[Android, iOS] Nest Quest 2D side-scrolling, platform game

Hi all,

I am happy to share the release of my first game, Nest Quest. The initial release contains 25 levels. If I can get some traction, my plan is to make regular updates that will include 5 new levels and 1 new power-up with each update.

I would love to get your feedback. I know there are quite a few talented devs and artists here and I'd really like to learn what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. Thanks!

Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Molow.NestQuest
Amazon App Store: https://www.amazon.com/Moltow-Nest-Quest/dp/B079C7Y4NC/
iOS App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nest-quest/id1278791562?ls=1&mt=8

Description
Evade obstacles and stomp baddies to help Mildred through her quest to find a safe place for her egg to nest in this light-hearted, 2D side-scrolling game.

Highlights
• Levels are easy to complete, but hard to master
• Flexible design that enables you to play for a minute, or for an hour
• One hand play using tap (to flap) and swipe (to change direction and stomp)
• Quick, simple tutorial to help you learn the controls
• Each level is hand designed to maximize the fun

The game is available for phones and tablets. Here's a video of the phone version.

 

I almost dismissed this at first glance but upon further inspection - you have put in some quirky polish that makes this thing appear charming. IMO your customer base will only be a small-ish subset of players, but that is alright as long as you can translate 7-13 year old comments into actionable updates.
Consider low repetition on all of those voice recorded sounds. Those tend to become grating quickly, speaking as a parent.

What is your criteria for traction? If I were you I would be laser focused on directed marketing at the age demographic noted above. Don't waste time in areas where older teens and adult gamers hang out. IMO - your audience is 8-13 year old gamers and marketing efforts should be focused on them.
See if you can find some tubers or letsplayers who create videos/reviews for a younger demographic. Might provide a solid boost to player installs.

 

Thanks, theANMATOR2b! I really appreciate the feedback. Great advice. I will definitely take it.

I have a couple of follow-up questions...

The first question relates to your first impression (almost dismissing Nest Quest). I expect that is true for most people. Do you think that I should be (or even can be) doing something different as it relates to improving the first impression it leaves on people? I get that it may simply be related to what you said about making sure I am targeting an appropriate audience (8-13 year olds) and this forum is clearly not that. But if you have advice related to first impressions, I'm all ears.

Another thing you mentioned: the voice recordings. I agree, and have been thinking about that. For the characters that have voice recordings, I have arrays of recordings and I'm currently using a random method for selecting and playing a recording from the array when an event occurs. Because, however, random access means that you could (and often will) get the same recording over and over, I was thinking of changing my implementation to use a list to keep track of which recordings have not yet been played. Each time I randomly pick a recording from the list, I can remove that element from the list so that it won't get played again - until the list is empty and rebuilt. Do you think this approach would address the issue of the recordings becoming grating or are you simply suggesting the elimination of voice recordings?

Thanks again for your helpful advice.

 

A angry bird type cinematic opening would help LOL - but beyond that - I don't think much of anything will help. Only because of the 'style' and 'speed' of the game. I think older gamers (14 and up) might have a similar reaction, where as younger gamers are more inclined to see the cartoony content and keep watching until they either see something else they like, or decide to play the game.

It seems you have thought of repetitive sounds which is good, being mindful of repetitiveness. As long as there is not an annoying sound associated with something that happens often - like collecting a bunch of coins or 'winning' if the levels are extremely short - I think you have a good handle on it. Whichever system you choose is probably good.
It is hard really - try to keep in mind certain sounds in isolation are great - until they are repeated over and over and OVER!!

No I actually thought the limited sounds I heard from the trailer were not terrible. As long as they aren't like mario crossing the finish line in mario kart repeated constantly they should be fine.

 

Great! I think I will reimplement the voices with the list idea.

Thanks again for the helpful advice. Now on to search for appropriate tubers and letsplayers.

 

Please update if you find some who are oriented towards what seems to be your target audience. Im sure others could benefit from a short list of those who actively promote content for a younger audience - but are professional in delivery.

 

Hi moltow,

Just to follow up on theANMATOR2b's suggestion regarding sound clip iterations, one trick I used recently for this scenario was to have a list of sounds that can be randomly selected (as you already have) but also a 'cool down' timer. That is to say, you select a sound at random but then prevent a further random slection being made for a short period of time.

If it is a 'cartoon'-esque effect you are aiming for, what about playing around with the pitch of the playback as well? Depending on your audio clips that may increase the perceived range of variations?

 

theANMATOR2b: Will do. Thanks.

Doug_B: Good suggestions. I will play around with them and see what works and what doesn't.

If anyone has the time to download and try the game, I'd also be really interested in your thoughts regarding the controls. Based on theANMATOR2b's advice to focus on 8-13 year olds, I am worried that the game might be a little too hard for the younger segment of that group.

Thanks!

 

Interestingly there is another Nest Quest (by Craig Wilkinson). I downloaded the one by Ben which I believe is yours.

