, after I got some of the space mockups done I liked that it felt clean, but fairly open ended with the destruction of blinking walls, enemies, etc.
I did notice spikes from 40 - 60 in my tests, but I have a decent machine. I’m assuming this was when one of the enemies popped? I’ll play around with it some more and see if I can squeeze out some optimization.
No new powers. Everything will play off of those 3 controls. It’s for 1GAM so time is limited and I’m stuck between polishing what I have versus adding levels to extend the potential of the inputs - which I feel has some good potential but cunning design to monopolize them takes time.
Me too! I got the idea from Splinter Cell Blacklist, they do this periodically with an objective or level name on walls at key points and I wanted to try to replicate the idea in a top-down. I think it feels cool, like an ominous high level narration character.
I’ll try to get some stuff done for next week that improves its shortcomings. Thanks for taking the time to look at it, it’s helpful to see input from the outside, even outloud thinking, just to compare with your own impressions and keep the direction on track.
Good points, maybe I can add a bit of a more controlled intro with faster speech points in a safe place that introduce the mechanics better. This would likely clarify the ammo situation and help with adoption of the mechanics. The Console/Exit mechanic is unclear, I’ll work on fixing this and explaining it through speech scenarios.
Agreed! Poor execution.
Rather than explain it, I’ll work on improving the experience so next time you play it is clearer.
Right, lots of cloudy points to clarify. I think, again, that a better safe-zone introduction would help a lot, as you’ve pointed out. #6 is particularly good in explaining the core issue.
In reality, there are three levels. But theres no value in having more if the mechanics aren’t clearly understood.
Thanks a bunch! Much needed to hear this after a couple of weeks working on the fundamentals
I’d recommend starting by introducing the non-combat mechanics, first - those seem slightly less intuitive than shooting stuff, and more important. A great thing with the vacuum mechanics are that you can set up really cool mid-distance vacuum manipulation puzzles, sort of like an isolated bit of a Zelda game. Judging by your previous comments and the game itself, you’ve already made headway towards either a survival horror, or a stealth game, so there’s great potential for synergy between the two.
Alternatively, instead of one long, boring level, start with the Vacuum and distance-manipulator powers turned off, and make the first level start the player off with a safe area to get the basic movement down, then add something you have to shoot to teach the player the gun (in the event they’re completely clueless), then add enemies, then start adding the ability to turn on the vacuum (and some safe scenario to have the player use it to continue), then more stuff, then the ability to turn on the distance manipulator (same caveats apply, safe zone to learn it, then more stuff to have the player integrate it. At that point, you’ve generally got a complete, low-text tutorial level.
Hey Gigi & the rest of the world’s fantastic Game designers!
I think this type of posting matches with the WIP area, but having found it, and having a current post in the Work in Progress Thread here, I’d like to try and scrounge up a bit more feedback.
We published our game Cake Hop to android market last month and have gotten feedback from a few users that they don’t seem to understand the game concept very well. I’ve revised the tutorial multiple times to make it as intuitive as possible.
I am looking for feedback to confirm if the game is really too hard to understand or users find the puzzles too difficult to solve.
@jtok4j - I like the simplicity of the experience, the thematic art, and the addition of background music. You’ve got a nice, basic game that stays consistent to itself. And, here’s a few thoughts that might make it stronger:
Fewer choices - Put a big ‘GO!’ button, that takes me to the first level, on easy mode. I don’t want to make 4 decisions before my first experience. Difficulty and marble choices could be bonuses for progressing.
Faster! - The speed is pretty realistic for a marble-board game, which would have been perfect, 20 years ago, when people played those. Speed up the movement, the acceleration, the bouncing - modern games are much, much faster.
Overlapping Art - On some of the menus, the background, text, and buttons are fighting for attention. Consider making the buttons into BUTTONS, and putting strong outlines (black? white?) around the text, so it is easy to read.
@appar.caterva , @LaneFox , @renman3000 - Do you have web deploys? I had the same problem when I asked for feedback - not everyone had an Android phone, and few would take the time to download it to a hard drive. Next time, I’ll remove ALL barriers to get more feedback :).
I agree. I took the time to download the prototype from @LaneFox , but it seems to me that just having a webplayer in a DropBox folder with a gibberish name that gets deleted after the week is out would be much friendlier to getting feedback.
No Feedback Friday #12? I was hoping to submit my game for review… should I just start my own thread here or will someone start the official thread for this week?
