[Feedback Friday #4] - November 7, 2014

Want design feedback for your new game? Then you've found the right thread! Post it here to find out what others think. Discuss to your heart's content, until next Friday, when we'll lock the old and start anew.

How To Get Folks To Checkout Your Game?

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

How To Give Good Feedback?

• Be Positive - Finding a few redeeming qualities in the worst of games, is in itself a game.
• Be Respectful - Whichever side you're on, play nice or don't play!
• Focus On The Design - Not the designer.
• Be Specific - "Your game sucks!" is for nubs.

Good luck!
Gigi

[PS - Feedback Friday #3 is here]

 

Hey guys!

I've been working on this project for a while now and i hoped people would give some feedback on it!
Any and All Feedback is welcomed!

X^3

Original Thread Link (More Info can be found on the page!)

 

Hey guys, new week, new prototype of Sara the Shieldmage!

Prototype

Controls:
A/D - Move
Space - Jump
LMB - Cast Spell(s)
Z - Interact
X - Melee Attack (incomplete, looks bad. Don't press this button, it will hurt your eyes.)

Objective:
Reach the treasure chest via the lower route and return to the entrance via the top route. Pretend that some obstacle prevents you from simply using the lower route (it actually will by my next prototype.)

Feedback:
The main question in this build, is: does the spell positioning interface make sense? I followed a suggestion from last week, which was to ditch the effect ghost in favor of an animated cursor.

Known Issues:
- Pressing Z on the last textbox from the treasure chest re-activates the chest. I'm figuring out why this is.
- The dual-spike gap on the lower path is really, really hard to get through. I'm rethinking it.
- I started on a melee attack animation. It's horrible, and incomplete. It doesn't actually do anything yet.

 

@Asvarduil that cursor ain't gonna cut it. I can't even see it most of the time and end up going on dead reckoning.

@Ra1den I like the art and music, but I don't know what the F*** I'm doing and I even hit the tutorial first. You have to tap on single squares (which I don't think was explained), but comboing requires you to keep pressing, so any lone square is a combo killer. Not too sure I really agree with the combo mechanic as well as the dual input method (of tap and drag separately).

 

That's good info. In what ways could it be improved to be better? Obviously visibility is a problem, based on this.

EDIT: Oh dear god I see what you mean, it's completely mangled...

EDIT2: I fixed it. Apparently, a Legacy uGUI texture won't behave itself in a webplayer anymore if it's on the cursor. I changed it to an advanced bitmap and got it to work. Please, try again.

 

Much better. Not sure if the arrow is the ideal icon, but it works for now. Also, did you change any of the timing, because the three block stacking part got harder to do?

 

I didn't. What do you think of the current difficulty of pulling off a 3-block stack?

 

Odd then, cause I flubbed it a few times when last week I hadn't.

 

It's doable, but there's a very small window for a 3-stack to happen. With two mana charges you can drop two blocks, get on top of them, then as soon as a mana charge regenerates you have some time to quickly drop a third block and use that. It's a small window - perhaps a full second - but it's there, I built the top escape route with that in mind. It sounds like I may need to do some tuning to make that window a bit wider, even with the 'safe' block before the great wall.

As to the cursor, in your opinion, what would make more sense than the arrow? Icons are hard, so I was actually expecting someone to comment on it.

 

It's a cool, iPad pattern game. I like the background music and the simple setup.

A few things confused me though. First, the title screen was really busy, I thought I had been dropped straight into the game. The various action buttons were swallowed up by the noise of everything else on screen. I think a way to get around this is to have a simple title and the action buttons, get rid of everything else.

I did actually read parts of the tutorial - not all of it was very eye-grabbing. Consider distilling the tutorial down to the basics: drag the mouse to chain adjacent squares, tap singles, and triple-tap large blocks. I discovered the hard way about how to handle the singles in-game, it wasn't obvious.

There were some arrows that appeared on-screen and it seemed like when I clicked certain places, the screen orientation changed randomly. I don't know what caused that, but it was disorienting. Warn the player of this somehow, this made the game difficult, not challenging (in other words, unfair instead of, "oh this is something I have to get good at.")

The 'boss' - the rotating squares - was unintuitive as well, the way to make the boss rotate, or to even defeat the boss blocks, was unclear. Consider revising that or providing an in-situ tip to help the player understand what you're asking of them.

TL;DR - Good concept, now help your players understand what's going on in-game!

 

Pretty cool.

