Feedback Friday #127 - August 21-24

G'day folks!

Getting feedback early on in your project is a great way to spot and avoid design problems, and speed up the completion of your game!

Looking to get some help with a particular problem, or just have your fellow devs playtest your game and give their thoughts?

Then you've found the right thread! Feedback Friday runs from Friday to Monday every week.

What To Show

• Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play > everything else
• How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)
• 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. 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. There's something of value in every game.
• Focus on the design, not the designer.

Feedback Friday #126 is here.

 

A couple of months ago I asked for some feedback on an "alpha" version of my game, and the response was very helpful. I'm actually still folding some of that feedback into the game, and it resulted in a lot of good changes. Along the way, I decided I wanted the beginning of the game to be a lot more interesting. I decided to follow a pattern I've seen used before, where the player has access to a "full power" version of their character towards the beginning, only to have that power taken away, requiring it to be acquired again. This has some advantages: You immediately get a feel for the mechanics of the game, it shows where things are going, and it gives players a reason to continue playing, so they can reacquire those powers.

I realized that this kind of a "god mode" start would also make for a pretty good "demo" experience for the game. So, I built this part of the game to serve as both the actual start for the game, as well as a stand-alone "demo" level that people can play to get a sense of what Gravia's like.

I got the demo up on Steam this week, and I'd appreciate if anyone would like to give it a try. I think it's about a 5-10 minute experience overall. You don't need a key or anything, the demo is freely available to all:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/906470/Gravia/

If you're one of the great people who tried my "alpha" release a few months back, just be aware that it seems Steam might not show you the button for the Demo. Or, the button might not do anything when you click on it. Apparently with Steam, if you have the full game, you can't play the Demo for the same game. Seems like a weird policy to me.

As for what I'm interested in:

• Just your overall impressions, mainly related to things you feel were confusing, or didn't work for you. Was anything confusing?
• How do you feel about this being the very first thing you experience of this game? As I said, I'm planning on this "demo" to actually be the first level, to get players right into the game. Do you have any concerns about that?

 

Hi. I'll try to find some time to check it out over the weekend. Well done for progressing your project!

 

Thanks. Since you played the "alpha" version before, I'm not sure you'll actually be able to see the Demo link. Maybe if you've uninstalled the alpha version you'll be able to install the demo?

 

hi - well, I had uninstalled the alpha and I went to the "store page", clicked on download demo and I think the demo version (not the alpha) is downloading. Will check it out tomorrow and confirm either way

 

hmm - downloaded and gave it a quick spin. The version is 0.4.14-alpha. I think this is still the alpha, not the demo version?

 

ill see if I can remove from my steam library

 

I just tried what you tried, and unfortunately it downloads the full alpha instead of the demo, even clicking on the Demo button. So, it seems that if you already have access to the Alpha, you're not able to play the Demo. That's a pretty weird policy on Steam's part. But I don't think there's anything I can do about that. Thanks for trying, though.

 

@dgoyette - Can you make a non-Steam demo build for us to test?

 

That's a good idea. For anyone who already tried the alpha version on Steam, or just doesn't want to use Steam, here's a link to the demo on Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nxx2a0eG2JbnXctrnXeeLoVj9hJL5MiP/view?usp=sharing

 

Controls are intuitive. I played keyboard+mouse the first time and gamepad the second. I don't know if you have plans for the gamepad's right trigger, but I would have found it more comfortable to use right trigger instead of right bumper.

Controls and camera are responsive, too. No stutter or hiccups, even when I was playing around at using a black hole to clear the storage room of all the shelves of crates and boxes.

There was just the right amount of onboarding. Any more and it would have been too hand-holdy.

I like the Portal-esque meta game thing that happens at the end of the demo.

 

Thanks for trying it. I'm glad, and kind of surprised, you had success with a controller. The game should have full controller support, but I'm personally extremely bad at FPS games using a controller, so it's hard for me to tell if the game is effectively playable with controller. And since you're generally not shooting at specific enemies, I don't think I can realistically add any kind of aim-assistance that other games often have. As for the trigger vs. bumper thing, the controls are remappable, but maybe I should make Right Trigger the default. I'd be more inclined to trust your judgment than my own in that respect.

I'm also glad you felt it was a reasonable introduction. The main goals are to make the player feel powerful at the beginning, and to mostly just let them do cool things to "hook" them and make them want to keep playing the game.

 

Hey @dgoyette, I'll jot down some thoughts as I play through.

• screen froze first time shooting right. did not unfreeze until i tab out of application (did not happen a second time)
  
• music gets irritating. maybe only use it for key points and beef up ambience? or maybe something more soothing/less annoying, like ambient space genre or something. As it is, I turned it off.
  
• bending the metal is cool. maybe give us a clue about that in previous room. A chance for people paying close attention to feel clever. Maybe very first room can have lots of things that bends and get tossed around.
  
• I already knew how game works, but maybe a short explanation about what a rift is would be good to give right off the bat.
  
