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 to feedback. 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. Every game has some redeeming quality.
Focus on the design, not the designer.
Be specific and constructive. Don’t like something? Explain why.
Hi, I’m Aynsley, a female game dev, and the creator of project ETS. This is my first game ever, and I’m looking for some feed back to help put in onto the next level.
I’m a artist by trade, but also a writer, and I knew I wanted to tell a story using Unity.
But I do want to give some credit where credit is due.
Thank you TonanBora and Dennis for helping me get my dialog system functional before Feedback Friday.
Here is the link to my Demo (Patched)
I’m looking for feed back on:
Level design: Did it feel to easy? was it to difficult? Was it interesting and did it keep you engaged?
Art: Did things stand out enough? Was it consistent? Was it pleasing to look at or was it like visual cat screeching lol?
Character movement: Was the character to slow? Was his jump force strong enough? Was it boring to play as that character?
I had trouble interacting with the door to get into the level, but after typing E several times, I got it! I am not a platform player so I amused myself while I tried to to run around, hitting walls and stuff.
As a purple color lover, I really enjoyed the palette.
Oh dear lol sorry about that, I caught that too, it was due to the fact I had the same door linked to two transition points in the scene.
I’m rebuilding with a fix. Thanks for finding my first bug!
EDIT just patched the build and swapped out the link, it should work fine now,
But in case you don’t want to scroll all the way up, lol here is the new link
Works now, just do not click multiple times on the E at the door, like I did. lol
Also, might be good to put a cue at the Door, letter E or something like that. Seems intuitive but you get folks like me that need that extra information.
When interacting with the door, hit E ONCE, strange I know, but for some reason it won’t work if you press E multiple times
The strange pink thing that floats is called PIXIE you can interact with her too
I like the message from Pixie. Are you planning to give information throughout the level or just at the beginning? It might be a nice way to move story elements along.
The government has issued a purge on all level seven AIs or high, and the protagonist is a level twenty AI (Basically indistinguishable from humans) The story is about escaping the city, and uncovering the mystery of why the purge is happening in the first place.
As platformers are not my kind of game I will focus my feedback on the art, as I do love anything with a sci-fi touch.
Your art style is really consistent, everything fits very well together. I really love the more square looking roaming robots that look like they have a cable as their “tail”, looks really funny and well thought, as if they’re real big guard dogs.
When being higher up in the first level after the first door, there’s a few windows. The background of these windows look awesome, but I would make the border of these windows a bit darker as it’s hard to see the outlines of the character when moving/jumping in front of these.
The mainframe computer room looks very cool with all those screens, especially the computers there reminded me of SD Snatcher which I’ve played a lot as a kid. It did look like a weird perspective to jump in front of the computers but behind the screens though.
I like the overall atmosphere you’re creating and would love to see more of it in the future.
Thank you so much for the feedback!!! This is great! also SD Snatcher, wow that’s a big compliment!
To address your points. lol yeah I noticed the screen issue after you told me about it, it was noob mistake on my part.
I put the screen of the mainframe on the wrong sorting layer.
Darker areas around the windows is a really great idea, I didn’t even consider the fact that the character would be hard to see! thank you so much for that!
So ok, I’m not a big platformer guy - so feel free to take all of this with a grain of salt. I think you have a really nice foundation here. What I’m going to recommend is a lot of the higher end polish that starts to make a foundation feel more like a complete game.
1 - Interactive elements need to be clearly indicated. I spent a ton of time running around hitting E on stuff that was just background filler. I spent around 30 seconds trying to hit E on a red background tile placed between two platforms you had to jump for, although I couldn’t trigger anything. I’m not sure if there was nothing to trigger, or if I just did it wrong.
2 - I have no sense of purpose or progress guide. This felt kinda metrovania like and I got to the end, but I didn’t know what I was doing, why I was doing it, or where I was going. This is probably the most important stuff for taking something from being a prototype/vertical slice to being a game. And if you want people to pick up and really play, this should be your next major focus IMO.
3 - Controls. I’m not a platformer, so I donno about normal controls but I felt like they were a bit awkward. WASD and space are fine, but the right hand controls felt annoying to me. Perhaps I, O, P for interact, shoot, melee - basically use WASD on left hand, and space, interact, shoot and sword with right hand? Find a configuration that is natural and comfortable. I did not like E for interact because you need to use your left hand and it should always be controlling movement.
4 - Animation. I would add some minor juice to the animation/locomotion. A couple frames to stop/slide. A couple frames on jump landing, a little particle for jump start. Don’t need to be crazy, but just a little extra to make the controls feel more polished.
5 - sword is useless currently.
Again, this is a pleasing foundation and seems like its got some promise. Giving it structure and the player purpose will start to really make it feel like a game.
Thank you so much for the feedback!
Yes I agree that my intractable need to clearly labeled, lol I’m sorry you had such hard time! I’ll make sure I’ll fix that asap.
Yes, I did have some story dialog in the project, but unfortunately my dialog system felt clunky and unusable in its
current state as far as cutscenes went, so I opted to leave it out, maybe not the best decision in hindsight. I do agree
that my game needs more purpose, and a sense of urgency.
Yes I am not a huge fan of the control scheme either, I have sort of gotten so used to it I didn’t even think much about changing it before today, but going back to it, I can see its flaws.
Yes! Thank you so much for the animations tips! that is a great idea!
Yeah the sword is kind of useless lol FOR NOW!
Those controls are a great idea I will test them as soon as I get the chance, I do want to take strain off the left hand and leave it entirely for movement
I actually thought the end game dialog presentation felt pretty polished - at this point I don’t think you need actual dialog options or anything - but a couple intro bubbles for example to help set the stage, and maybe a couple popups in front of doors (as a gamer, I know a door means I should go through it - but toss in some fluff “you feel your goal lies beyond this door” or whatever).
Doesn’t need to be a ton, but just some hints at a bigger objective and some guidance as to who I am and what I’m doing can go a long way imo. Really don’t underestimate the importance of this stuff.
Last note on the interactives, I think the way you have it now is fine (except the red tile which screams ‘i’m a secret, interact with me’ imo) - but perhaps have things that are interactive glow, outline or have a popup bubble with ‘e to interact’ - doesn’t matter what imo, but something to clearly mark stuff you can interact w/.
Last note - gamers are kinda used to havign some kind of reward when they hit a dead end. So you may want to think about that - again - maybe just a health boost or a little dialog popup. But most dead ends should have something.