First off, not bad presentation. I do wish that the blocks exploded when I swiped all of them in a collection/shape though. That would be interesting. Little *pow* and then they throw particles out. I really, really hate the single blocks. Why can I swipe everything else but I have to tap them? The big blocks are the worst, because I'm sitting here tapping it several times and nothing satisfying happens at all. It just dies after a while. I tried swiping back and forth through them but that didn't do anything. It should, that is how I would expect to kill the big blocks.

Can't the blocks have random faces on them? Like mean little alien faces? Why am I killing them anyway. Who do I think I am, God?

It also feels like there's no point to killing the blocks. I would like some power-ups. A smart bomb and a slow down time comes to mind, because this is basically the same mechanics as fruit ninja.

So, to review... everything should be swipe to kill, powerups, exploding blocks would be neat.

 

@Ra1den, X^3 is a great-looking game. To me, the colors and shapes are just right, and the music fits perfectly. I like that the gameplay is simple but challenging, and that the graphics fit the design just right. I like the nice, simple blocks. I'll echo most of the suggestions that others have already written:

• Simplify the main menu screen.
• Ease the player into the mechanics better. Check out how Osmos does this in the first couple levels. It doesn't require any text; just a little nudge or visual prompt here or there.
• Like @Misterselmo writes, more visual (and maybe audio?) feedback when you destroy blocks.
• Make it a little more obvious for first-time players how to destroy single blocks (and big blocks for that matter). It's frustrating to have an idea of what you want to do (destroy the block) but to have no feedback from the game on how to go about doing it. It's kind of like a discussion we had in another Game Design thread regarding old-school text games. They were frustrating because you knew what you wanted to do, but the parser didn't give you any feedback on how to execute it. In fact, maybe there's a way to use the same "verb" (action) for single blocks and strings of blocks.
• Maybe it would be going overboard, but a little more screen shake or something when changing direction or finishing levels would be a nice little feedback reward for the player.

@Asvarduil, a lot of nice improvements! The short platform in the middle of the long spike pit makes for a nice break and gives some feedback that you're on the right path. I also like the feedback of the down arrows where you cast the spell. I'm still not sure about the spell icon. Can you move it to the upper right to make it more apparent that it's a HUD element and not something in the game? And perhaps this is a premature suggestion, but if you could add very short idle-to-run and run-to-idle animation transitions, it could add a lot of character to the protagonist.

 

Thanks! I'm still deciding a few things with the action GUI. One of the things I'm adding is a melee attack for Sara (she conjures a shield of magical force that knocks enemies back and deals slight damage), and I want to create a UI doodad for that as well. Both of those are going to go to the top-right corner of the screen, but I have some slight adjustments I need to make to my GUI setup to allow for that.

How best to use spikes in my levels is also slowly becoming clearer to me. I need to even out how jumps function (make it a little more linear, and less parabolic), but the 'maw' on the lower path is probably going to not be a maw by this time next week; the point is to say to the player, 'Hey, I'm going to put spikes on raised platforms!', which I then deliver upon on the upper path.

As far as the run/idle state transitions, I can't promise much, but I'll see what I can do.

 

Can you make the icon smaller then, and with a look that's more consistent with the health (heart) doodads in size, color, and style? Just something to really make it clear that it's a HUD element like the health doodads.

I figured you'd want to save little things like this for late-stage polish, but I thought I'd jump the gun and mention it anyway.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Just to clear up, as you can see this game still needs a lot of tweaking... Generally everyone who has played it has said the same thing, that they aren't 100% sure on what they are doing/what they are supposed to do and i am working on it!

Originally i didn't want a traditional boring main menu and text to explain to people what to do, so i am experimenting
at the moment and hopefully i will reach something that works,you guys did help me straighten out what is working and
what isn't....Once again thanks!

@Asvarduil Interesting mechanic, Are you planning on including more spells? I don't know but the thought of summoning doors,traps and portals sounded cool to me... Also the mana indicator was "ahhmm" for me (maybe just me?) i kinda thought it was off... The health indicator was great though!

@RockoDyne I'm working on a simple tutorial level with visual cues/text which should help!

@Misterselmo Funny enough i was going to include power ups initially, but then on later difficulties it got too
unmanageable + It felt like i had diverted away from what the game's central mechanic was which is mainly Click or Click/hold and drag, I might add them later on, on a another game mode (Yes i am planning other game modes) but for now i'm going with a simple set-up first.... Don't worry there will be more pow pow effects though

I'm not a fan of aliens >.> lol

@TonyLi Thanks for the structured critique....I have taken note of all of these things and will update it soon!
More visuals are coming... Sound has been a tricky field though, I have gone through a lot of sounds in the last week or so but none of them quite fit in the game or sound "right"... The search will continue and if i don't find the appropriate sounds then i will just have to make them!

