[Feedback Friday #20] - Apr 3, 2015

[Extended to Friday, April 17]

[How is it APRIL already?!?!?! First quarter down - wonder how many games you'll release this year!]

Want design feedback for your new game? Then you've found the right thread! Post here to get precious player feedback. Discuss until next Friday, when we'll lock the old and start anew.

How To Ask For Feedback?

• Show - Be Interesting! Pics, videos, or best of all, a playable game!
• Be Concise - Who's got time for Wall 'O Text? Less is more.
• Read This - More great guidance in superpig's post.

How To Give Feedback?

• Be Positive - Finding redeeming qualities in the worst of games, is in itself a game.
• Focus On The Design - Not the designer.
• Be Specific - "Your game sucks!" is for nubs.

What To Show?

• Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play >>> everything else.
• How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)

Gigi

[PS - Feedback Friday #19 is here]

 

Howdy, looking to get some wonderful critical feedback on Omegatech Pre-Alpha core gameplay.

Playable: www.omegatechgame.com/downloads/Demo_Web.html
- Meant for mobile but keyboard cheat keys 1,2,3 also fire weapons / press the big red button to fires all weapons
- Click to target/untarget/move
- Bad idea to melee strike an explosive battery

Known issues:
primary: needs a more effective tutorial.. would love suggestions as we improve on the look and feel.

website: www.omegatechgame.com
trailer:

 

Hi @pixelknight,

The look is great -- some of the best anime style I've seen in a game. I especially like the smoke clouds. Very nice, consistent art style throughout. Some of the taller structures block visibility a little too much for my comfort.

I'm curious how this feels on mobile. I think I have a decent idea from mouse input, but there's nothing like actual touch controls. Would it make the game too easy if, when you target an enemy, your mech navigates so it has a clear line of fire to the target?

The level of detail in the tutorial is fine to me. It's a bit of an information dump, but plenty of highly-regarded games, especially RTSes, present the same amount of information in the same timeframe. I'd love to get a better sense of the characters' individual personalities, though, as they deliver their info. The game feels like it has great storytelling opportunity; take advantage of every text box.

I noticed a couple typos in one of the secrets:

Secret Found!
Excellent eye, soldier! The resistance
has hidden supplies in abandonded
buildings and they recognized you're
using an Assault strategy.​

Finally, a minor thing: The text in the Omegatech Game First Look video flashed by too fast. On the plus side, though, that counters the reputation that Unity occasionally has for being kind of slow.

 

It is presented very well. Great graphics and sounds. I found the control a little odd where it seemed like I had to move a certain distance (I clicked just slightly off my mech to turn it around and nothing happened so I kept clicking farther and farther out and finally it turned and moved as I wanted it to). Some times the movement hopped. Mech was moving and skipped ahead many frames worth but I think that is likely the webplayer combined with my 2008 laptop. Overall it was all very smooth and responsive other than the odd minimal amount that has to be moved. I liked collecting all of the gear thingys although no idea what they are for. Found the secret. Fought many enemy bots but never really felt like I knew what I was doing and where I was going so I wandered around checking everything I saw. Of course, I skipped all of those boxes that kept popping up annoyingly in the beginning so maybe that would have shed some more light on things if I had wasted time reading them.

 

Hey guys!

If you could please say review this small casual game:

Google Play link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.IVM.crazyFactory

Video:

Wondering how could I improve this game, what features to add, stuff like that. Any asnwers will be greatly appreciated.
Also my team is looking for a designer who knows about balancing. So if you're interested drop me a pm.

 

Battle Karts
WASD to steer, x to shoot (if you got an item).

inanegames.ca/battleKarts/battleKarts.html

 

@Aiursrage2k
1. Ui takes up too much of the screen
2. the controls are horible, wasd to steer and X to shoot? what am I playing with one finger at a time? how am I supposed to steer and shoot at the same time?
3. WARNING: SOUNDS ARE TURNED UP TO THE MAX AND THEY ARE NOT PLEASANT! you should turn down the volume a bit please.
4. the minimap is right next to the kart i can't see a lot of the screen because of that.
5. same thing with the kill texts.

but the game could be fun. requires a lot of work still, but it could be fun, not as fun as mario kart, but still.

 

@Aiursrage2k:

I liked how as soon as I hit Start I was straight into the gameplay. I do think it would be good to give the player maybe 5 to 6 seconds of non-targetable time so they can acclimate themselves to being in the game world and get a feel for the car. Just a bit of time the AI cars will not target the player.

The speed was a rush. A nice fast pace that made it a joy to experience.

I had no problem with the controls. I hate WASD but I simply used the arrow keys and that works perfectly with X for firing. I use a similar scheme in my games. I go with WASD/Arrow Keys/Game pad for movement. X/Space/Enter for button 1. C/Right Shift for button 2. This way caters for left handed and right handed people.

Graphics were more than good enough considering the focus here is on sheer speed get the gun get the kills get the hell out of the way.

Overall this is a great start!

 

I went to Play Store to install it but it needs permission to access my Photos/Media/Files so that is a no go. But I am sure there is someone here who does not care about such things who can give you feedback.

 

Yeah, that's either "lazy with setting your application manifest", or "malware." I'm not going to think about downloading Cats & Rats unless that changes, sorry.