On my iPhone4 the game plays really quite nicely. The into background music is mellow paced and fitting the game style. I could actually see this game being quite catchy. Although I was not able to work out how to turn in the air with the egg - the instructions seemed to imply that was possible.

As some suggestions:

1. If you are to aim for a younger audience then you might want to consider adding into the instructions little bouncy graphics, for example, some little animated arrow heads alongside the text "swipe right / left".
2. Similarly, in the main menu, maybe the buttons could have small animations (to make them pulse or wiggle) to make them more enticing to younger fingers.
3. To try and cover a wider age range, could a difficulty be added to control the ease with which the egg drops / smashes? The easiest setting, for example could make it impossible to drop the egg reducing the difficulty to the purely "flappy bird" elements of play.
4. Following point 3, on the first level, if I swiped right and just let little bird run, it used 100% of the time to reach the finish. Easier levels could increase the time available.
5. Whilst this particular point will probably be lost on youngsters, on loading into the game, the music halts abruptly. Fading the music out would be smoother.
6. When I ran out of time, instead of clicking Return to Menu, I swiped the screen. The level restarted but with the intro music playing - it didn't play the first time round (as per point 5).
7. After about 2/3 replays the restart button did not work. But pressing Return to Menu restarted the level.
8. Having just played the skulls and crushers first level - I have to say that I found it plenty challenging. I got past the first skull crusher once.

 

Doug_B: Thanks so much!

These are some great suggestions. I'm definitely going to do this.

These are good ideas, too. I am wondering if I need to adjust the scoring based on the difficulty, too. I don't know if players will care if they get the same score when settings are "easy" vs when settings are "difficult." There's currently no social interaction (leaderboards, etc.), but I'm thinking if I add these in the future, players will only think it is fair if the scores take the difficulty into account. Do you agree?

This has been bugging me, as well, but I haven't been able to decide how best to address it. I wanted to make the menu music fade out during the transition from the menu scene to the game level scene, but when the load scene takes place, the music just stops. Perhaps I could put the menu music's AudioSource on a GameObject with DoNotDestroyOnLoad and then manually handle destroying it once the game scene level loads. Do you think this is the best approach to this problem or are their other, better ways to accomplish this?

I'm not sure I fully understand this, but my guess is it is a bug. Each game level scene has its own music that should start playing when you take your first action with the bird (e.g., move), so the game level scene music should have started playing each time you restarted the level. I'm not sure why it didn't play the first time. I will see if I can reproduce it and fix it.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll try to reproduce and fix this bug, too.

Yeah, the big role in difficulty on the crushers is to stop the egg from continuing to roll into the crusher, you have to first swipe left to stop the bird and then tap to flap, to stop the egg. There is a tutorial step that explains this, but it is still a pretty hard mechanic. One that I do worry might be too tough for younger players. I've struggled with whether or not this is just too difficult, and needs to be redesigned, or if this is the kind of mechanic that makes this game unique. As with your suggestions of allowing the player to set the difficulty level, perhaps this mechanic should only be used in the more difficult settings. What do you think?

Thanks again for the great input!

 

Either that or a leader-board per skill level but some form of differentiation might be a good idea.

I created a sound manager class which I put in a DoNotDestroyOnLoad object. Inside this class store all music / sound fx you want to play across scene boundaries. Then you just have a simple clean interface to start them, e.g. PlayIntro(), PlayGame() etc. The class can fade out any currently playing music and fade the requested one in.

Agree, that does sound like a good thing to include in the difficulty settings.

 

That's a great idea!

 

Hi Doug_B,

I figured it out. The "Tap to restart" text isn't a button, but just a UI Text, and I'm using touch events to record the tap and reloading the level when a tap occurs. Having said that, the UI Text had RaycastTarget set to true, so it was blocking the taps. So this will be fixed in the next release. Thanks so much for pointing this out.

 

Glad to have helped.

 

Hi all,

A new version of Nest Quest is now available on all App Stores (same links as the original post).

• Nest Quest now fully supports the iPhone X display
• Nest Quest can now be played in landscape orientation as well as in portrait
• The tutorial now displays animated swipe gesture indicators to help players better understand the controls
• The menu music now fades into the game levels for a nicer transition
• Bug fixes

I am still working through some of the great suggestions made on this thread.

Thanks, Ben

 

Nice work Ben.
What was the initial reason the game was not displaying on iPhone X? This might be a common 'thing' to do before deploying to that particular platform. I admit to not researching this topic at all before posing this question.

 

Thanks, theANMATOR2b!

The game displayed on the iPhone X, but because of the X's rounded corners and "notch," some of my UI would get obscured. To address this, I employed Unity's Screen.SafeArea on a parent RectControl so my UI could remain as it was for rectangle screens, but would be inset for devices that don't.

 

Good work on completing..cant wait for more

 

Thanks, Fortitude3D!