 

All the more reason to kill as many as you can a.s.a.p.

 

At first (as the others said), I was like "what the hell is going on?" so I started clicking things and eventually ended up in the game. Continued to click and things blew up. Then I thought maybe I do not need to actually click but just hold down the mouse button and swipe. Tried it and that worked. Made it better. Less clicking. I like the look of the game very much. Seems kind of retro-like and all of the psychedelic colors and particle effects were cool. I made it to some point where there was only a large square and a smaller square. I was able to rotate but not blow them up. Then it went on to another screen I think things were moving horizontally again then.

If I knew what exactly I was doing (I tried connecting groups to other groups and am not sure if it actually worked or not) it would help a lot but seems like it has potential for sure.

 

Yep.

 

This is much better! I made it to the chest. Got the mana crystal. Was very happy to see how that improved spell casting. Made the journey to the exit much more enjoyable. I never reached the exit but that is because I was playing around with how far I could jump, seeing if I could jump and cast blocks in air and travel across. Ended up hitting a spike and that was the end. It's coming along very well! =)

 

Yes, there will certainly be more spells! There's all sorts of things that a mage centered around barriers can do. The character you played as will tend to be more defensive, though; there is going to be a second character who comes into play midway through the game also.

As for the Mana system, what did you see was off, exactly? The Mana UI has sort of been a rather uncertain part of my prototype so far, so I'm looking to improve it any way I can.

 

I guess I will throw my game out here again even though I am still waiting on the new snake and spider graphics.

I made several improvements based on the feedback last week.

First, all of the things I mentioned changing the first time around are still there.
I also tweaked jumping a bit more to try to make a tiny bit easier (again).

I finished the snakes implementation as far as their behavior is concerned. They will look better than they do now but their behavior / AI will be as it is in this demo. More challenges await with the spider and bat.

I updated the graphics of the platforms and treasures using some asset packs I bought on the Asset Store. I really wish people would make more 2D assets! Would have been great to find a nice 2D animated snake, bat and spider moving, attacking, stunned, death and so forth animations that I could have simply bought and plugged in but that is another story.

I also swapped in the real player graphics.

Let's see... what else? Oh, I went ahead and added Gigi's recommendation to be able to resume a paused game not only by pressing P but also by pressing either Jump or Attack. I worked on some other stuff but it is not actually in-game yet.

I will update the input next time around so the Xbox controller also works.



Collision detection for the snake's venom and egg bomb explosions are not implemented yet. But you can play like they are to get a feel for how much they will effect the game difficulty.

Your Goal:
Collect all of the treasures to make the key appear
Collect the key to open the door
Exit the door to clear the level (this is not implemented yet)


Control for PS3 Game-Pad:
The stock controllers do not work but a generic PS3 / PC controller plugged into the USB port does.
D-pad left and right to move
Triangle or X to Jump. Hold to jump a little higher. Press D-pad first then press X to jump further horizontally.
Square or Circle to Throw stones
P to Pause / Resume the game.

or

Keyboard Control Scheme #1
Left and Right Arrow keys to move.
X to Jump. Hold to jump a little higher. Press Left or Right first then press X to jump further horizontally.
C to Throw stones.
P to Pause / Resume the game.

Keyboard Control Scheme #2
A and D to move
Space to Jump. Hold to jump a little higher. Press A or D first then press Space to jump further horizontally.
F to Throw stones.
P to Pause / Resume the game.

Of course, you can also mix and match between the two keyboard control schemes using A and D to move, X to jump and C to attack, for exampel.


The game starts out paused so... PRESS P (or Jump or Attack) TO START PLAYING!

***** You can play-test the game here *****

 

@Ra1den - Congratulations on your project. It has a cool look and good music. The idea is original and kind of neat. Below are a few design ideas that might help.