• room where i pull self up with rift, shoot up into higher area and then immediately get sucked into another rift in center of hallway - its unclear what game is teaching me with the presence of the second rift.
  
• room with tons of crates to mess around with - give me more of this in the beginning. just to play around with, get a feel for how rifts work without any consequence. I like making the things fly around. Its fun. I want to shoot a rift on one side, shoot a rift on the other side, and see what happens. I want to shoot ten rifts in a big circle and see what happens. Maybe if I shoot too many rifts everything just explodes? Who knows. But as a gamer, I want to do all of that.
  
• combat isnt working for me. I dont like getting frozen when hit (by enemy). Need a dodge mechanic or something. I dont want to only move backwards.There is no distinct strategy. Just backpeddle and shoot rifts, right? I can't say this part is fun for me. I killed first guy quickly and was fighting the other two before it auto-ended.

A few summary thoughts:

I think I still have a few critiques similar to my first time around. Training can be slowed down, give me totally consequence free playgrounds that are fun to mess around in for a good while before introducing any stakes.

I didnt face any confusion or major irritations this time around. I think pacing can be tightened up by introducing just a single concept at a time. As mentioned already I am not in love with the combat, but I did basically know what to do immediately.

Couple other notes which may be n/a for where you're at but I mention anyway:

SFX is lacking. Result is game doesn't feel very alive. A few layers of ambient noise, player grunts/breathing, more intense rift noises will go a long way.

Rooms are pretty bare. I dont think you need to fill with junk but maybe using hard lights and more shadow, and having the rifts add a lot to that can add more interest. You can also use lighting to subtley give player hints about where to go, what to focus on, etc.

I dont care for floatiness in WASD movement.

 

And one more thing I mention, it was hard for me to figure it out but I think I got it:

There is like two types of gameplay. A type where I see the puzzle, I make my plan and do the puzzle at my pace. And then there is another type where things happen suddenly and I must react.

I think it is irritating for me as a gamer to not know which of those two types of gameplay I am contending with. It should be communicated clearly. That is perhaps why the room where I jump up the high wall and then suddenly get pulled into a new rift leaves me feeling irritated. Because how can I prepare for that? And nothing until that point has taught me "be ready for the unexpected" or "you'll need lighting reflexes". It might be realistic to get squashed by a thing you didnt know existed but it doesnt make for a palatable gaming experience IMO.

So for that room I either want to be left with a clear lesson I learned, or get some sort of communication to give me fair chance to prepare for whats ahead.

 

I understand your sentiment here, but I think it's cooler to discover that on your own. It's a puzzle game. I want to feel like I'm figuring things out on my own.

@dgoyette - Speaking of which, I would have liked additional, more challenging puzzles. Gravia is polished enough at this point that I assume you're aiming to demo in the Steam Autumn Games Festival. If so, consider adding a little more content. Otherwise you'll probably get complaints about how short the demo is. I worked on a game that was in the Summer Festival, and despite being maybe an hour or more of gameplay, some streamers still complained that it ended too soon -- which is a good thing, in that it left them eager for more -- but I think something as short as the current Gravia demo might just be frustrating.

Also, Portal has character in the form of GladOS and the dystopian setup of the test facility. I'm not saying that you should rip off that idea, but it would be nice to develop some kind of more unique character in the demo, or at least hint at it a little more.

 

Thanks to you both for the feedback. There's lots of helpful stuff here. Here's some specific questions/follow-ups (hopefully not too dense...)

It didn't crash? It just locked up until you tabbed away and then back in? I'll keep an eye out for that. I haven't seen that happen before. That's puzzling.

Good point. Right now I'm kind of using one "background" music piece all the time, so that's understandable. It's also not really the right tone. I'll have some new music soon that better fits each part of the game, this level included.

The first room has a set of pipes that bend, and eventually break, as the rift deforms them. But, that may be a little too subtle. I don't mind adding another set of pipes to that area to make it more likely that a player will notice that interesting things are happening.

Excellent point. I don't know how that escaped me. Probably in all likelihood, any person who is sitting down to try this game will been told "you make black holes", but it's completely reasonable to state something explicitly along those lines.

That's fair. The point of that part is just to give you a cool sensation of go up really quickly. The second rift is just there to make sure you don't fall back down again. I originally let some platforms come up under your after you shot up, but that was confusing to people. But now that I think of it, I can probably put another target up above, and let the player shoot it. I can make sure it's not too difficult, to get the shot off. That's probably much better, even if it takes the player a couple of tries.

That's reasonable. There's probably no reason that necessarily has to come at the end. That room truly only exists to show off some of the visual effects, and to play around in it.

I'm a little on the fence with the combat in the demo. Combat isn't a huge part of the full game, I just felt like it was interesting to include some of it. I intended it to be probably too hard for people, and as just a way to wrap up the demo quickly. But probably ending it with something difficult like that can give people a bad final impression. I'll give that some more thought.

