[Feedback Friday #25] - May 15, 2015

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 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 #24 is here]

 

Hi guys,

Here's the next Alpha. With some major changes.

Link : bit.ly/1ENTIo1



I'm trying the old and tested mechanic of Level Progression rather than playing by minutes. Making the progression day by day. My main concern right now is increasing the user engagement.

Apart from this, I've worked on a long list of suggestions (https://trello.com/b/QypUoB6r/warfront-defenders).

Let me know if this is looking better.

 

1. Well I didnt like it as much as last time. It played the first mission and it seemed kind of spammy in comparison to last time. I tried the second mission but died right away the luftwaffe bombed my positions then i gave up.

 

The second levels needs more work. But the first one is tad easier? Did u get 3stars on that?

So, you are saying the playability of last alpha was better? Minute based levels rather were better than this?

 

Hey guys
Here is a new screen shot:


You can see the old screenshot in last week's Feedback Friday thread for comparison. That post also has the webplayer for gameplay, although I haven't made a new build with these visual changes.

@Asvarduil I took your advice on cutting back on the text. Do you approve of my UI images?
I will also implement a rank system like you suggested. I really liked that idea. I tried playing with light & fog but not to much avail. Did add some shadows though. Changed & fixed the ground textures and added some flowers and bushes of various colors.

@Socrates
I experimented with some different trees, and, partly because of your advice, decided to not use realistic ones. Tried to find some free cartoony ones, couldn't, and made the ones you see in the screenshot. I am not an artist.

I'm going to do a little bit more with the UI (Adding a bar for the timer instead of/in addition to using a number countdown, for example)

But what do you guys think, am I on the right track here?

 

You don't need my approval!

Still, it looks much better now, in my opinion. The gameplay looks more fun. I can't wait to play your upgraded prototype.

Also, the cartoony trees are a nice touch. I'd suggest using the "ball-top" trees more; they mesh well with the character. Will enemies also be balls?

 

Hah! I know. You were the one who pointed me in this direction though. I'm rather proud of my art creations here, even though they are ludicrously simple. My clock for the timer won't be as amazing as the moneybag or skull, unfortunately.

I agree, it looks a lot better. Still a few things to sort out, both with UI and gameplay. But I think I'm getting close to satisfied. I've already reshaped the "pine" trees so they look a lot better now, but the ratio favors the other trees.

I will keep the enemies as they are, although I'll tweak the AI a little. Creating/finding/buying some other model is something for which I completely lack motivation. I also really don't like setting up animations, so it's a lot easier to leave my functioning enemy in. I think the monster works OK, it doesn't look completely out of place in this setting IMO. (But mainly I'm lazy.)

Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully I'll have something closer to a finished product next Feedback Friday.

 

I still did not make it past the first round (Day 1 here I think). I don't know what the difference is between the Minute Progression and the Day Progression. Unless you just mean the text says Day 1 now instead of choosing 1 minute, 2 minutes, etc.

The game seemed to play the same to me as it did last time. It has a very good presentation but I don't get what I am doing. I drag some troops to a few locations that I am able to. Click the Green Button. The ship fires a few shots (one nice thing is at least this time I did not lose any men during the "heavy attack" phase). Then enemy troops start moving in firing. They always seem to be stronger than my troops. Hitting more often and seemingly taking more damage. I guess this phase is basically just watch it like a movie? Kind of like a regular TD game. I like TD games the few I have played but for some reason this just doesn't have the same feeling. Maybe it is due to the very slow speed of the game. I am not sure.

 

Looks better to me than the other screenshot. I think the trees are very good especially the trees made up of spheres. The whole display just looks cleaner.

 

@JimmyP - Now that I'm at home, I have more feedback on artistic stuff, even though that's totally not even the point of this subforum.

So, I notice you've got some fog in, and it helps! What I'd suggest you do is to find a higher strength of fog to add a little bit more "haze". I recommend working in "twos" - double a value, or half of a value. If you don't like the fog at double strength, try removing half of what you added, for instance.

Also, the color of the fog is a good learning opportunity. I had it explained to me, that thick fog looks as it does because it's a whole lot of water vapor. Now, you could keep it grey if you were going for a super-thick M. Night Shamalayn film look, but as you're using it to provide some helpful haze to glue the look together, try making it whatever color your sky is instead (I use this extensively in my sidescroller, The Hero's Journey, as shown below...)


It's a subtle effect, but you can see how the mountains just out of the cave mouth have a nice misty effect about them...

The conical trees just don't convince me, but you said you were working on them. I too am a programmer who doesn't specialize in art, so I know your pain. Just keep practicing as you get the chance, and your game art will improve. It will especially help when you find "your" signature art style.

 

Well you might try for a toon shader. I found one I like in the wiki
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/TeamFortress2Shader

 

Player engagement is breaking the game. This is essentially a TD without upgrade mechanics which lies at the heart of player engagement.

Will try something very different this time.

 

The more cartoon trees look much better, especially when coupled with the overall brighter color palette. You may not be an artist, but that is the the advantage of a less realistic style. The closer you are to realistic, the more the human brain notices the deviations from "perfect" looking.