• Consider removing MOST OF THE BUTTONS on the main menu. There are ~20 buttons, most of which are random colored squares. I was surprised that it started the game.
• Consider disabling main menu buttons until later - When the game opens, I want a single PLAY button, or maybe a PLAY or TUTORIAL button, though it's strong if the tutorial is Woven cleverly into the game.
• The click-drag operation could be stronger without the click. Just dragging the mouse around would be kind of fun, like wielding a light-saber or space laser pointer. Or maybe just some refinement. It felt a bit clunky.
• Once I figured out it was click and drag, the game became REALLY easy. And the levels progressed VERY slowly, until I eventually just got bored - and it took almost a minute of me doing nothing to end.
• The bar at the bottom looks like the paddle from Break-Out. I kept trying to use my keyboard to move it and catch the falling blocks. Consider going for a different look, and also hiding it until you start taking damage. Consider also having missed blocks do a LOT of damage and having the health bar regenerate slowly over time.
• Consider having the game start with a block in the center ('CLICK ME'), and then two, 'CLICK AND DRAG', and so on, with them moving very slowly, or not at all.
• Left-to-right and right-to-left were not as fun - maybe there's too much time to decide. I liked it up/down better.
• Given the futuristic look, you may consider adding a skybox - there are several free ones in the asset store with pictures of space and planets.

Good luck,
Gigi

PS - I hear mention of bosses and other things, and I assume I missed those, because I started the game by randomly clicking one of the boxes on the main screen.

 

@Ra1den, I just wanted to add that I kind of liked the strange main menu. I fall into the "less is more" camp when it comes to tutorials and introductions. I enjoy playing around with things to figure out what they do, so long as they always give feedback and aren't too frustrating to navigate. The concept of this main menu appeals to me, but it was just a little too hard to figure out how to start. Maybe if one of the blocks were pulsing and flashing, I would have been tempted to click on it before any of the others, and that would have taught me that clicking on these blocks start levels.

 

You still need a splash screen with some friendly icons to say "Hi. This is my game. This is a game where you x. Swipe the blocks to blah blah blah. If you see this, do this.... but watch out for XYZ. Enjoy"

 

No key? Probably explains why I couldn't exit the level!

I like the new graphics, particularly for the player and his jump animation. Much improved! I liked the new audio (at least it seemed new to me). Given how much it's improving, you may also enjoy these thoughts:

• Can you remove the 'jump bonus from moving'? I get why it's there, and I just don't like it. It takes away from the spontaneity of me playing, turning in air, and jumping. This game screams to be played fast and the move-jump-boost mechanic takes away a lot of the fun.
• Levels - If/when you add changing levels, consider making the first level much simpler, and build up to something this complex. As a first level, it's overbearing.
• Snakes - I want to kill them. Shooting them with a rock has almost no feedback and was completely unsatisfying. They bump and bump and bump - allow the player the satisfaction of killing 'em. This also adds a fun design element for you where snakes can appear (ex fall from the top or enter from a spawner), and killing them is fine, cause they'll be more.
• Rocks - Instead of having N rocks that you throw and retrieve, consider a simple mechanic where you have a 'Throw/Energy Bar'. Here's a simple design for that. Each rock could use 35% energy, and the energy recharges at 30% / second. So, you could reasonably throw 3 rocks in short succession, and then you'd have to wait 3-4 seconds to do the burst again. Or, you could throw one, pause, another, for a pretty long time. This is a common design that is quite flexible. It allows power-ups (ex 10s ability where shots take no energy), and upgrades (50% more energy). It also creates a fun meta-timing-mechanic for the player, and simplifies your design (no longer have to track down rocks or keep a counter ... 50 rocks is kinda weird right!?).
• You may enjoy including some free music from danosongs.com or incompetech.com [quick implementation note - create an extra audio source, 'AudioSourceMusic', hold a reference to the music as an AudioClip, and then assign the clip on the audio source in code, and call Play().]].

Good luck,
Gigi

 

Thanks for the feedback. I am at work now but will have a more thorough read later. This level is just a testbed of all things. There will be real levels starting simple and getting more involved. The rocks will be collected. Throw they hit (or miss) and end up back on ground someplace where they can be collected. On killing the enemies... I can say the player will have a whip. Needs to find it first.

 

Have you watched people play this @Asvarduil? If you were standing behind me, watching me play just now, you'd have all the feedback you need as you watched me struggle with the basics. I like the graphics and the concept and even the subtle music. What I'm struggling with is the game concept in general.

My take away - I'm a weak mage who creates blocks that last for ~5 seconds. My job is to click-awkwardly to create a block and jump on it REALLY fast before it disappears. Here are some thoughts:

• Rethink the whole left-click spell interface. It's confusing and awkward. Keep simplifying until maybe, it's just gone all together.
• If there's no click-to-spell interface, then she clicks to spawn a block, and it sort of shoots a short distance in the direction she's facing, and slides a bit. She can then blast it with her spells, or she can push it around until it falls. Maybe then, it despawns after ~10 seconds, and that might could work.
• The look and feel makes me want to shoot glowing blue-fireballs! Pew, pew, pew ... Can't explain why it feels that way.