I definitely struggle with this aspect. Everything tends to feel kind of empty, and I don't really have any "stuff" that makes sense to fill that space in with. One major concern is that if I add decorations, some people will get confused and think those decorations are part of the puzzle/challenge, instead of thinking they're just decoration. I'm still not sure the best way to approach this sort of thing, but it's on my list of "polishing" tasks, to find more ways to bring the environments to life. Definitely still something I have trouble with.

That's on the list, too, and it's a common complaint. I'll be tightening up the controls in the very near future.

That's a very interesting point, and I've honestly not considered it before. Gravia's a blend of puzzles and action experiences, usually with each "level" being mostly one or the other. It's definitely the case that people don't usually know, at first glance, whether the challenge in a particular level requires clever problem solving, or mostly just good platforming/timing. It's possible that just figuring that out could be part of the enjoyment for some people. But I've definitely seem people's first impressions be wrong, and they approach certain challenges the wrong way because they think it's a puzzle, and not a platforming experience, or vice versa.

I'll give this some more thought about whether to try to broadcast what's expected from the player in each level. My first thought was that it could be some subtle queue, like changing the music depending on the type of challenge, but not everyone even keeps the music on. Maybe there could be a subtle color scheme difference, I'm not sure. Definitely something interesting to think about.

Yeah, I agree with you on that. I struggled to think of some puzzle ideas that really made sense for the Demo experience. Since it's the first level of the game, and players can't be expected to have any real clue what's going on yet, having puzzles this early felt a little cheap. On the other hand, Gravia really is a puzzle game, and that should be an impression people walk away with from playing the demo. Thanks for encouraging me to think about that again. I really should get a reasonable puzzle experience in here.

Yeah, I'm planning to have this in the upcoming Steam Demo event. I was mostly designing the demo to run for 5-10 minutes, expecting that would be a good length for live events, like game conventions, so that enough people would have a chance to play through it. I only more recently found out about the Steam thing. I'm not sure what the right amount of content would be, but I definitely have concerns about having too much stuff, such that people feel like there's not reason to play the full game anymore. I'm sure that balance is hard to strike. But I definitely think a bit of additional experiences in the demo make sense.

That's a good point. I was holding off on any character introductions until immediately after this experience, since it seemed most people playing a demo won't care about the storyline of the full game. But having one character in here could make it more memorable.

Okay, thanks again, both of your. Plenty of tweaks to make now.

 

@dgoyette Had a play, you've got a really cool concept there and the level design/atmosphere is very well done.
The music is a little bit dramatic for the tutorial I think. Something a bit softer but still a little eerie would fit better.

The main issue I had was with the movement. It didn't feel very snappy and responsive which is something that's important for a game like this where I imagine timing and accuracy will be very important.

Is there any reason you chose left click for both fire and cancel? In the battle I kept accidentally clicking too many times and messing myself up. Possibly right click to cancel would solve this? Unless you had something else in mind for right click.

Really good work, keep it up and I look forward to seeing where you take this

 

I've put up a new build on itch for my game SpaceCraft.
It's a 2d space ship builder, exploration and combat game.

I'd appreciate it if someone could give it a go and answer these questions.

1. What did you like?
2. What didn't you like?
3. What did you wish there was more of?
4. What did you wish there was less of?
5. How long did you play?
6. Are there any features you expected to see that weren't there?
7. Can you post a picture of your ship? (if you customized it)
8. Describe your combat experience (if you had one)
9. Did you encounter any bugs? (details)

Before you play:

• The tutorial is very short - don't be discouraged
  
• If you've played before, click the "HARD RESET" button on the Main Menu - the old save files might cause issues
• When you get to the part of the tutorial where you add the laser, you might have to click the Crosshair (offense) button first to show the laser (Don't know why, only seems to happen in WebGL).

https://serinox.itch.io/spacecraft

Appreciate it!

 

hi @dgoyette I tried out the demo, I definitely think getting the full glove in early is a more exciting intro to the game and likely to be a better way to grasp the players attention (and whet the appetite as a demo). I like the glove model - looks really cool! I played with controller this time and everything worked well. I agree with the comment above regards sounds I agree a bit more foley might be helpful (footsteps, grunts etc). There are quite a few good resources online and as I am working on sound myself at the moment here are some places to look:

https://www.pmsfx.com/ (free demo bundle is good)
https://www.zapsplat.com/ (free in mp3)
https://sounds.com/ (free trial if you sign up. Can buy / download on an individual sound basis)

The asset store also has a number of free bundles as well. Note that quite often authors list on multiple sites so for example some of the kits on the asset store are also on sounds etc. Price can vary!

 

I didn't specifically mean an actual entity in the game. By "character," I mean a unique spin on the setting and story. Portal has a dystopian training center with a mystery about why there aren't any other people and why it's run by an automated system run amok. Currently, Gravia is just a bunch of rooms with puzzles. Is there anything more to the setting or backstory?

