[Feedback Friday #36] - Dec 4, 2015 (Christmas!)

I played the first few levels.

Love it, reminds me of bomberman. Great concept. The game is intuitive and fun.

Right now the difficulty is fine. Seems to me like more puzzle than action. I'll play the rest of the levels later and edit.

 

1. Too hard for the first level.
2. What is a "Christmas" game?
3. So freaking retro. It seems like an old game, like one of those old bible games almost.

 

Give the web version a try for me to see if it's any better: http://www.kongregate.com/games/Rcastoro/bonsai-word

Also just released an update to the google play store for Bonsai Word that makes it one click to select letter (no more touch issues) and facebook login/leaderboard issue resolved.

 

The PC version I think is what you intended it to play like. Technically, it is sound. It is functional in all aspects and playable. I played it for a while.

That said, it isn't what I would consider to be fun. Then again, I hate scrabble and I think crossword puzzles are the eleventh level of hell. It would be more fun if there were longer words more often. Maybe if it was a vocabulary challenge. I don't like the "shuffle" feature, the way it simply randomizes the letters and takes your points.

To make it appeal more to me, you would need to find a way to put longer words into the mixture. Even if that means scanning the play area for any words and if you don't find any, automatically reshuffling. There doesn't seem to be any benefit in keeping the same letters each round. I ended up with a lot of "X"s and vowels just sitting around. I think the longest word I got was 4 letters.

And that's my feedback.

 

Thanks, this is great feedback. Fun is relative - I see your point. Bonsai Word wasn't really planned out ahead of time in terms of being fun and more of a time burner (to be honest, it started out as just a learning vessel for me). I am able to routinely find 5, 6 and sometimes 7 letters words.

I originally had 6 words fall into place that were 6 characters long but that was too simple so i removed them. Perhaps I stuff the board in the next update, or drop more "prime" letters that are used most often in words, and less X's....

The idea behind the shuffle board is when you play the android version and hit the facebook login button, you are playing against everybody for high score. When you shuffle, it removes 15 seconds.

Thank you for your time and thoughts. I'm just excited to start on y next game, which will definitely be something considered fun to gamers (and myself) who like action games and more interactive stuff.

 

That's the idea, anyway. On to the next one.

 

Thank you T_T I thought I got overlooked among the discussion, apart from one kind post. And I definitely need to change the genre description, probably into arcade puzzle (there'll be some other gameplay modes that will be more arcade style).

I also tried a couple of games here:
@Magnumstar Played 3 rounds, one on each theme. The gameplay seems solid, I'm not very good at word puzzles but I could see this game being fun for people who are really into word puzzles. If you keep the design as just letters on the background, be careful of the colors, the 3rd theme in particular can be a bit of a headache with the letter color on the background. And I realize this idea is overused, but I wouldn't mind having a hint system when the player sits there for like 20 seconds and hasn't accomplished anything (have I mentioned I suck at word puzzles?).

@_Gkxd Played up to a few levels after LShift was introduced. Basic gameplay is fun, but it doesn't feel super tight. Levels that you have to super jump using inversion don't always feel the best, I want to be able to super jump pretty easily but I'll sometimes fail to get enough momentum. I get that some stages are based around solving those jumps with spinning inverters, but I'd rather it be a fun jump, and then maybe have some hazards in the air or upon landing. LShift seemed like a neat idea, but I didn't really enjoy it, the timing of having to hold and release at perfect timing, along with everything else going on, didn't feel very comfortable. A minor idea for distinguishing platforms from the rest would be to have some specific texture on walls. On the positive side of things, I loved the music and sound. The art style worked really well, and I like the pattern that appears around the exit star. Controls felt responsive, the stages feel a little off, but the character did in fact react how he should.

 

@Magnumstar just letting you know I did my "review" and left a comment on the game's page at Kong.

 

Fantastic FF! This one ends just after christmas. And, then, we can a holiday break to get ready for the Jan 9th - UNITY JAM 2016!

Gigi

 

Super Leaf Rush(pre-alpha stage). My first attempt to make a full game. Any kind of feedback is appreciated.
http://gamejolt.com/games/super-leaf-rush/115514

 

One thing that i personally note at this stage is that the game seems really repetitive. Maybe i should add some more depth to the tap mechanics? Or maybe adding more variety of leafs with different properties? Or maybe start balancing the difficulty in order to make it harder in time?

 

And another FF comes to a close. Next one starts Jan 9 - It's the GAME JAM!
Gigi