[Feedback Friday #40] - Apr 1, 2016 [April fools for the win!]

Feedback Friday #40 is CLOSED. Next FF opens April 29th!

Want design feedback for your new game? Then you've found the right thread! Post here to get precious player feedback. Discuss until we lock the thread to start the two week break.

How To Ask For Feedback?

• Show - Pics, videos, or best of all, a playable game!
• Be Concise - Who's got time for Wall 'O Text? Less is more

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 #39 is here]

 

Ok, here goes my first attempt at getting some feedback on my game. Please go easy on me if I make any mistakes.

Xcavate is a board puzzle game which me and my friend are working on. We hit on this idea when I was sketching out various game ideas and testing it out with family and friends.

The Game Mechanic is a mish-mash between minesweeper and chess. You go on a treasure hunt in each level, and excavate tiles on the board to reveal chess pieces that give you clues on where the treasure is.

The game is intended for puzzle & board game geeks of all sizes and ages.

If you have an android phone, you can download the build here

Feedback We're looking for

Is the game easy to understand and play
Is it comfortable and fast enough on your device
Is the level progress and ratings balanced? Are they too hard/impossible or too simple, or is there anything else wrong with them.
Is there anything that annoys you while playing the game.
How can we make the game more fun and challenging, what handicaps or bonuses could we add etc.

How to send us feedback

Shake the phone and you'll get a feedback form while playing the game, or drop a comment for discussion here.

There's a good 27 levels in the game already, so I hope you guys enjoy playing the game!

 

I don't have any android devices, any chance you could do a web build on something like gamejolt (you can keep it private by not publishing it to the world) & posting the link back here, noting that it won't run on chrome?

 

Ugh...I can't export to web because I use local file access and that generates compiler errors with the web player build.

Anything else I can do? I can get a Mac build, and maybe a Windows build, but not sure how to send it across. I just signed up at GameJolt, but don't see the upload game option anywhere.

 

Go to your profile page I think, there should be the option. You have to go through a number of steps to do it like giving it a description, rating/classification etc

 

Well, I managed to go until the Builds & Files page, when i create a release, and try to click on it, i get an Internal Server Error.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get their support team to talk to us, will let you know.

 

Hey guys, so I actually posted a link to my latest build in a thread in general discussion and realized that I probably should be posting one here as well. I actually wanted to post a build for the last two threads but I missed each of them! So here it is...

Here's a link to my Windwos build last night:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rii7puhijav1sel/BSG_4_7.zip?dl=0

Mac build:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/huhyqqgo3lzzbp6/bsg_4_7_mac.zip?dl=0

Here's a little video:

You can check out some other videos here to get a general idea of the game:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcYos-qQ5PluVVYEfLGyhlw

It's a turn based RPG that focuses on team building and progression like an XCOM, Darkest Dungeon or a more direct influence City of Mordheim.

The game is still pre-alpha, and I've just worked on the 'tactical layer'. So there's a whole section with your base and stuff that isn't done yet. This is really just a little prototype.

Any feedback is more than welcome!

 

@frosted looking very cool, wish I could play the game, I'm on a Mac so hard luck on that front for me.

@tedthebug finally got the Gamejolt thing going - http://gamejolt.com/dashboard/games/139942 is the link to the game.

 

Just added a link to a mac build - hopefully it'll work!

 

@frosted - The tactical layer works really well! I had fun fighting my way through the village. I also like how the "objective in sight" indicator showed where Bob was. I also like the pacing of the instructions.

I don't know if it was intentional for my crew to look like slack-jawed thugs, but I suspect if you unassign the rig's Jaw Bone they'll close their mouths and look a little meaner.

 

This might be the best approach, although I'd kind of like to be able to open their mouths when they're attacking.

What I'd really like to do is mass edit all the animations to a closed jaw position, I've tried a bunch of ways to do this but haven't had any luck yet.

The animation defaulting to jaw open is mind blowingly annoying.

Glad you thought it was fun!

 

Not just fun; the combat feels very polished, too. Since it's a pre-alpha, I was prepared to fight with the interface, but it's very fluid and intuitive.

 

Thanks.

Still needs a lot of work - the targeting is a mess and stuff. But appreciate it!

I've already put a pretty immense amount of effort into the combat - the animating, responses, timing, effects, etc. Glad you think it's paying off!

 

OK, here is something I banged out over the last couple of days. It's a roguelike game with an educational twist (and originally discussed in this thread). The early, early, pre-alpha WebPlayer prototype is here: http://stroutandsons.com/halfbaked/KanaAdventure/

​

This is intended to be a mobile game, so it's designed accordingly: tap (or click, in this case) to move, and all buttons are down on the bottom where your thumbs would be.