 

@dgoyette

regarding sound design here is a couple ideas:

• Intro and exit SFX for individual puzzle rooms (this may help set tone as well, and even indicate how challenging a puzzle might be)
  
• Failed and successful SFX jingles for puzzles
• background explosions/crashes tie in with story of the place being torn apart
• strange droning sounds, rushing wind etc from further away to clue in presence of rifts.

You can get lots of free SFX from sonniss. Look up the GDC game audio bundles

 

Agreed. The current background music isn't really the right feel for the rest of the aesthetic.

That's definitely something I keep hearing from time to time. I think almost everyone who mentions it quickly gets used to how movement feels, but I'm sure it's better if they never felt the need to mention it. I'll clean the movement up and make it feel more precise.

Right-click is meant for something else in the full game. I played around with the "firing a Rift" idea early on, and it actually gets even more complex in the full game, where you can click again to create the Rift in mid-air while it's flying away from you, instead of waiting until it hits something. At that point, having just a single button for everything ends up feeling the most fluid. I admit it's an acquired feel, but spreading the behavior over multiple buttons always added complexity and cognitive load, vs keeping it all on one button. I could technically add an optional extra button to get rid of the Rift, which would be redundant to just left-clicking. But everyone I've seen play the game quickly develops the rhythm for it, and at that point, having just the single button seems to be the less confusing approach.

Thanks for the links. I always like finding new sources of sound effects. Actually using them, though, is probably the real problem. I do currently have footsteps and grunt noises when you take damage. (Although, in the demo, I decided to make you basically invulnerable, so you never hear the grunt noises, because you don't take damage in this level...) The real problem I have with sound effects is finding the right kinds of things to add to the levels that would actually make interesting ambient sounds.

I mentioned above that when I start adding "decorative" objects (intended to enrich the feel of the game, but with no gameplay function), lots of players assume the object is interactive or useful, and they spend time trying to do something with it. But it's just for decoration. This ends up being more of an issue if that object makes noise. There's a tendency that if you're walking past something and it makes some sound, you want to stop and investigate and see if it's important.

Anyway, I should probably just make a dedicated thread on this idea of adding decorative objects and sounds. I'm 100% interested in having a much more rich environment, both visually and aurally. I'm just not really sure how I'm going to approach that without potentially confusing and misleading people.

Thanks again for playing, and for the feedback.

 

Hey @dgoyette, I had a play of your demo. I think it's a fantastic concept (I've never played anything similar before) with tons of potential, and the core mechanic is very solidly implemented, and the tutorial starts off well, but it feels a bit like the game isn't sure what to do with the player toward the end.

First of all, I liked the atmosphere right from the main menu. The menu music really sets up that sort of somethings-a-bit-weird-here puzzle vibe. I think the menu itself could look a bit more modern and sleek, but great start. I was put off a bit by all the purple though.

I didn't like that if I skipped the intro, I have to look at a loading screen again.

No need for WSAD/mouse look message imo. Everybody knows what to do in a first person game.

Before I start, I'm going to call each room a tutorial. I think you should too, and I think each room should teach something distinct and clear, with them all put together at the end in an 'arena' setting.

FIRST TUTORIAL
The first tutorial is perfect, just a demo of the mechanic at just the right distance to teach you that you can control getting sucked in or not. Though I think you could add some more interesting stuff in the room to get sucked in - the boxes are a bit bland, and the bent pipe thing at the back with steam coming out is great though that's all there is. Here's where you can really show the player what the rest of the game can offer, so I would go for a very big impact.

SECOND TUTORIAL
Bending the door is great fun, very good idea on that. Though it folds up too neatly and this reduces the feeling that you're just tearing into the world around you.

THIRD TUTORIAL
Good jumping tutorial.

FOURTH TUTORIAL
Good 'levitating' tutorial, though not entirely clear why the second gravia thing is there in the hallway. Why can't I just fire a second one to go across?

FIFTH TUTORIAL
Having the room full of boxes is a good start (I think the player should have been given more of a 'playground' earlier on though). Jumping the gap between platforms is fine, a bit awkward with the low ceiling but it serves as a test of skill timing the jump.

Note: At this point I feel like the tutorial is 'just doing its job' but hasn't given me anything especially exciting. I'll talk a bit later on about what I think could have been added.

SIXTH TUTORIAL
The combat seems like its going to be fun. Of course, the first thing I do is aim at the robot and fire. Does it do anything? This is not clear. There's an effect but the robot doesn't seem to be damaged. I miss the robot and hit the wall, and then the robot is sucked in and slammed into the wall. Not bad. Why does it seem to be pulled harder than me, because it's metal?

Running around inside the enclosed space is boring and annoying though. I feel like I'm doing laps in the octagon. How about a varied arena where I can try different things, and set up interactions between me, the robots, and various environmental situations? Make them fall into pits, get sucked into fans, etc.