Gigi

 

Is this fixed in stone (see what I did there?)? Chasing down rock/ammo sounds boring to the extreme. You seem to like it, so I'll say no more.

Gigi

 

I think if the game focuses on precise stone throwing and knocking out the little bastard snakes, and sneaking by them it can keep its pace nice and easy.

If it goes fast paced, that will need to change.

It's a pivotal design decision, strategy or action?

 

I'm getting mixed signals here. You like, but can't figure out the concept? You were struggling with basics?

I feel this is the clearest feedback you've given me in your whole post. I need to give the player more time so that platforming over a Summoned Block isn't as frantic. Noted, and working on it.

Why does clicking and making a spell appear come off as complex? It's a single button and choosing where to put the spell's effect. I'm afraid I don't understand your mindset on that remark. It's different enough from A) what I've experienced, and B) what other remote players have given me feedback on, that I'm sure there's details that are worth hearing. And, if the click interface genuinely is confusing, I'd love to hear what alternatives I should pursue.

The reason I don't like this alternative is that you give up control. Summon Block isn't only for crossing spike pits, it's also for setting off distant buttons, or bottlenecking enemies. Sara's whole theme, is a mage whose power is centered around shielding herself, and others, but using those shields in really creative ways. She has some offensive abilities, but that's not really her ethics; she's a protector first, not some pissed off old man wizard who barfs lasers and farts fireballs. I realize that I'm not writing a standard, cliche mage; she'd technically be closer to a priest in a D&D system. But...well, let's get into that.

If the message you're trying to send is that you're feeling the game is light on offensive capability, this build is. I've been building the platforming part of the game, primarily. I feel like the controls and physics are in serviceable shape, so I've literally just started on further fleshing out my concepts on enemies and combat.

My vision to Sara from a combat perspective, is that she's a less-than-squishy mage who strategically sets up chokepoints with Summon Block, or remotely activates traps, while using the Luminous Shield (her melee attack) to repel and damage enemies who get too close. As the game goes on her moveset will grow more aggressive (those blocks? They shatter!), but I want to avoid the cliche of a wizard who farts fireballs and barfs lasers; I feel it's overdone, and it doesn't fit my philosophical concept of the game.

If you want to see what I'm going for in terms of play style, funny enough, there is a video...

Yes, I'm aware that's not my game, but Lana is the inspiration for Sara mechanically. The number and placement of the 'A's in the name is a coincidence; Sara as a character is a way older idea that I've brought from an older, abandoned work.

But, the fact that I've typed so much leads to one inescapable fact: this basic prototype for the platforming is no longer sufficient to show off what I want to do with my game. The fact that you misunderstood it so much, that you fell back to grasping at the cliche wizard in an attempt to find something to latch onto in particular is in one sense a good sign: this prototype's lifetime is at an end, it's done its job of allowing me to work on the basics like treasure chests, physics, and a basic utility spell. The bad news is, the work I need to do just grew tenfold - I need to take all this stuff I just typed for you and distill it into an experience.

If in two more months, you're still falling back to wanting a standard wizard, that means I've failed and need to abandon the game. My job is to make sure that this non-traditional mage is compelling and evocative. What's more, there's the interplay between her, and Davis, a Knight of the Crimson Blade.

 

*gets feedback*
*argues with player*

</typical game designer>

 

I think I put the game out for feedback too early. Not enough of the game mechanics are implemented yet for people to understand the game. The idea is you are not there armed for battle. You can find rocks to throw to temporarily stun an enemy. You can find a whip at some point too. But... the idea is snakes are spitting out venom and laying exploding eggs. Weird snakes I know. So if you are able to stun a snake at the right time it may just blow itself up. Or maybe a spider will catch a snake, etc. That's why I am focusing on this one level. This level maps out the greatest distances apart platforms can be. And it just evolves as stuff is implemented. Once all enemies and mechanics are in it will be easy to create the different levels. First level small and simplistic. Growing in difficulty until you reach the level in the demo or beyond. Next time I throw it out here it will have the mechanics implemented more fully so the game concept can be done justice.

 

I think we're thinking - and, doing - alike.

