Just used: 7PJF4FXK9474
Comments to follow.
Here’s my play experience (hope you have your bullet proof vest on tight):
I click New Game and I see a mission select screen with quite a lot of info, most of which means nothing to me.
Click the easiest level, and I’m thrust into the game with no instructions. Fortunately I’ve played one of the older Starfalls so I have an idea of what to do. I then fly in a circle with my opponent for 37 turns before being destroyed. I was bored by turn 15, and pretty annoyed when I lost after all that.
I try again, my opponent and I do the circle dance for another 22 turns, before my use of Evasive Manoeuver leads to victory. Woot 2 stars. I wonder whats in the shop. Wow looks like some cool stuff … oh it seems my 3 resources aren’t enough to buy anything.
Ahh well back to another mission, I’d better stick to green as the last one was hard enough… hmm its the same mission exactly as far as I can tell (okay maybe the opponent was in a slightly different position). A bit more circle dancing and I win with 1 star. I can buy a thruster overdrive but I don’t really want that … I want 180 Turn which I can see giving me some kind of advantage, ah well, buy thrusters.
lets try a harder mission. Okay, its the same mission … with a few asteroids. This time it took 49 turns groan (the thrusters make me fly even further past the enemy, hurray :s). I want to see some more ships but I really don’t want to play any more.
You absolutely need a slower and easier introduction. You need to tell the player exactly what to do, and you need to make victory a virtual certainty in 5 or so turns. The first levels are much too hard and random.
Level one you blow up a disabled cruiser (“Okay rookie, its time to get your feet wet. There’s an enemy cruiser broadcasting a distress signal at sector X.1. Go there and take it out before help arrives”).
Level two you do the same but it has fighter guarding it (“There’s another cruiser to take out, but you were too slow, this cruiser has an escort. Take out the enemy fighter then destroy the disabled cruiser. And rook … be careful.”).
When you get to the shop the player should have something cool to buy the first time. 180 seems like the most obvious choice as it is clearly useful.
At the moment it doesn’t seem like there’s much in the way of tactics. I fly at the enemy and evade if it looks like he might shoot me. Hopefully there are more tactics than this, and if so you should be introducing them as soon as possible (maybe we can hide behind an asteroid to avoid a slower moving big ship). And by introducing them I mean tell the player explicitly. You don’t have to reveal every tactical possibility, but you need to show the player there is some depth to the game because at the moment its not apparent.
I really did want to see some more ships. From a content point of view it seems quite good. The getting there is the issue!
EDIT
Some more positive comments after I played it a bit more on the train home. Its definitely a whole lot more interesting one you have 180. The feeling of having advantage over the other fighters is good, and you spend a lot less time circling. I really think making the early missions easier and getting 180 unlocked really quickly will help a lot.
I did notice a couple of bugs:
- after doing a 180 (maybe 180 with a slight turn) sometimes I cant turn in one direction only.
- when I select overdrive thruster and dont adjust the thrust I just do a normal thrust. Maybe not technically a bug as you can adjust thrust, but it “seems” like the thruster doesn’t work.