WHAT TO DO
Here's what I think the tutorial needs. First of all, it just needs to be more plain fun. More effects, more interactions with flying crates, broken glass, gas bottles, plasma pools, electricity grids, industrial fans and saws, whatever. Right now the tutorial feels like a tech demo prototype where I'm imagining what the game will be.

Secondly, I feel like you haven't yet gone and written down "100 crazy things to do with the gravia hand" and tested each one of them out in a prototype. The mechanic offers so much, but the tutorial is very basic in both the idea and the implementation. The tutorial doesn't convey to me that you know exactly what the hand is capable of and you're going to teach me how to do it.

If I were you, I would brainstorm as many scenarios for things you can do that just make you go "wow that's some awesome s***, let's do that again!". The closest I felt to that was going vertically up and across, but the level design of the tutorial in general just doesn't feel like it's keeping up with how cool the hand is.

Are you worried that the player won't understand what to do with it, and you need to teach them all the basic little steps? I don't think that's necessary. Since the first time I fired the hand, I could easily imagine what would be possible with it. I want to progress faster and be put under more pressure with timing and figuring things out. And I don't even play many games like this - I did like Portal though.

For example, with the player getting sucked up vertically, why not have the target on the roof, and leave it to them to fire sideways once they reach the top of the jump? I would have felt a lot of satisfaction with that, but the game did that for me.

The combat tutorial is what really needs work though. In fact, this should be an arena that uses all the things you learned previously to challenge you - with the added pressure of combat.

It's fine to have a couple of basic tutorial situations in the first couple of minutes, but as a player I'm looking for the game to start challenging me much sooner, much harder, and more spectacularly.

By the way, where's the player's health?

THE ENDING
I'm not sure if the ending part is finalized, but it doesn't set up any sort of clear story/premise. There is no defined enemy, no clear basis to create tension and intrigue. It just looks like you take off the goggles and, well, there's a gravia thing outside. At this point, I want to know why I'm there.

CONTROLS
- Why does shift make you stop? I want to run with it.
- Why not cancel the gravia with the right-click? Would be much more intuitive in fast/timing situations rather than wondering if the next click is going to fire or cancel.

SUMMARY
- Incredible concept with lots of potential, and very well implemented core mechanic.
- Tutorial needs to 'think bigger' and be more exciting.
- Needs more explosions and feedback, and more environmental elements to contend with (plasma, electricity, fans etc).
- Each room should teach something distinct and clear, and then put it all together at the end in an arena.
- Don't be afraid to challenge the player! This is the sort of game where people go to be satisfied with themselves by figuring something out. The learning curve should be tighter and rise faster, but right now it's flatlining a bit.
- Need to establish the premise of the story at the end. Didn't like the music right at the end there personally.

Hope this helps, and all the best with your game!

 

Hey,

I tried this out, and ended up playing for probably a half hour or so. It was pretty enjoyable. I would probably like to keep playing, but I got the impression maybe I was at the end of the content, and that I'd messed up a bit. But overall, this was fun. There were several times I felt I wanted to see what would happen next, which is good. This sort of game can run the risk of being tedious, but I felt like I was able to improve my ship quickly enough to avoid that. Here's my ship when I stopped:



Things I liked:

• Mostly, there was a pretty good pacing in terms of resource collecting and allowing me to improve the ship, which made it easier to collect resources, etc. That's good for resource gathering games.
• I liked that there as unexpected stuff to discover. Like finding a giant rock ball I could blast apart. And going deeper into space and finding more dangerous enemies. Pretty cool. I'd lean into that more. I feel like I wanted to keep exploring and finding new things I hadn't seen before.
• I liked having some things to aim for, like getting a nuclear reactor. I'd recommend having more stuff show up there to aim for in the future.

Things that might be fine, but I didn't love them:

• Running out of power at the beginning is pretty bad. I noticed I could still barely move, but it would probably take 5-10 minutes just to get back to somewhere I could charge up. Maybe start the ships with a tiny bit of power regen, and maybe it only generates power if you haven't used your weapons in the last 10 seconds, just so I have a way to fly home if I use up all my power.
• Turning became an issue. I didn't see an obvious way to improve turn speed, even if I added more thrusters. I assumed it was based on ship mass, but it felt bad that improving the ship came at such a tradeoff.
• Trying to escape from an enemy, there's really no evasion I could perform. Enemies could fly at me at full speed and keep shooting at me. Maybe combat could be tweaked where you can't fly as fast when shooting, so that someone dedicated to escaping has a chance of getting away.
• I would have liked to be able to reorient my guns during combat. Eventually turning the ship was very slow, and I couldn't take out minor enemies because they were too fast.
• Getting nuclear reactors seems to completely change the game, and maybe not in a good way. Once you get one (or more) you're suddenly not dependent on planets like you were. This may be fun, but it felt too easy.
• Eventually I had 10 or more guns, and one suggestion would be to give them a little randomness in their firing. When I would press Space to shoot, they would all fire at once, which was visually and aurally kind of weird. Maybe just space them out by a fraction of a section each?