Aiursrage2k - you're up for feedback

What Worked:
First, your visual presentation was simple, but generally easy on the eyes, both in terms of being presentable, but also everything being big enough to interact with meaningfully - I don't forsee a great many usability problems when your game makes the leap to a mobile device or tablet. The actual music and sound design was reasonable and provided generally good feedback. The minimap was easily the most helpful part of your actual gameplay, and the cart's movement controls were generally tight and responsive.

What Didn't Work:
First, it's been said before, but X as a 'Use Item' option is very very bad. I was expecting either LMB or Space Bar to use my current item - those would be more tactile options. You could do like I did in The Hero's Journey and provide alternate buttons for a left-handed setup, or you could go one further and make your controls fully rebindable to solve this dilemma as well.

On that note, I have to ask: why in the good Lord's green earth do you not give the player a weapon, but give all of the AIs weapons right away? I kept dying as soon as the round began, which was not fun, and turned me off to the experience. There are a few things you could do to make the first 15 seconds of the cart battles fun:

1. Give the player a starting weapon of some kind - dying and not being able to fight back is like being given the middle finger by your game. I don't want your game's bird, you can have it.
2. Design your arenas with blocks that cause it to take a small amount of time before you can actually be hit with an opponent's items. About 10-15 seconds would be optimal, because I need time to figure out the game's controls and UI before Player 7 explodes me.
3. Add a double-tap evasive maneuver of some kind. Another problem with your items is that if someone fires something, there's very little counter-play available - a CPU using an item more or less means, it's going to hit you. What would be more fun, is something like a drift turn that you could use to evade an oncoming item, or a dash of some kind.
4. Alternatively, make the projectiles a bit smaller so they are easier to evade, or have a greater chance of missing. Whoever designed these carts apparently also designed the buzzards in WoW that have a tendency to drop zweihanders twice their size, apparently.

In-game, the radar was the strongest point of the experience, but it had issues, because about 3 seconds of the 5 seconds that I was alive in my first round, was me figuring out that I was the reddish-purple dot, and that everyone else were the other colors (mostly because they were moving, and I hadn't yet figured out how to do so.) I would suggest making the player's radar blip periodically emit a wave as an added bit of extra visual feedback to help the player more quickly understand which blip represents them. The radar is a key piece of tactical information - making it usable, not within three seconds, but instantly is of great importance.

Also, your player numbers are very strange. Obviously I'm player one, but when there's four players, and the four contestants are Player 1, Player 3, Player 4, and Player 7, I have to wonder what happened to 2, 5, and 6. Did a sarlacc eat them or something? Alas, I fear we may never know...

The music and sound, while good, was ineffective because - also as pointed out above - it's too darn loud. To mitigate this, I suggest adding some audio sliders to your settings - Master Volume, Music Volume, and SFX Volume would provide a player great control over their aural experience, which would make it easier to retain interest in your game (unless you hate people with functional eardrums, of course.)

The TL;DR
This is obviously an early build of the game; it has a good ways to grow. I'd suggest tightening up the early-game experience to allow new players to get their bearings, but also tightening up the general user experience for better overall retention. Most of the game can work, and work well, with some careful tweaks and tuning.

 

@GarBenjamin & @Asvarduil that's the requirements for saving player prefs and google+ all games that need to save any data require access to files, and any games with google+. I might be able to remove the photos one.
anyways thank you for at least having a look guys and I appreciate for telling me this, will have to look deeper in to this.

 

No problem and it is nothing personal. I just am very leary of all of these apps requesting access to stuff. Yours at least does not ask for phone identity, contact list, call history and other such stuff. I see these things as a huge security hole and wonder how many people have had their contact lists and personal photos stolen by apps. I imagine a lot of the telemarketing spam comes from data stolen by such apps. Certainly would not surprise me in the least.

Anyway, I checked out your video. The game looks interesting kind of like a falling version of a bejeweled style game? The graphics and sounds are very good. They have a "fun" vibe to them. The game appears to have enough action/excitement to be interesting. I did not understand the connection with the cat and what it is doing at start of round. Based on the You're Fired screen I am guessing there is some kind of story where the player is given a job to do. That is a good thing.

 

@Aiursrage2k the biggest thing you could work on would be to get the UI elements away from the center of the screen. The notifications when a player dies take up a huge amount of space in the most important part of the screen and so does the radar.

 

I wasnt going to bother updating until next friday but might as well make an update.

Whats new
->AI karts are no longer using navigation meshes they are using real karts (the same thing the player is) so its more fair.
->Every-time you get hit, you spin out and have some invincibility frames
->More Weapons
->Controls: WASD or Arrows to move, x,space, left mouse or enter
->Players UI Score takes up less room, Radar was moved to lower corner
->2 of the arenas were swapped out 2 added in
->Fade out to black after each stage
->3 Seconds grace period. (Where you can sneak out).


Same link as before.
inanegames.ca/battleKarts/battleKarts.html

 

@GarBenjamin Thank you. Well i'm improving it quite a bit soon too. Will see what I can do to remove some of the requirements. I never really looked at it like that, but you're right.

 

How bout we extend to this friday? I was on vacation and missed the last one. My apologies.
Gigi

 

And the extended feedback comes to a close. The new week begins here.
Gigi