Want design feedback for your new game? Then you’ve found the right thread! Post here to get precious player feedback. Discuss until next Friday, when we’ll lock the old and start anew.
How To Ask For Feedback?
- Show - Pics, videos, or best of all, a playable game!
- Be Concise - Who’s got time for Wall 'O Text? Less is more
How To Give Feedback?
- Be Positive - Finding redeeming qualities in the worst of games, is in itself a game
- Focus On The Design - Not the designer
- Be Specific - “Your game sucks!” is for nubs
What To Show?
- Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play >>> everything else
- How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)
Gigi
[PS - Feedback Friday #29 is here]
I have a one lane trench game where both sides are teams of kids having a snowball fight the kids have a warmth bar which is their health above their heads. You have snow, which slowly accumulates and is used to buy units.
The unit types are:
- Basics, throw snowballs
- Sprinters, don’t throw snowballs, but are faster and do lots of melee damage
- Shovelers, no combat capabilities, but gather snow for you
- Walls, spawn at your front line and have lots of health
- Uncles, very slow, but tough and throw huge snowballs really far
- Cocomen, heal your troops
By toggling the unlock/lock walls button, you can change whether or not units stop behind walls.
you can play the prototype here.
3 Likes
@JoeStrout and @kStrout - Still on travel. I’ll check this later in the week (could be as late as Friday). Congrats on your prototype and welcome!
Gigi
To be clear, this one is Kevin’s project — I’ve provided some design feedback here and there, but he’s been working hard on this with almost no help. (A very nice Father’s Day present!)
@kStrout :
I played your prototype a few times.
What I liked
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The concept of the game is fantastic. It shows something that I firmly believe: a great game can be made out of nearly any scenario. You’ve taken something from the “real world” and produced a solid game prototype around it.
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The control system of the game is very good.
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The atmosphere is very good. Definitely feels like winter and two teams competing in a snowball fight.
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The units are excellent! Uncles! lol The Shovelers for resource generation is so simple and logical within the context it is brilliant.
What I think can be improved
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More feedback (I always seem to throw this one out). Maybe I missed it but I did not notice anything that showed the current state of the “battle”. Something like a sort of tug-of-war line at the top showing a blue and red circle moving left and right to show the general state of the situation would be informative.
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Balance. At several points I thought I was doing well and suddenly the other side put out about 10 shovelers and then a massive wave of units came walking across the playfield. My last play session I easily & quickly drove the other side completely off the visible playfield.
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The game continued with my “troops” moving to the right edge and lobbing snowballs off the screen. I guess there were more “enemies” over there or maybe the arrow keys scroll? If the arrow keys scroll that is my bad because I should have tried that and I did not.
Summary
All in all, I think you have done an excellent job on this MVP! With some more feedback and work on balancing I think you’ll have a very playable game. Look forward to your next update.
1 Like
Thank you for the feedback! I like the idea of a front line indicator to show where the battle really is. As far as balance is concerned, I don’t really want to change it much because the way it is now, the side winning tends to have the advantage, so the game doesn’t drag on, the first one you talked about with the shovelers is a good strategy the AI likes, but a risky one, if the AI had waited too long, your troops would have destroyed his shovelers and won, but if he created too few shovelers, he would not have enough units to attack. One of the things I am quite happy about is the fact that I managed to make this game where each side has equal units, resources ect. But the games can still go either way.
As for the troops stopping, that is something I need to work on, the screen doesn’t scroll and there are no units there, for now I assume if you run into this problem it’s obvious you’ve won, but in the finished product they will keep going into the enemy “base” or something and you will get a “You Win!” message.
When you mean balance can be improved, do you mean between the units? This is very hard to perfect and if there is a unit you feel is useless or a unit you think is too powerful please tell me.
1 Like
I meant the balance of the game in general. Not a specific unit. More just the game session itself. For example, instead of making the AI try to beat the player and produce a ton of shovelers followed by a massive army trudging across the screen you may want to experiment with pacing. Perhaps just throttle down the speed the AI generates shovelers and produces attacking units until the player has gained an advantage over it. This would allow for longer and perhaps more interesting gaming sessions. As it is currently it seems like once one side gains a small immediate advantage they are only a very short while away from winning. Just something to think about.
It’s easy to make the AI in games defeat players. It is often more fun to make it slip up occasionally. For example, I threw out a simple experimental shmup for feedback this past month. Even though it is challenging the enemies actually make mistakes… intentionally. For example, they fire at the player’s general area instead of always firing exactly to hit the player. In fact, it is the player who actually runs into their shots based on their own actions more often than it is the enemies hitting the player because of their precision firing.