Some things you probably need to change/fix:

• Performance is the main issue. It seem that every time I saw the words "Loading", as I went further out, it would be accompanied by a permanent drop in FPS. By the end, I was probably running at 5-8 FPS compared to 60+ when I started.
• Key binding text is white on a white background for the different ship parts. Pretty hard to read.
• Maybe default the key bindings of newly added parts to be the same as existing parts? It's a bit annoying to add another gun and have to manually assign its key binding.
• In the ship building UI, the menu overlay can't be clicked through. So, it was had to click some of the squares of the ship itself.
• In key binding, it says to press Escape to exit key binding mode. But Escape also kicks you out of full-screen in WebGL. Maybe not an issue in the long run, but a bit awkward.
• Seemed weird, but even after a hard reset, it kept my unlocked weasons. So, after a hard reset, I started a new game, and found I could still

Overall, pretty fun. I assume there will eventually be more randomness to the planets layout, and more stuff to do. I did quickly feel like there wasn't much point in collecting things anymore, since there was nothing else to buy, and I had plenty of every resource.

 

Good to see this game evolving! Though I think there's a bit of a lack of focus, and it would be good to drill down on the fun a bit more for each part of the game.

I played your previous prototypes, and I like the concept (building my ship out of blocks, deciding what goes where). This is a good mechanic.

While I think you've done a decent job in many areas, it doesn't feel polished in any particular area. I think if you simplify things and do them with more intention and attention to detail, the 'more than the sum of its parts' aspect of the game will really pop out. Here is a list of things that need improvement imo:

MENU

• The main menu aesthetic in particular, and the aesthetic of the game itself, is not great imo. I really think you would be better off going for a FTL type of aesthetic, with strong colors, less gradients, strong object outlines, and a blocky, LEGO type of appearance. The below example just screams out 'building sandbox game' as well as being eye candy.

• I think you really need to nail the ship-building menu UI as it is the main premise of the game. It's not very intuitive for me design-wise. The tutorial is a great idea, but referred to buttons with different names (e.g. I had to click Offensive before I could find Laser, also Keybindings button was not labelled as such).
• The menu needs to nail context properly to become really intuitive. When you are applying keybindings for example, why is 'Deploy' still visible? (though it doesn't work). I would look at all the different states that the menu can be in and create different tabs for each one that really clarify what options are available to you. It just doesn't feel easy to grasp at first glance.
• There really needs to be default key bindings when you create a module, especially if I already have one of the same type set up.

DURING THE GAME

• The camera is jittery. If you're using physics, are you implementing camera lerping in FixedUpdate?
• The dragging mechanic is cool, maybe it should use up energy?
• Why are there circles to fly through? It doesn't make clear sense why I am doing this, and in what order. I think a waypoint marker would be more interesting.
  
• The home base should never be lost completely from the map. What about edge indicators on the minimap?
• The tutorial should have a basic premise. Why am I gathering resources? Maybe my ship has just come out of a battle and needs repairs. Why am I flying toward the planet? Because that's where my hangar/repair shop is. Why am I fighting random ships? Because they are pirates/I'm a pirate/the universe is in chaos etc.
• The combat is OK but the relative speed is too fast. Enemies fly off one side of the screen and then the other. Where are the eye-popping explosions and sound effects?
• Running out of power results in a boring situation. Is there some way to get it back without going back to base?
  
• What is the level design? Is there a structure to the world, areas that are more/less dangerous? Friends? Enemies? Crazy space weirdos? Places I can't yet go but offer something I just need to keep playing so I can get?
• In a game like this with little/no story (I presume) feedback and cause/effect is king. I need to feel like the world knows I'm there, and it's worth exploring. There need to be times of high/low tension, wow moments, moments where I think "ah so I can do that! That's cool.."

WHAT NEXT
I think the best thing to do here, especially since this is a sandboxy game, is create a set of mini-designed-areas, like rooms, that you can connect together to create the overall world. Right now, it feels like the world is just a bunch of resources, some random enemies and a home base.

- What events will I experience that challenge me in different ways?
- Are there bosses or specific types of enemies I will encounter in specific types of environments?
- Why do I need a bullet or a laser weapon? Do they have different strengths/weaknesses? Shields/hull?
- What patterns can I learn about and understand, so that I can strategize and conquer this game world?

It's an interesting prototype (though a bit unpolished) but what is needed now is some idea of what is 'out there' in the universe that makes me want to move through it, learning and growing and conquering!

 

There's a lot here for me to digest. Let's see what I can do with this.

This is a tricky thing. I've only just added the ability to skip cutscenes in general, but for various reasons, it requires a hard reload of the scene to make sure everything's in the right initial state. I realize that kind of defeats the purpose for very short cutscenes. I'll keep thinking about this, and whether there's some middle ground here that won't be a nightmare to build and maintain.

That's a pretty fair point. Right now, each part is mostly an isolated experience, not really building towards a unified final experience.

