I published a free Android game recently, and I’m looking for reviews. It’s a third person space shooter game.
You are a captain in the newly organized Earth Space Council (ESC). Your mission is to fly to the planet Exelon and investigate the disappearance of a trading vessel whose last report was from that sector. You are flying a retrofitted XQ-27 Samurai. At Exelon, you encounter Macedonian space pirates, who swarm to defend a mining vessel that is plundering the planet. You must destroy the enemy fighters and then find and destroy the mining vessel.
I downloaded your game. Great graphics, I really like the visual style. I also liked the ambient music in the video and was disappointed that it wasn’t in the game as well.
I couldn’t work out what the objective is and kept getting killed right at the start. I assume the objective is to get to the red circles on the map. I kept getting killed before I got there, I guess I’m not meant to travel at full speed all the time?
There is a comment about turning speed on the android review page, I think the turning speed is reasonable, could probably be a little faster. I felt like there was always someone behind me shooting at me. I have only played for five minutes, I’ll sit down and play a bit more later. I did notice that it stuttered quite a bit when I shot a lot of rockets. I think overall the first mission is too difficult, I would recommend a training mission at the start with just one enemy or something simple like that. Also the ad in the menu obstructed view of the controls.
I gave it 4 stars anyway because I want it to be successful and I know how harsh of critics users can be. Good luck with you game. I am also working on a 3D space shooter for Android, hopefully there is enough room in the market for both our games
Edit: I also noticed that the ‘back’ button does not quit the game.
if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Escape))
{
Application.Quit();
}
Thanks for your feedback. I do play the music during the game. The video was created with the actual game and the music you hear in the video is what plays during the game.
It is hard to beat the game. I don’t want it to be too easy. The speed comment is noted. I start the player out at 20% of max velocity. I think that is my mistake. I’ll increase the speed to 50% so they are moving faster when the game starts.
The ad is a one-time thing. It displays for 15 seconds and never again. I just wanted to see how AdMob works.
This seems like an unnecessary addition to me. There is a home button for quitting. The back button should be used for navigation inside the app, not for quitting it.
On most devices if you press the home button the app will still run in the background. so isn’t shutdown. And people had some issues i think with accesing the home button in unity
Thanks for your feedback. I do have a mini-map. Click the left most button in-game and you’ll see an overhead view of where all the enemies are. You can even zoom in to a particular area by touching the screen.
As far as the difficulty, you have to play more than once or twice to get good at it. For example, now that you know an enemy fighter is lurking at startup, you should evade, increase speed, and attack.
I’ve noted your explosion comment and your fog comment.
What I am seeing is that nobody reads the “How to Play” instructions. So they don’t know that they can increase the velocity or zoom in. They are pretty intuitive instructions, but if they aren’t read, they are of no use to the player.
One thing I’m considering is to increase the velocity at start to 80% of max velocity.
I understand your point of view on the difficulty, but sadly I notice that most of the users of smartphone will not take the time of the reflexion, contrary to other platforms, and first minutes of game are thus decisives.
I saw the mini-map but I have difficulty in estimating the orientation of the spaceship, I just thought rather of a more direct indication in the game scene.
I know it is frustrating, but i think that generally it can be rewarding to note the constructive comments of the market’s users (and again, to look at some stupid comments I believe that these users are simply hurt to die so fast).
As rmgalante pointed out the application will still be running in the background. Not only that but the only way to actually end it is to go into settings->applications and force close it. That basically the equivalent to making an PC application you can only quit using the task manager. The developer has the power to override the ‘back’ button so that it can be used to inside the game i.e. close menu, quit to main menu, etc. They still have a responsibility to make it quit the game. Almost all games I have played allow you to use the back button to quit. In my opinion if it takes more that 2 or 3 presses or more than a couple of seconds to quit then that is going to rub the user the wrong way. I know when I’m getting off a train or something and I just want to close an app, I don’t want to have to fiddle around or wait.