Instead of trying to tackle a huge overarching vision all at once, we're both starting with little things, and trying to get stuff to just work. The problem we're both facing, is that A) we have to iterate through failing approaches, and B) since our scope is necessarily limited, the impression that people get is limited, and perhaps this leads to us getting limited feedback based on an incomplete information set. It's still valuable - there's all sorts of good messages we're both getting, that are helping us build and design a better game - but there's certainly an opportunity for process improvement wrapped in this somewhere.

I have to admit, Gigi's feedback on my prototype stung a little - there's nothing quite like someone in essence saying "your idea as presented is stupid, confusing, and boring" to wake you up a bit. It seems like you felt a similar sting in the feedback of your prototype, too. But even that essence of 'Stupid, Confusing, Boring' is valuable, in that it's a red flag that we've hit the boundaries of the 'little' things - to get Gigi and others to have fun, we've got work to do.

And, for the trolls in the audience, I should note that asking questions and explaining my 'whys and hows' is not arguing. I'm not saying he's wrong in his feedback, in fact he's brought up valid, actionable points. If that's arguing, I'm going to assume that when prompted what color the sky is, your answer will be, 'chartreuse polka dots on an orange field'.

 

Oh yeah I consider all feedback. Nothing may come out of it but I definitely consider it all.

 

Feedback is hard. I've been left in near tears before. Certainly, it's taken the wind out of my sails, and knocked me on my behind for days, sometimes weeks!

Here's your challenge: EVERY BIT SHOULD BE FUN! It doesn't become fun once the pieces come together - it's fun at EVERY step of the way and just gets MORE fun. Minecraft was fun the second you could destroy a block. Mario was fun the second you had that bouncy jump - even on a flat surface, with no mobs. Tiny Wings was fun the second you could swoop INTO a curve. If an element of your game is frustrating, then rework until it is, or scrap it and find something else. Blizzard spent years on Titan and still announced, 'we couldn't find the fun' - a few hours/days/weeks spent on rocks or blocks is nothing.

@Asvarduil - That video looks hella fun. In it, the mage is casting spells hyper-fast at TONS of monsters. Fast, rapid, action. To get closer to that, you may consider stepping back and seeing how you can drastically SIMPLIFY! Reverse engineer that video and it's clear the player wouldn't click-click-click to create blocks exactly in the right place, one at a time. They would press once and BAM! A wall of ice blocks would appears. Then, she'd jump up and BAM they'd explode. Simpler, faster, more generous. Fun, fast. Simplify.

@GarBenjamin It's too early? Game development is iteration and your game is plenty playable. If you listen, your players are telling you EXACTLY what you need to hear. Keep the good ideas and chuck the ones that aren't working. Iterate as fast as you can until you find the fun.

Gigi

 

I appreciate the testing feedback. As @Asvarduil mentioned, if the main feedback is talking about fast action, shooting or otherwise killing and so on then the current state of the games must be way too early for play testing. When playing Sara the Shieldmage I can tell the game is more focused on being a puzzle platformer than a run n gun hardcore fast action game. Although there is room for improvement in implementation I don't think completely changing the game genre or core game play is the key.

Likewise, if all people get from playing my platform game is the dude should have a gun killing respawning enemies that is also missing the point. I actually set out intentionally to not do that. Making a simple hop around and shoot the baddies would be a lot simpler on me. As it is I need to pay more attention to everything to try to keep it interesting despite not being about just running around shooting everything. In the past every game I made was about shooting and killing. I wanted to try something different this time. With more emphasis on exploration, adventure and the player having to use a bit more thought and timing to deal with the enemies instead of simply throw a rock or pull out a gun bam they are dead.

I do get the game may not be everyone's "cup of tea" as they say and that is fine. The people who will like it are people who enjoyed things like the Genesis Indy Jones games, Solomons Key and so forth. Not exactly like them but with more action. No or very little direct killing is the main comparison for SK. I still think once the game development has progressed further the experience will be more fun for people who like this kind of game. If jumping around, knocking out enemies, sneaking past them collecting treasures is not enjoyable already that I think is more that the game does not match the player's game style preferences. Not every game is a run n gun focused on shooting and fast action. I do like those games but, like I said, my goal is to make something different.

 

The first few seconds of a Mario game, you are jumping, hopping and leaping around, maybe bouncing on a few mobs. Nintendo knows that the essence of a game can be found in the first few seconds of play. Right now, the first few seconds of this game FEEL like a jump over snakes, throw rocks at them, get the gems & key, and race to the door kind of game. It looks like that, plays like that, and sounds like that. .

Rather than missing features, the game, as built, is either completely failing in its goal, or it is evolving toward something else. In which case, CONGRATULATIONS on progress! Great ideas rarely pop into our heads fully formed - they evolve slowly, over time.