It's a turn-based roguelike, but if you tap more than 1 cell away, you will queue up multiple movement commands. Also, when monsters are moving too, they can do this at the same time as you, which makes it feel simultaneous (even though it's really not).

Oh, and don't worry — there is literally only one character being tested at this point. It's カ, pronounced "ka".

Feedback & suggestions are welcome.

 

@frosted, I gave your game a try. It runs well on my Mac, and has a good atmosphere. The initial walk is quite long, though; I nearly gave up, concluding that there was nothing to see, but then I decided to try walking off a cliff, which brought me to a tree, and shortly after I stumbled upon a peasant.

Combat with the peasant didn't go very well; it appears to use up all my AP (action points?) just to creep towards the peasant each turn, leaving nothing left over to attack him. After a few turns of that, I gave up and let him go.

But he at least led me (at last!) to the village, or the outskirts thereof (I don't think I ever did make it into the village proper). There I had combat with a couple of swordsmen, and that went much better. Unlike Tony, I did struggle with the interface a bit, but managed to figure it out — you've done a good job of providing help and prompts when they're needed.

 

Just curious - did you figure out that shift was run? I have the tutorial prompts timed so that someone running will hit the end of the path and the peasant right after the last tutorial message prompt is up.

It seems like 2/3 of the players jump off the cliff in the beginning which blows my mind.

I'm gonna give your game a spin after dinner!

 

No, I didn't. I'd swear I tried mashing various modifier keys, but couldn't find any way to run. (I really wanted to run, too... the slow walking around was painful.)

Are you checking for both Left and Right shift?

EDIT: Have you considered making run the default mode, and you have to hold Shift to walk?

Well, I was getting pretty desperate by that point.

Thanks! Don't expect it to take you more than a couple minutes. After you've killed a couple of orcs, there's nothing more to do... you can't yet pick up items, or do anything else. (Though you can walk through walls, so I guess that's something...)

 

Only left shift - did you use right shift?

Also, the second tutorial message says "to run hold shift" - did you not see the message or were the tutorials not starting for some reason? I'm thinking about switching these popups to in world text or something.

 

I wasn't going to go into environment design since I assumed you were looking for feedback on the tactical combat, but I did think to myself that the cliff could use some bushes on the edge as a psychological barrier, and more visual candy along the path to draw the player that direction.

I didn't jump off the cliff, but then again my finger reflexively holds left shift whenever I start running in any game, so it didn't feel like too long a run.

 

Hi Joe - I've thought this was a neat idea since reading your post in the original thread. It's really nice to see it taking shape.

Is there any correlation between the katakana and the type of attack or defense?

Is the map procedurally generated?

Have you implemented items yet? I really wanted to pick up the apple and open the chest I came across.

I noticed a couple little things:

Since the Map | Items | Attack buttons are darker than the Incantation buttons, I kept thinking they were disabled after selecting an Incantation button.

The wall tiles are a little misleading. It felt a bit strange to be able to walk on them, and also to walk into black areas when cutting corners.

Speaking of walking, there's a stutter in the player walk cycle.

I'm looking forward to sounds effects and background music when/if you implement those.

 

JoeStrout, I played it.

What Works
First, and not necessarily part of the game, the URL. having http://domain/halfbaked/game was pretty awesome. I'm going to see what I can do to easily mark my digital prototypes that way, that's pretty awesome.

The battle system of this game generally feels good and lends itself well to a mobile interface - you've done a great job of distilling a JRPG feel down to the only control that a phone interface can do well. The presentation is mostly clear and intuitive.

Lastly, and most importantly, I'm left wanting more. This feel like a great resource to teach people kana. As a former Japanese student (and, later, Teacher's Assistant in my college/university class) myself, I'd like to suggest having part of the game be to teach players the stroke order for kana too; for example, the tagyo:



There's a lot of possibilities in this game; maybe the most common Kanji are the expansion pack? I really, really want more.

What Doesn't Work
First, I feel like the battle interface doesn't flow very well. I would move the 'select rune!' prompt closer to the player, or change the UI so that it's more central to the screen. It's distracting to have to search the entire darn screen to find the character I want to use for the attack/defense rolls.

Next, having a timer mechanic present in your battle system would be a good idea. Early monsters like these Orcs could have a longer timer, or at the earliest bits of the game no timer. The reason you would want to do this is to 'encourage' players to quickly recognize the kana you're teaching them. I would make sure it's non-punitive, though - finding the right kana quickly could just lead to a +10% (tunable) boost to that particular roll.

