Game: Skydive

I consider this game finished for now. My first unity3d project, so the codebase is kind of a mess, and I prefer not to touch it anymore :stuck_out_tongue: I learnt a lot from it though. So here’s the description:

Fight for your life in this high speed parachute chase. Grab all parachutes in order to land safly. If your opponent steals a parachute, you need to take it back before you reach the ground.

Link to gamesite:
http://letitrollproductions.com/Skydive.aspx

My suggestions, taken from the video, as there was no game to try which didn’t require me to give my email.

1- It asks for an account and email registration to the website just to try it out: NO.
That’s a huge barrier to accessibility. Why would I entrust you with my email just to try your game?

2- Make sure the difficulty of the game ramps up much slower than what’s shown on the video, because otherwise the frustration of loss will overcome the desire to beat the challenge. As it stands, the audience this type of game attracts will try it for 30 seconds, realize (too soon) that it’s too hard to beat, and move on to other games.
(Edit) Also, if your game pits two opponents against one another, the harder the rock-dodging gets, the more it steals the focus from the competition with the opponent.

I hope this helps. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for your comments!

Might be too difficult still. I did lower the difficulty alot after testing on some friends. When I polished the levels though, I might have made them more difficult just because I thought it felt more fun. The video is from alpha stage of the game so the rocks are completely remade.

Hm, yes, I realize you are right about the login. This was kinda my emergency solution. I did a full integration with stats and stuff for kongregate, but since they reject unity games now I just wanted to get it out.

There is playable version on http://www.wooglie.com/playgame.php?gameID=489 (still got some problems with crossdomains so I wasn’t able to get the communication working with my site, so it isn’t possible to save there now)

I went there, saw the sign-up, then closed the tab.

Now, there is no need to register. No data will be saved if you don’t however. I’ll solve that in the future.

You might want to try other portals like Wooglie and TinyUtopia which are focused on Unity games, I know that at the very least Wooglie actively pushes your games to other portals with no extra effort on your part.

Thanks for the advice. I checked out tiny utopia, seems like a nice site, not that many users yet though, what I could see at least.
It’s approved at wooglie.
direct link: Domain name for sale - M2H

Oh holy hell thats tricky, or maybe I just suck, looks good however. About the log in issue, I just ask for a username and password. Haven’t had to worry about password resetting or anything else yet. Also you might want to add a play as guest option. I started out with just a note syaing that if you were not logged in, your stats would no be saved, and saw many people just ignore the game. Play as guest button dramatically increased the number of clicks that were converting into games :slight_smile:

Hehe, seems you’re not the only one. I’ve become blind from playing it too much. The first few levels are really simple for me. In the end I just tested it on my girlfriend, but I guess she got better at it as well. She’s not a gamer, and had a really hard time at first. I’m gonna add a few levels that are much easier.

I’m gonna redo the save system I think. I’m gonna try and save everything in a cookie if you’re a guest, if I can manage to get that working.

Thanks for your input!

Just added 5 easier levels. Hope people find it more pleasant to start out now. Progress is automatically saved if you play at my site as well.

Play

Read your blog and saw your post on project management.
Try http://www.pivotaltracker.com (free)

Played the game and it’s pretty awesome!

I think you should start out without having to grab the parachutes for the first few levels, then introduce the parachutes, then introduce the opponent. That way you have a lot of different game elements changing often. Keeps people more interested.

Also, you could have an “Easy” mode where you need like, 75% of the parachutes instead of all of them.

You could do a lot with this potentially, if you really wanted to. Add birds, guns, more opponents, etc.

But as it stands, it’s a pretty fun game!

Wow, played a couple of levels, seems easy enough and has refined gameplay. :slight_smile: Is it really your FIRST project?

I’m glad you liked it!

Thanks for the link to pivotaltracker. It can get pretty messy with a lot of documents. I just want it to be easily accessible. I’ve had to work with sharepoint and other management tools at work which people didn’t use properly because it was too much of a hazzle. I like text documents since it’s very flexible. I will try it out though, otherwise I’m donky :stuck_out_tongue:

Hm, yes, I’ll probably add a few more levels to the easy section and refine the pace of the first 10 levels. Thanks for the tips, I’ll put it in my backlog for when I get the motivation for this game again. I’ve had similiar thoughts, but now that you mentioned it I got an idea for how the birds should actually work :smile:

It’s not the first project I ever did, but it was my “learn unity”-project so the code is quite a mess :smile:. Also it’s written in javascript, which I don’t use anymore.

Cool was mentioned on indiegames.com

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/11/browser_game_pick_skydive_let.html

haha saw your game on indiegames before i found it here :stuck_out_tongue:

i played it for 30 minutes straight (that means you did a good job)

That’s awesome! :slight_smile: Gonna add a few new levels when I get the time.

I’ve added 10 levels since last time I posted here and divided them in easy, medium and hard section. I also did a facebook integration and with that a challenge mode, where you can challenge your friends. You have to connect with facebook (or register) in order to do that. It doesn’t require an email. Maybe somebody finds this entertaining :slight_smile: It’s been tested for a while now, but it’s still in beta.