Gigi

 

That hits the nail on the head. It is a game that started with the goal of platform puzzle adventure with lighter puzzles and more action. I've focused more on the action mechanics because I prefer those at least for the most part. I think some light puzzle mechanics and adventure are cool though. It is just none of those are in yet. So we end up with a game that appears to be a very tame action platformer with an underpowered hero.

If the puzzle and adventure / exploration aspects were implemented I think the first impression and feel would change. It is hard to say because I am trying to make a sort of hybrid game not a true puzzle platrormer or a true kill the baddies arcade platformer. I may very well fail to bring the two together but I think it is possible.

I figure there have to be some people out there like me who would like a little more depth to their mindless arcade action platformer games and a little more arcade action to their puzzle platformer games. I think it will succeed to blend the two but no puzzle aspects are in yet. Nor adventure other than exploring the small level. Thanks for the feedback.

 

There are great points in this, but I also feel it's necessary to think about the context of the video too.

Hyrule Warriors, the game Lana in the video is in, is a -Warriors game, which is about farming mooks while playing in essence a strategy game, until a boss fight happens. Put another way, the immediate priority in the gameplay of Hyrule Warriors is fighting enough mooks to power special attacks, which help you either achieve goals in the overarching strategy game, or defeat a boss.

The way I explain my concept for Sara the Shieldmage to people who want to know, is the polar opposite (not that you can get that from my prototype, which means my prototype is no longer sufficient to communicate my goals, as noted before.) The player is negotiating platforming and puzzles, in search of necessary macguffins or powerups, but is beset by monsters that they have to defeat to keep going. So, more like a core Zelda title instead of the -Warriors game talked about above. I'd go further and say it's a side-scrolling Zelda, but not in the same way as Zelda 2.

The way I reason it, there are two ways to interpret this vision:

Option A: "OMG Asvarduil, what you really want to do is make awesome combat, and relegate the puzzles and platforming to the 'wider focus' of the game!" This focus is much like that given to Hyrule Warriors. This is how I'm reading your feedback, and it's valid, and has a pretty huge precedent in gaming. The implications in terms of the overarching design is that both players have an aggressively-focused moveset, with only limited utility spells to negotiate puzzles when they come up. TL;DR - In option A, the core attraction is the combat.

Options B: "OMG Asvarduil, what you really want to do is make awesome levels full of traps and hazards, with some restrictions that you can get past if you have the correct ability. However, since you have some combat, it'd be a great idea to use monsters whose purpose is to make it easier to be defeated by the level hazards." This is also a setup that is common in gaming, as seen in I Want To Be The Guy, Super Mario Bros., Mega Man, The Legend of Zelda, and many others. The implications for this philosophy, is that the player character repertoires focus on ways to get around level hazards. Of course, these repertoires also have combat uses.

Back to the video. Making Sara just like Lana isn't going to happen, it's just not my game's setup. If I was doing a -Warriors-styled game...then, yes, not a bad idea at all. If I was doing a more combat-heavy title, like a side-scrolling beat-'em-up, or even something like my last project, a side-scrolling swordfighter, then still a great idea. Those games lend themselves naturally to characters with an aggressive kit. Puzzle-solving and platforming are the primary foci of Sara the Shieldmage, though. Thus, my game needs to enable players to solve puzzles first.

That said, having slept on your feedback, I think you're right that the game needs more action; tuning the Summoned Block to make platforming more frantic was the wrong way to go about communicating urgency, because it's fake difficulty, not legitimate challenge.

One idea I'm kicking around right now, is double-tapping A/D to cause a dash. If Sara dashes into a Summoned Block, it shatters into a bunch of shards that really hurt stuff (sort of like when Lana backflips off of the phantom books, but without zapping the thing with lightning.) Other spell effects would have different things happen, with different triggers, but right now, there's nothing to show for it, which means it needs to get in my prototype. That way, you can have another crack at it, and see if that helps you enjoy playing as this non-traditional spellcaster.

 

The big problem there is that exploration is a function of level design, which doesn't translate at all to the arena level you've been using. If you are really worried about it sliding into an action platformer, you're going to need to start showcasing exploration. Toss out that level and work on one that should actually be representative for the kind of action that is meant to take place.

 

I agree with you and it all goes back again to it being too early on. Lol. I am using this stage to get all of the core play mechanics down, enemies etc. Plus I also wanted to originally do it all on a single screen game. Lol.