Next, the game got in a unresponsive state when I moved the player under a chest; as I couldn't click to the player, I couldn't do anything beyond that point. Of course, given that this is a concept prototype meant to show the battle system and nothing else that makes sense.

TL;DR
Dude, why didn't you FF this game sooner? You've got an excellent concept! Make it so, Number One.

 

I certainly saw some of the popups, but I didn't catch that one. This isn't my typical sort of game, so I had some confusion and fumbling about — I'm not at all surprised I missed something.

Awesome for an alpha, of course, but for the finished version you might consider making the tutorial messages stick around until the user demonstrates whatever it is they're supposed to do (e.g. run, in this case).

 

Hey Tony, lots of great questions!

I'm thinking about having later katakana do (or block) more damage. But I have very mixed feelings about that, because it results in a strong feeling of some characters being "better" than others, which I think interferes with reading. So, I might keep them all equivalent — they're just a detail of the magic ritual you have to do to make magic happen.

This one isn't, but I've got another scene that does that. In the final game, they'll probably all be procedurally generated, except for special story bits, and perhaps the main town.

Sorry, no, that's still on the to-do list.

Good point. I was experimenting with translucent buttons so you can (barely) see a bit more of the environment. Of course final buttons would be all pretty and graphical, but they could still be translucent or opaque. Which do you like better?

Yeah, I haven't implemented wall collision yet. You shouldn't be able to walk on them.

It's not the walk cycle itself; it's the pause as we process the next turn (turns happen after every 1-cell movement). But it should be possible to polish that out somehow.

Thanks for the encouragement! There are a few sound effects in there now, but not enough (and no music at all).

 

@Asvarduil, thanks very much for the detailed feedback.

That's an interesting idea. The fiction I'm imposing here is that the katakana are magical runes, which have to be properly paired with incantations (readings) for the magic to work. So, on a touch device in particular, I suppose we could have something where you have to actually write the runes correctly to activate them.

But, on the other hand, I don't at the moment see how to work that into this JRPG/Roguelike combat system. It feels like maybe that should be a different game. And my target audience is really people who don't have the time or will te really learn Japanese, but they want to learn katakana so they can read all the Japanglish words that appear all over the place in modern Japan (and/or all the sound effects in manga). So, again the stroke order thing might be well suited to a different game, targeted at more serious students.

I hear you! And appreciate this. I'll give it some thought.

I think I know what you mean. I've thought about having the prompt actually appear in a speech bubble over whoever's attacking. But I still have to put the choices somewhere, and you'll still have to scan them. Not sure what to do about that.

I fully agree. I picture a circular border that fills around the prompt characrter.

I was going to make it so that if you don't answer in time, it's the same as answering incorrectly. But maybe your idea is better!

I'll check it out. Thanks for the bug report!

Well, I didn't FF it sooner because I wrote it like this afternoon. But thanks for the encouragement, I really appreciate it.

 

@JoeStrout have you considered having the character writing in a separate menu? Maybe they could get hats or some cosmetic benefit for practicing them? That way players can do it if they want without actually affecting gameplay but doing it will still give them something to show for the effort.

I'm hoping to try all of these this weekend, I just finished school for the autumn break

 

I agree. Treat each character equally.

I like that idea. I think buttons at the bottom would work fine with that.

 

There's all sorts of ways you can incorporate writing of kana into your game.

A way I think would be good is to have your 'magic' system (common in JRPGs) be a Vancian Magic system like Final Fantasy I, where when you stay at an Inn (another JRPG trope), you can 'reload' your spells by 'scribing' these 'runes'; similar to the battle system, a non-punitive approach is best I think. If you successfully scribe the kana, you get extra charges of spells; if you fail, you get your regular number of charges.

You could also make writing a challenge to use an ability; basic abilities like fire/ka/か require successfully scribing the 'rune'/kana to cast; more complex spells like 'blaze'/ki no te/きのてwould require writing multiple characters (and, introduce some vocabulary while you're at it; as good as character recognization is, some limited vocabulary will prove useful to provide context for the skill you're teaching, specifically one of the syllabic alphabets.)

In other words, writing kana is a great 'skill' challenge, that still works for the phone interface and the JRPG setting - it requires drawing with your finger on the screen and helps give that 'magicky' feel. It provides very little scope bloat, but provides great benefits for your work.

Still, it's just a suggestion - either way your game gives something of value.

 

Or how about this: inscribing a katakana word on magic parchment (available at the scroll shop) is how you craft magic scrolls. These have special effects you can't get other ways: ベッド (bed) puts monsters to sleep, エレベータ(elevator) teleports you up or down in the dungeon, ピザ (pizza) and サラダ (salad) create food items you can eat, etc. The scrollmaster would only suggest enchantments made of kana you already know, and would show you how to write them correctly. You can either make scrolls to use yourself, or just sell them for gold.

