Feedback Friday #132 - September 25-28, 2020

G’day folks, looking for some friendly advice and feedback for your current game project?

Then you’ve found the right thread! Feedback Friday runs from Friday to Monday every week. Share a demo of your current game to get playtesting and feedback, get new perspectives to help you overcome your biggest obstacles and take advantage of the Unity Community to boost your game development!

What To Show

  • Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play > everything else
  • How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)
  • Post a link to a playable game, preferably WebGL. If you don’t have a playable game, post something substantial, not just text.

How To Ask For Feedback

  • Be concise.
  • Specify what you want feedback on and what you don’t.
  • Resist the urge to write an immediate defense. Take the time to understand their points. Remember that your friends here are taking time out of their busy schedules to help you for free.

How To Give Feedback

  • Be positive. There’s something of value in every game.
  • Focus on the design, not the designer.

Feedback Friday #131 is here.

3 Likes

Streakz: Eight Ball Pool - Super fun casual pool game for Android - Get it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jnamobile.eightballstreakz


If you have Android device please check it out. I know I need to add a lot more social features (share highscores/screenshots, leaderboards, etc) but interested in your thoughts on the gameplay, controls, etc.

It is purposfully hard (got to drive that spending)… but hopefully not so hard as to be unfun. Let me know what you think.


PS Hope it’s okay to post something released, if it is an issue let me know and I will delete post. I figured there was no harm in releasing prior to wide-spread play testing given that organic installs are virtually non-existent on play store.

Looks like a great game! I’ll download and play it - are there any specific things in the game you’ve identified that might need work? Any gameplay mechanics you’re unsure about?

I haven’t played it, but I looked into play store and I can say, when I searched full title, results end up with tons of 8 balls pools games.
Only when I typed Streakz in google play search, the result came up in some around first top10. So we’ll, you got some competition ahead :slight_smile:

Not expecting any organic installs, need to buy them for casual games its just the way it is :slight_smile:

I’m pretty confident the controls are simple to use, having gone through multiple iterations with quite a few people. Its not obvious that you can control power, but it has almost zero effect on the gameplay so I’m not too concerned about that (origianlly I wasn’t going to have power contorls at all). Although still welcome to put your notes in.

Questions

How do you find rate of coin delivery? Did you look at themes and try to unlock them?

Probably the most valuable thing you can help me with is help me work out how to make people play longer.

If I buy installs I’m going to need to get people to play at least 60 minutes (assuming no IAP) to break even. I would expect 5-10 minute sessions, which means I need to bring people back somehow.

What might help? New game modes? More things to unlock? More rewards? Make the game a bit easier? More juice to make streaks sesem more epic?

What annoyed you? How quickly did you get bored? Etc…

You need some game modes.
For example,

  • Different tables.
  • Different amount of balls.
  • Different winning / loose conditions.
  • Different balls weights.
  • Weaker / stronger stick
  • Some perks / bonuses
  • etc.

I’m a bit worried that it loses the hypercasual feeling if I add too much … but maybe it already has with the somewhat realistic graphics.

I was thinking of a:

  • time trial (see how many balls you can pot in 1 minute for example).
  • clear the table mode (X amount of shots to sink Y amount of balls)

The other question is will these things actually bring people back. These (both your ideas and my ideas) seem like things that would take hooked players and give them more to do. But most players wont be hooked. Most will play for 5 minutes. What I need to do is covert 5 minute players in to 30 minute players.

Aren’t there tons of “casual” pools games?
What makes your game special otherwise?

‘Hyper casual’ not casual. It is not a normal pool game, you dont play a game of pool. You take one shot. Then get given a different shot. There’s no commitment to a full game of pool. Play sessions will be as short as 30 seconds, maybe 5-10 minutes for a good session. I haven’t seena lot of games like this, but I’m sure there are heaps of them.

The game is not special. Thats not the right thinking, this isn’t a game people are going to rave about. The game is amusing. It needs to be amusing for a long enough that users pay for themselves. I’m fully expecting it wont be able to do that, but I’d like to give it a change to prove itself.

Bit early for analytics to be useful but at the moment over a few thousand sessions:

Sessions per user: 1.4
Average play time per session: ~400 seconds

Also I fully acknowledge that this may be better as a casual game without the ‘hyper’. Smaller player base, more in depth gameplay, with more of a focus on maximising ARPPU.