 

More info for the person you're addressing: This is a well-documented effect called the "Uncanny Valley" - it's originally from robotics, but it plays a major part in games too.

 

Yeah, I agree. In hindsight it's rather obvious, really, that realism is no aspiration in a game about a soccer ball with a machine gun.

@Asvarduil
I played a bit more with the fog. It's never possible to actually see the sky in my game, however, so I won't spend much more time on it. Surely a good lesson for later on though. About the conical trees, I resized the various half-cones so they look like proper pinetrees now. Well, I mean... Close-ish to proper pinetrees.

Glad you guys approve of the new visuals. Also very glad you guys pushed me in this direction. Aiming for a new webplayer build this weekend, if I can get over this AI hurdle.

I gave your game a try last night. It felt hard to know what to do, and it took me a few restarts to understand that my guys needed to take cover or be instantly blown up by the battleship. It seemed overly difficult, to be honest. I think GarBenjami's comment was right on the money.

 

This is the first time I'm ever letting someone play my game, and honestly it's a bit scary. I think it's time for me to start showing it around and fixing stuff that does not work. So feel free to check it out if you want! I appreciate all feedback, no matter how blunt.

Once ingame, press Space to play: Akiro (link)

Spoiler: GIF for those interested

 

This looks enjoyable! You've got a nice, relatively consistent visual style; it's easy to understand what's going on (don't become something else's calamari appetizer!) When I get home, I'll append more in-depth feedback to this post.

 

@JimmyP - Another reason you're getting good comments on the spherical trees, is because there's something to learn about composing a scene with shapes.

Once upon a time, @Gigiwoo linked me this little GamaSutra Whitepaper on aesthetics in modern game design. It covers both art and music. As someone who is trying to mitigate art as a weakness, this may be a worthwhile read for you.

 

Welcome! Congratulations on posting your first prototype for feedback. It's an exciting, hopeful, and scary thing to do. I hope others will join me in offering constructive feedback that helps improve both you and Akiro.

Akiro is a cute, quirky, and fun game idea. The simple one-touch control lends itself well to mobile titles. It also has a simple game concept that has lots of room for expansion. The creatures in the game work well together, to convey 'OCEAN DEEP'. Here's some thoughts you might find useful:

• Provide guidance. Took me 3 minutes bashing EVERY key on my keyboard to realize it was the spacebar! Consider that for testing, you might as well allow any key to work: arrows, letters, numbers, the spacebar, whatever! Alternately, even mouse clicks.
• Difficulty. The game starts hard and gets harder - I wasn't able to get more than 2 pieces. HARD is a valid game style, though there are other options that might work for Akiro.
• Objectives - Consider providing clear objectives, such as 'Collect 3 fish' or even, 'don't get eaten'. Without goals, it's hard to get into flow. Many successful titles (ex Alto's Journey) also provide long-term goals, to maintain player retention past day 1.
• Scale/Growth - This game SCREAMS to work like Jenova Chen's 'Flow' or Osmo. In both of those games, your character gets larger as it eats things. In Akiro, this could go in phases. So, at level one, there's no enemies (or rare), and you need 3 bits of food to 'grow' to Level 2. At level 2, your character is a bit larger, and now you start to see enemies. At level 3, you begin to eat the level 2 enemies, and so on. In Osmo, this is very organic, based on size. Of course, some things could always hurt.
• Control - The character control could be made more interesting. For instance, you could use a tap-hold feature to create smoother arcs, or tapping rapidly could cause you to accelerate speed, or the tap-turn radius could be smoother (it's very jumpy/aggressive). Maybe the speed of taps also impacts how sharp the turn is. You may consider looking for ways to make the movement FUN, so that even with NO game, it'd still be a joy - think 'Journey', again by Jenova Chen.
• Movement - In addition to exploring control schemes, you may experiment with 'left' and 'right' controls. I'm not exactly sure how it would work, it just feels like there's fun to be found there.

This early prototype shows a game with a lot of promise. It has a lot of room to play with ocean depth, creature size, visual effects (darkness, lightness), camera control, leveling, and goals. There's also a LOT you can do with the colors, parallax backgrounds, and bubbles to add to the visuals.

Gigi

 

thank you! Seems like there's a lot I can dig into. I really appreciate the feedback. I will take everything into consideration. The Scale/Growth mechanic sounds really interesting, and as you say I think it might fit well.

 

If you go that way, consider playing FLOW. Though he released a paid version for PS3, Chen made an older version available as part of his Master's thesis.

Gigi

 

Yeah a TD has more depth to the game, where you can place towers, upgrade them, make mazes (select which type of towers to build, etc). But usually TDs dont have the enemies attacking your towers (which makes them more passive).

 

I tried a build with the tower AI disabled. Where you have to target the towers to the creeps. The mechanic is not working at all.

My next trial would be upgradable soldiers. With new weapons. Lets see if it works.

 

Maybe look at this game for inspiration.
http://armorgames.com/play/15768/infectonator-survivors-alpha?tag-referral=tower-defense

 

I missed this one this time but the others gave you plenty of great feedback. Throw another post out when the new Feedback Friday thread is up and I will be sure to play it.

 

Insightful interactions this week. The new one begins here!

Gigi