So this gets you the stroke-order and writing practice you were looking for. And it'll also give you extra reading practice too, because it'll be listed in your inventory as "エレベータ Scroll" (though if you forget how to read it or what it does, you can tap the info button for a reminder).

I suppose this could be extended to enchanting weapons and armor, too, though I start to worry about scope creep (*).

Thanks for the inspiration!
- Joe

(*) Kevin has suggested that Scope Creep should be a monster — initially a creepy-looking guy with a spyglass — who gets more appendages and nutty abilities every time you encounter him. Much like the feeping creature.

 

Scrolls are an awesome idea! I didn't think of it quite like that.

I'm also not just saying 'include writing/stroke order!' for the cool factor; there is one, single right way to write hiragana/katakana/kanji. If you don't learn to write them right, you have to break the old habit and learn the right way, and that's very tedious (I had to do this, I tried to self-teach myself Japanese starting in High School.) It's much better to just teach someone to do it correctly the first time 'round, and since your game is to teach the hiragana, it makes sense to teach both reading and writing at the same time.

It also fulfills the Japanese ethic of zanshin, or readiness - this is a quintessential Japanese ideal in everything from flower arrangement/ikebana to fencing/kendo - further reinforcing the value of your work, and going with your premise that this game is a stepping stone to help people start doing their own learning about the language.

 

Unless running has a serious downside make running the default and use shift to sneak or something like that. Also don't check for shift, check for something useing an input manager of some sorts, allow the user to rebind keys and by default bind both left and right shift to be the same "virtual" button.

Just a thought: you might be able to use AstarPP to cast a navmesh, set max slopes that can be walked and use that to limit player movement. You should be able to easily use blocker meshes to further restrict some critical areas too. I suspect if you don't take measures to limit movement it will end up leaving tons of possible exploits and areas where people can get stuck and need to restart a mission.

I really think you've proven that the general concept works well and you are on to something. I feel like the added skillbased gameplay component makes the game more fun to me than traditional roguelike concepts, since it removes some of the randomness and gives more control to the player. Possible real-life benefits come as a bonus, it doesn't feel like a "gamified learning experience". It's a proper game with learning as a bonus, which I think is great.

I think this one is at least partly down to personal bias and preference. I never played a JRPG and I'm not missing any modal systems. I've played western RPGs like Albion that had a modal battle mode with grid based movement, but I think unless you have a party of several characters the system you've chosen is better, for all the reasons you've mentioned.

 

I don't play a lot of FPS/3rdPS on pc but isn't "hold shift to run" the standard input model for that camera style?

Also, yeah - reconfigurable keys are set up. The tutorial messages are also using the rebindable keys and stuff. Still at some point need to check for input - I'm not going to build that keybinding option screen for a long while.

 

Call of Duty style FPS implementations have super limited stamina that let you sprint only ~50 or so meters till you are exausted. For them it makes sense to not run by default. Do you have something equivalent? Oldschool FPS like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D or Quake had autorun features because there was no downside to running. My memory on Shadow of Mordor is fuzzy but I think it had sprint(which also served as "climb") and sneak as different buttons. Rockstar games like GTA have a stupid system where you need to constantly mash the sprint button to go faster, I hate that one.
Let me phrase it differently: is sprinting or not a meaningful choice or is sprinting just the all around better option unless you want to be stealthy and sneak instead of run?

 

AI behavior will respond differently to run and walk. That's not set in stone, or a 'sneak' could replace the walk logic. I was under the impression that games that used this camera generally default to 'walk' unless you hold down a 'run' button. Assassins Creed does this (for similar reasons - ai response), so I imagine Shadow does also. I based the input scheme and AI response logic around Assassins Creed (or at least, I did a lot of testing to try to infer some of the rules it used). Mine diverges from AC mostly on that I end up spreading AI effects from one AI to the next, so mine snowballs out of control instead of being localized like AC or most other games.

 

I see. Maybe the turn based component of your game is what is confusing players. There are few games doing something similar so we have little experience to draw from. Running in 3rd person realtime mode was no problem for me but during combat I wondered why I still need to press shift. It made less sense to me in that specific context. Others may or may not agree.

 

I donno either. I'm going to leave the walk default as is for now. I think this might be a question kind of like @JoeStrout's where the demo scene might not be representative of the rest of game play. Maybe once I have more scenes and have better defined what the "average" experience is like I can revisit the issue. In this case (defaulting/toggle/etc) it will probably be pretty easy to change.

 

And another FF draws to a close - loved the fun explorations this week. Next FF opens 4/29.
Gigi