I'll think about whether the big room full of junk should be the first room. Or maybe a slightly toned down version of it, just so things aren't too overwhelming right away. I wouldn't want someone to be completely confused about what's going on when they fire their first Rift, because there's 200 objects suddenly moving around the scene. This is one of those "balance" things, where it's hard to know what's too much vs. not enough for any given player. But I think this first room could easily have a bit more stuff in it that shows perhaps some subtle gravity interactions. Maybe it's not a swarm of stuff flying around, but some interesting bending/breaking would be good here.

Yeah, I'm reworking this a bit. I've tried it out with having the player fire a second rift to get up and over the top, but I think that ends up being just a bit too difficult for the average player to do successfully this early in the game. I'm taking another pass at it, though, to see if I can still let the player create the second Rift without requiring really precise timing here.

I had mostly envisioned the robot fight as a thing people wouldn't have much success at, as just a way to put a hard stop on the tutorial. But I'm rethinking it not. I mentioned in an earlier reply that Gravia's not hugely about combat, so having the fight here might be a bit awkward. I'll give this some more thought. A better final experience here might be more like what you mentioned earlier: Something that combines everything the player has "learned" into one last challenge. The robot fight probably gives the wrong impression that you're going to spending a lot of time fighting robots in the full game.

This is a bit tricky. There's a difficult balance with a Demo of giving the player a really fun experience that sells the game, and giving them so much stuff that they don't see any reason to play the full game. I'm sure there's plenty of wiggle room with this, but I've intentionally kept the mechanics of the Demo pretty limited. I could throw explosives, broken glass, electricity fields into the demo (those are all things in the full game), but I worry that so much front-loading will mean I've revealed everything in the first 10 minutes, so there's nothing to look forward to.

So, it's a hard thing to feel confident about getting right. On the one hand, the Demo may be the one chance to hook people, so it should be really exciting and visually stunning. On the other hand, it may set the bar too high, and make the rest of the game seem boring as mechanics are introduced at a more reasonable pace.

In the end, I'm sure I'll add some more visually interesting stuff here, and streamline it a bit. It's just tough to know how much is too much.

Again, this is a case of not wanting to reveal everything too soon, and not give the player any reason to play the rest of the game. But maybe there's some middle ground here, to give a sense of what's to come, without letting you directly do it yet. So, give a preview of some of the cool things coming up, without giving you control over them yet.

For the demo, you're mostly invincible. This ends up making sense in the context of the story, and empirically it's just better than having people dying all the time in the demo. I had a rough, earlier demo from a year or two ago, and it was pretty easy to die in it. That didn't go over well with most people. They want to feel like a god for a while, and that's what this demo tries to provide. Health becomes more of a concern after the demo, as the consequences gradually increase.

Getting the difficulty curve just right is extremely difficult. This is another case of wanting this game to be accessible to a broad audience, generally people who aren't masters of FPS games. Having had a fair number of people play the alpha version of the full game, the biggest complaint has been a steep difficulty curve. I've been working on flattening that. This definitely means toning down the challenge of certain parts of the game in order to avoid alienating large groups of people.

However, I've found a sort-of compromise: Throughout the full game, there are many "secret" areas, which are generally extremely hard to reach. Sometimes they're just not in an obvious place, sometimes they require extremely precision to get to. Whenever I come up with a puzzle or platforming idea that's "too hard", I turn that into a "secret" area, which the extremely ambitious can try to overcome. Most players are actually unaware of the existence of any secret areas as they play through the game. Anyway, my current plan is for the challenge of the game not to be too extreme. Those who want added difficulty can find it in the secret parts.

That's on its way. Taking off the goggles leads right into the beginning of the story, and I'll be adding a bit of detail to that final scene to make it more clear what's going on, and why that Rift suddenly appears there.

Shift will become important, as it's the "Brace" mechanic. It holds you in place to keep you from being pulled around by Rifts. It's definitely a bit surprising to people who are used to Shift being the "sprint" key. Keys are remappable, but I've found there just doesn't seem to be a better default for it, given how much you'll be pressing it during the game.

I discussed the left-click / right-click thing in an earlier reply, but the basic gist is, people get used to it fast, and splitting it into two buttons ends up making the behavior more confusing later on, as your Gravia Glove gets an upgrade. It's basically a bit of a compromise, but testing has shown it's been the better of the two choices.


Thanks very much for all the feedback. I'll definitely be rethinking some things here. You're a good example of a player who wants a good challenge. I'm the same way, and my instinct is to make things very challenging. But I've found that most people are the other way, and they'll just quit if it's gets challenging. I'm having to carefully weigh the pros and cons of the "challenge" in this game.

 

Hello everybody. Few months ago I posted here video about our game, here it is:

This is our first game, and today we made demo, with few skills and only with bots. All game already running on PUN, but there were some issues with sync state after one of the peer will loose internet connection, working on it right now (hope fix soon).