It wasn’t the idea, this was a quick diversion from bigger projects, but I should be open to change :wink:

Before feedback weekend times up, just my quick shameless snick in here.

While working on me EcoPico project, I am curious, is there anything you don’t like about my procedural hex planet, or feel, that should be somehow different?

  • Just quick explanation:
  • yellow color is low ground,
  • dark color is high ground,
  • white is either north / south poll ice caps, or hills ice caps,
  • dark blue water,
  • Light blue, frozen water

@Antypodish

  • The grainy texture isn’t doing much for me. Maybe plain colors or something smoother?
  • The white looks very pink.
  • Is there meaning in the different ocean shades? (other than frozen, depth maybe?)
  • The water sorrounded by mountais on all sides too prevalent

(First impressions with no context on gameplay :slight_smile: )

1 Like

Thx @JohnnyA for an input.

Yep, I would need to think about something more suitable. More variations. I.e. Ice, snow, water, solid ground and rocks perhaps.

I think the reason is of sun light, which meant to be more warm yellowish light. But probably I forgot to set it correctly, giving pink tin.

Yep it is depth.

Yep, another issue, with masking two Perlin noises :slight_smile:
Still not sure how to go about it, to resolve, if I consider touch it.

Sure, appreciate :slight_smile:

I’m not able to download it unfortunately, apparently it’s incompatible with my dinosaur Samsung j120.

FYI, it didn’t appear in the first few pages when I searched for ‘Streakz Eight Ball Pool’. So whatever you can do to float up to the top of searches would go a long way to selling this game.

Good luck with this, my suggestion would be to gather as much data as possible from using different marketing methods, and particularly learn how to improve the store ranking, since you have a lot of competition.

Well done on looking for this kind of feedback early, especially for a lowpoly style game with low details it’s important to get the appearance right.

Personally, I do not like the ‘sandpaper’ look. The noise doesn’t provide any meaningful detail and just makes the planet less pleasant to look at. I’d go for a simpler and more subtle appearance, more like this:

I also think the distribution of different types of geography is a bit too random and makes it harder to identify what is what.

In the image above, there’s no need for any explanation of what each color represents, since the different areas are segmented clearly.

When you go from blue water to frozen water, did you consider blending the colors more? That would make it more obvious that it’s a liquid and not a solid.

Same for the blending between the white (ice caps) and orange (ground) - right now it looks like there’s a jump straight from ice caps to some sort of desert, which makes it less intuitive to understand.

Also, since the ice caps are distributed around the poles and also the equator, people will immediately think it must be not ice but something else.

Basically, the more you make the color follow the appearance of a real planet, and follow the properties of the different materials, the more intuitive it is:

  • Ice: small condensed areas near the poles
  • Ground: create contours of similar colors that go from light near the sea to dark inland
  • Water: Lots of blending and soft boundaries of colors.

Also, for low poly stuff ambient occlusion is very helpful in bringing out the different heights and boundaries.

PS what’s the game about?

1 Like

Great constructive feedback, thx :slight_smile:

I like the look of this example you provided.
I see generic consensus, regarding ‘sandpapaer’ look. I will either remove it, or make it more subtle. Or alternatively, make different look, for different tiles. I think only tests will show. But plain colors looks nice too I see.

Yep, this is definitely something to be twerked about and not features complete yet. I got sliders for procedural generation. But decent looks can be achieved, after some sliders settings.

If curious, there is my recent showcase and stress test of 160k tiles.
But I rather prefer smaller planets 10-40k tiles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tThzjMsdOxg

Yep I would like introduce more gradient and variation colors transitions at some point.

True point. I got some bug sneaked in, regarding side faces of tiles. They should have some gradient already. But haven’t investigated.

Something for me to keep in mind.

I don’t wont with that. At least not at this stage. I see the effect of course. But I have a bit different thoughts. Well I am open minded on the matter. Will see :slight_smile:

To give you a glimps on the project, you can look into my current prototype
https://discussions.unity.com/t/764650

Basically I am making a kind of evolution game.

The colorful voxel instances are lifeforms, with corresponding cells and relevant functionality.
But I wanted some variation of plane surface. Hence I thought, to introduce procedurally generated hex planet.
Still not fully integrated. But I am getting there.

I was considering long time, between hex tiles based planet and classical smooth surface landscape.

I decided to experiment a bit.
I removed most of noise. I decided to leave just small shade effect, to see what will look like.
And improved mountains side faces gradient.
Definitely there is much more work required with colors.

Any thoughts?