 

I wouldn't say it's too early, but you should have a level that actually will look like a finished level (even though you'll probably toss it anyway because you should hopefully be better at level design by then). You shouldn't be able to get everywhere, because it needs ladders or vine swings or whatever traversal bits and bobs are in the works. It should be a level that screams "you still got a ton more S*** to add." Just something that doesn't require the maximum jump height for every jump.

 

I don't get why some of you are so opposed to us saying it was too early for a play-test release? lol If we haven't implemented enough elements to fill in the missing pieces of the game play experience I think the best way to describe it is our releases were "too early" to illustrate the actual games we are building. We could simply say they were incomplete (that I think is obvious) but being incomplete is a function of progress = time which goes back to being too early in the development process. What we mean by "too early" is if we had waited 4 to 6 weeks and then released the games for play testing they would be in a much more complete state giving a much better representation of the overall game.

 

Rarely is it ever too early for play testing. Plus it's too easy to say it's too early until it's basically finished, at which point it's too late to actually change anything.

 

You just replaced my current sig quote. That's awesome in both the mind-bendy way and the true way.

 

Except as catchy as it may sound it does not change the fact that if not enough of the game is finished for people to understand then it is too early. The whole reason I threw the game out was because I wanted feedback early on to change things when it was easier. However, the feedback continually illustrated a lack of understanding of what the game was even about, what kind of game it was to be, etc. And that was nobody's fault but my own for putting the game out too early. Had I waited til other elements were implemented and obvious in the game people could have understood.

 

I don't know I have all sorts of stuff on my computer that I could put up here, playable demonstrations of physics and ray casting all sorts of weird stuff I could show you. It all goes back to what is a game? I will call everything I've seen so far on feedback Friday nothing more than a proof of concept, basically a demonstration that some of the systems are in place and they work. The game, like the devil, is in the details. There's no way you can say that something is or isn't fun until there's some sort of a goal. I mean I made this thing where a blue rectangle goes around and you can jump kick and punch red rectangles. They bounce around and it's kind of humorous but its not a game. I have a feeling that using screen point to world point and instantiate I could build a proof of concept close to what Asvarduil has in several hours, minus the graphics and sfx.

I agree on both cases that they're still working through the implementation details and it's not fair to judge them as a game just yet.

I mean you guys are the one that told me that there's more than one kind of fun... So let's give each other some breathing room. And I know nobody wants to be called out on "where is your game"... I'm not ready for that

 

I'm with Rocko. May I share a story?

In a design meeting two weeks ago, one of my designers said, 'I'm going to come out and say what everyone's thinking .... Our game is boring!" ... There was a long silence. And then, everyone agreed. Then, people began offering suggestions that went something like this: "we should record more voices" ... "we should add more animations" ... "we need some mini-games" ... "we need to finish the UI". These nice ideas missed the fundamental truth that the game was boring.

The DESIGN was flawed! We didn't argue about how we had tested too early. We set about redesigning the primary game mechanic. The game was barely playable (i.e. too early!) and yet, the feedback was overwhelmingly negative. We changed the design, and as a result, the game is 10x better! Your mileage may vary.

Gigi.

 

Well, was your game boring?

How many developers? How many weeks? I don't know. It's a bit different than one person working in their spare time. I'll just stop there.

 

I think there is just a difference in views and that is okay. I understand you can add one mechanic that is very fun even in a nearly barren game. Say bouncing around "popping" enemies for example. That's fine and dandy. But you (or at least I) do not want that mechanic in every game. Many people seem to like it but I have never been a fan of bouncing on enemies and popping them like bubbles. Personally, I'd rather stun them and move past or stun them at the right time so they kill themselves (or each other). Push a boulder on their heads. Dig a hole and trap them. Right now all I have implemented is the foundation. Movement. Collect treasures. Get Key. And one way to deal with the enemies. Stun.

I think game devs see things differently. Because I often run my work past the boys and their friends and they tell me what they think even if the feedback is "it sucks!" Their initial feedback was the jumping control sucked but the game looked fun. I received same feedback regarding jumping here. Tweaked it several times. When they tested this last weekend their feedback was "it's fun! It's gonna be tougher once the bombs and venom are working". So all that to say some people have found the fun already. Fun is not something that applies to everyone equally. I think working out pushing to the point of collapsing is fun. A lot of people don't. A lot of people think FPS running around shooting enemy soldiers is fun but I don't. Many people loved Halo. I hated it. Anyway I appreciate the different views and when I hear something specific and actionable such as jumping issues I definitely work on it.