This demo only shows 20% of what we plan to do. We are ready for Your feedback: is it fun to play? Is game attractive? General feedbacks, critic, what we need to change or add or remove...

Thx in advance.

Controls:
WASD (arrows) - movement.
Mouse - rotation.
E, SPACE, LMB, RMB - skills.

https://bigrush.itch.io/core-in-fusion

 

For the tutorial, my impression is that challenge is fine, but instructions and hints need to be stronger/clearer. Personally, there are two things that make me bail on games: boredom (by far the biggest one) and not knowing what to do next (usually combined with boredom, I'll stick with it if I like the game).

If the player knows what they need to do, but can't do it yet, it's a challenge. If they have no idea, it's a 'bad game'.

In the tutorial, I would be challenging the player hard while being 100% clear on what they need to do to achieve it.

A couple of ideas for tackling this problem: get a particularly difficult challenge (something that's difficult to understand, not so much to do) anywhere in the game, and give it to first time playtesters. But have 6 or 7 different levels of hints/instructions, going from nothing, to having an AI demo the thing from start to finish. The players have to increase the level of hand-holding if they don't know what to do. Find what kinds of information make it possible for them to connect the dots and still feel some kind of challenge.

In fact, the AI demoing the level is something you could have as a clear option in the tutorial, since it's just a tutorial and the entire point is to go from zero to hero.

--

About the front-loading issue, the way I see it, you want to front-load the excitement/pleasure of using the mechanic, because when people are enjoying it they will be thinking "I wonder what the game is going to want me to grab/rip/destroy?". What you don't need to front load is the tension and drama of the plot, or the 'real-world' applications of the hand as opposed to simply throwing test objects around. The tutorial can feel more like a kindergarten than a warzone, but it should still be a really fun kindergarten.

I know it's a completely different thing, but the principles still apply: have you ever seen a Call of Duty game, the king of drama and pacing, start of with anything less than a nuclear bang? It doesn't ruin the rest of the game at all, in fact it gives you something to play for.

If I were you, at an absolute minimum, I would add something really big and satisfying at the end of the demo (preferably right at the end after the player takes off the goggles). Something that says "play on, and this is what you'll get more of!"

PS I think you gave me a key when you posted on FF a couple months ago, so I'll check out the game (looking forward to it actually!) and let you know what I think about the game vs the tutorial.

 

@dgoyette @Billy4184 Thank you both so much for putting in the time and writing excellent, detailed feedback!

In general, it sounds like I've got a lot of work to do in terms of tying all the elements together and displaying them in a meaningful way.
I've been sort of focused on adding features rather than perfecting them as you've both pointed out and I will definitely put a hold on that now.
I agree that there's not much purpose in the universe currently, I'd love to give people a reason to keep building up their ship - some sort of end goal.

I think what I'll do from this point on is to improve all the existing features and put a big focus on the look and feel.
An infinite universe sounded like a cool idea initially, but I'm started to think hand sculpted sectors with unique personalities will be a bit more intriguing.

I'll make a big trello list from all of your feedback and get to work! I'll let you know when I "think" I've fixed the problems in the design - could be a few months off!

Thanks again, I really appreciate the time and thought you've put into your feedback.

 

You're welcome! Looking forward to seeing what you do with it, I think the concept and foundation is very good.

And even if you do end up going for an infinite universe, it's still necessary to develop an intentional structure to the world, and prototyping different types of 'rooms' will help you develop the building blocks for the universe.

 

Congrats on your first game! And for putting it out there to get feedback.

I think it's a neat concept, and the sounds are good. The main issue is that I expect the forward/back/strafe to be relative to the direction I'm facing. If I'm facing left, D should make me go up.

The beam weapon takes too long to recharge and the pause between firing is way too long. Perhaps it would be best to be able to fire weakly at any time, but the charge-up gives you an extra energy boost.

I think some momentum to the movement would feel good.

How about some environmental hazards - electricity, spikes, mines etc?

Good start on your game! Looking forward to seeing more.

 

@Billy4184 Thx for playing game. Indeed some skills needed to be re balanced. We will do that it in next releases, also task number one is to finish networking, because playing with bots is not funny We will think what we can do with movements upgrade. We already have some dynamic environment but they are still under development. We don't have much time to work on game, since we have our main job and game dev its only our hobby.

 

@dgoyette @Billy4184 I've change the universe so that instead of piecing it together at runtime, the solar system is predefined. I also changed it so that you slowly gain power when near the sun (in the solar system).

This solves a few problems -
Its very difficult to get stranded in the middle of nowhere (you get a lot of warning)
Performance is much easier to keep under control.
The player has a decent idea of where they are and where they can go.
The Solar Systems could be the "rooms" that you were talking about, where you can hyperjump to another solar system which has different planets, enemies, resources and things to discover.

What do you think of this change? (Just trying to squeeze a bit more out of this feedback Friday before I carry on with it! )

Here's a little video to help you visualise it: