[Feedback Friday #6] - November 21, 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? Less is more.
• 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 #5 is here]

 

I like how the Friday thread gives me something to work toward - a mini-milestone. I've uploaded a new version of Christmas Crush for Android (free). Last week's feedback was really helpful - hoping for more!



Christmas Crush (on Android)

Ready? Set. Crush the red ornaments before they explode!

Updates include:

• Ornaments/presents flash before exploding.
• Slow-motion on loss - to show what you missed.
• Extra time for ornaments spawned from presents.
• Fixed hang bug after rate popup

Gigi

 

Hi Guys,

I'll really appreciate if you play the first public build of Warfront Defenders and give some feedback.

It's been a while I'm struggling with the design of this game, many iterations and starting all over again many times. I'd appreciate feedback on overall fun factor, the game design, UX etc. I really want to understand if this is finally on the right track. Please be honest with the feedback and please help me out.

One Liner :
The game is a tactical defense game (not tower defense) played on dioramas of ww2.

This particular map is from the battle of Westerplatte which marked the beginning of ww2.

This game is built mainly for ipad/tablets and mobiles, but the input works in PC nevertheless.
It's actually a series of mini games or pack of mini games. Each game is based on a diorama. You will be playing for the defending side. The enemies and your soldiers are generated procedurally, so there will be an element of replayability.

Tutorial :
Starting with the game, you will be given an option to choose your play time. You can enter from 1 to 10 mins of playing time. The battle will be generated based upon that. You will have to keep the enemies at bay from the red flag position for that amount of time.

If a percent of the total enemies reaches the flag within the time you will lose. If you can hold them back you will win.

The control is mainly to orbit by left mouse drag and scroll to zoom. In the UI, you can find your deployable soldiers at the left panel, you can drag and drop them to positions marked with yellow arrows. After deploying the soldiers you can issue four type of command to them, attack, target specific enemy (you will have to drag a skull icon to your specific enemy from the target button), take cover and regroup to barrack. You can click select the deployed soldiers and issue commands from the right panel. When you are ready you can click the 'start' button to start the enemy waves.

There are two gauges to monitor progress, the big one at top left is your total health. It becomes covered with enemy flag as more and more enemies reaches your flag position.The watch just beside that gives an idea of the time left, during which you will have to hold them back.

Link :
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38338116/WarfrontDefenders/Webplayer.html

Thanks a ton and eagerly looking forward for your feedback.

 

I like the concept.

• I think a tutorial or help/controls page would help, I found myself wondering what the different UI buttons are for.
• Can soldiers be shot when they're behind cover? It didn't seem right that enemy soldiers would just stroll forward, totally exposed, until they got behind my soldiers' cover before they would start fighting.

 

Thanks for playing the game.

Ya, a tutorial is missing. Will make a rudimentary one before anything. For now you can refer to my previous post

The enemies can be fired upon when they tries to take cover. Once you discover enemy cover points you can setup your secondary ambush by luring them in. When they get shot while trying to take cover, depending upon their 'wit' some of them will look for another nearby cover and some of them will panic and freeze.

 

@Gigiwoo
I like the new object flash and extra time. This version includes a lot of little touches that make it feel livelier and more responsive. The "WHAM" is nice (like a little reward you receive for popping open the ornament) but I'm not so sure about the word itself. Maybe if it were 1960s Batman punching a villain.... What about a different word or even an image or particle effect? Also, speaking of text, would you consider a more exciting font for the instruction text?

I didn't notice any slow-mo. Is it working?

Also, I don't recall if anyone mentioned in the first go-round, but I really like how you can start playing the game right away. It's a fun little 60-second diversion.

 

What word(s) might you suggest? Shouldn't be hard to swap in. And, I'll definitely take a look at the font!

The slow-mo is a subtle effect, when you die. Some feedback suggested the game ended SO fast that they hadn't even seen what caused them to lose. So, now, when you break the wrong color, or miss a red, it clears the screen, except for the one that was wrong, and then shows you the POOF (which should probably be BAH HUMBUG!) or the BOOM particle and shatters the object in slow-mo for 1.5s. If I did it right, players won't really notice it as a 'thing', except that they'll now be able to easily see what they did wrong - OOPS, wrong color or OOPS I missed the red ornament. Then, in 2 seconds, they're back in action!

@TonyLi Thank you for the excellent feedback (again)! It's so helpful!

Gigi

 

@FlyingRobot

It's cool and I think definitely has the potential to be a good Tower Defense game. I was originally expecting something along the lines of a simplified RTS. Not sure why. I guess because you said "The game is a tactical defense game (not tower defense)". I gotta say that to me the experience was very much playing a Tower Defense game. But maybe that is because I am not sure what my options are? I placed units at a small number of available locations and then basically watched the results play out.

 

@Gigiwoo

The game is definitely more engaging now. The last version I played was a very casual experience. This time the experience was more intense. I think this is mainly because of the pulsating, jittering effect before the red objects explode. The words are a nice touch too. It might be cool if you could somehow implement "doubles" into this thing. Like maybe I could flick a red object and for that flick instead of it being crushed the object would be sent flying. If it hits another red object they both explode. Not sure if the play mechanic would work for the platform and game structure though. Just saying it would be kind of cool to be able to do something like a combo and get a points multiplier.

 

Thanks for playing the game.

I'm really trying to make it more engaging rather than sit back and watch. But may be the option for pre fixed stationary positions are making it more like a tower defense.

I wonder what would it be like if you can place your soldiers anywhere and move them around.

 

I think if the player could place the troops anywhere it would be a nice improvement. If you want to control the locations maybe you could just double the amount. To me strategy means options. The player needs to have options and then decide what to do.

If you add the ability to move the troops around (can you already do that? I tried clicking icons and map, etc but never got any to move) that would be very cool I think. Like maybe the player could select one of the dudes then click on the map and he moves there. Or click Attack then click on the enemy to engage. Just throwing out ideas though I don't know what your vision for the game is.

 

No, right now you can't move your soldier around. That would make this into more like RTS. The game wasn't meant for that. Although more options for tower placement can be cool. Also, there can be an option for quickly relocate your soldier to another position by clicking on it.

I guess I should call this a tower defense. Although my aim is to incorporate more battlefield tactics into this like hit and hide, flanking traps etc rather than broader strategy or upgrade frenzy sit back tower defense. I'd like to see this more enaging rather than sit back anyway.

 

Why can't you have it both ways? (Besides, TD is technically a subgenre of RTS. The original TD was built inside WarCraft III, a RTS.)

Your 'towers' are soldiers. You have spaces on your map. You select a soldier, and tell it to reposition to a free space. The soldier figures out how to get there. What's more this would add an interesting twist, because you could create a certain type of creep that looks for 'towers' that are repositioning, and attacks them when they're on the move, to possibly destroy them. This would be a very interesting twist for a TD game, I think.*

*: I don't normally play, or like, TD games. They just don't do it for me. That caveat aside, I think that might have some possibilites in terms of making the game interesting to the traditional RTS crows, as well as the casual TD crowd.

 

As it stands it's pretty much just a tower defense game, albeit a bad one where you don't get enough control over enemy movement. I've seen bots occasionally ignore my guys and head straight for the flag, which really doesn't make for great gameplay. The biggest problem for now is it's just too hands off once things are set up.

 

Thanks for playing the game guys.

I guess the game makes much more sense as RTS than TD. This is making me seriously rethink this. Generally, TD is lame than RTS. TD is mostly fun because of strategic upgrades, which is absent in this. So, this makes this lamer than a TD. That creeps passing by towers are generally TD behavior though.

This could be engaging with more RTS elements. This means I have to throw away most of the enemy code. They are now passive than active. Only activated on hit. This is the fundamental difference it's having with RTS enemies.

 

No ideas. WHAM just didn't seem to fit, at least to me. Maybe a snowflake or some other texture instead of a word?

It must have been too subtle for me to notice. But I do like the fact that you're right back in the action so quickly!

 

Hey guys, new 'baby step' iteration on Sara the Shieldmage.

Prototype

Controls:
A/D - Move
Space - Jump
LMB - Cast Spells (Repel, Summon Block)
Left Shift - Toggle Spells

Objective:
Defeat the Doomsday Cultist.

First, I made my Camera Freeze Triggers bigger and the dirt walls at the end of the stages, so you can't just stack blocks to get over them. Good catch, @GarBenjamin!

For the attack, I went ahead and did something that I think fits Sara a little better - her short-range 'attack' just covers her with a shield that repels attackers and deals them damage, but costs a mana charge to make appear. It also doesn't last forever, and there is a little deadzone between when the spell expires, and when a new mana charge fills up. Does this feel more suitable to a puzzle-platformer?

I'm debating how this spell will be used as a puzzle solving mechanic. An idea I had was for Sara to use it while standing between two leads, which would power various mechanisms in the ancient ruins she'll be rooting around in.

 

I tried to kill the cultist by dropping a block on his head. It didn't work

 

@Asvarduil - I know you're rethinking Sara's melee attack, but I agree with @Zomby138. If possible, please design your spells so they can innately do stuff that makes sense like this. It's rewarding for me as a player to be able to use my tools creatively.

 

Done. I updated the webplayer. Simply play it, and you can drop a box on the cultist. Because the Block is targeted, I made it deal more damage than the Repel spell.

That being said, I'd also like opinions on the Repel spell, too. I've only spent the last eight or so iterations on the block spell.

 

That sentence just completely encompassed everything I feel about this thread! and that's why this thread has quickly become my favorite weekly thread!

In this thread you can actually watch ideas grow, from their early buggy stages to their mean and slick final versions essentially watching them evolve over time, though the the fires of the continuous cycle of Iterating, they are constantly being destroyed and reborn until they finally reach their almost perfect form... Call me a poet but I think there is beauty in that!

Unfortunately I have no updates for you guys this week, I was busy with another project and felt that with no real major updates there's no point of posting.. I'll definitely have something for you guys in Feedback Friday #7! buut like all good things come to end, It will probably be my last update before I start taking final steps to release X^3

You guys have been really helpful, to pay you back I will give you guys as honest of a opinion on your projects as I can (Please don't hate me for it! haha) and soon as I have another project I will be back here asap!

Thanks guys for all the help!

 

@FlyingRobot

The game does puts itself as an RTS,the way it feels, the UI and the way you can rotate the camera...I think for 1 whole minute I had actually mistaken it for a RTS lol but surprisingly enough it's actually a pretty interesting tower defense game and I do think it can remain as a tower defense game...

I think you can go 2 ways, either go the simplified RTS route that @GarBenjamin mentions or completely dump the RTS side of it and go full top-down view/Bird's eye view and make it a complete tower defense game, I was waiting for more units btw, tanks, airstrikes, automatic turrets and such also honestly even your idea of battlefield tactics sounds very interesting and will add some level unpredictability to each game (like real wars)

Maybe even allow players to "equip" what units they want to use before the game starts (which opens up pre-game strategic play) and then give them a small "chances of winning" table or graph! I think it would be cool to be told you have only "1% Chance of winning this battle" with my current units just to pull out a hail mary and eradicate the enemy like a boss

My only real problem with it isn't it's game design but the setting, really world war 2? again? how many times do games have to take us back there? Yeah yeah the Nazi were really bad people blah blah blah it's a really stale over done setting....

@Asvarduil
Looking good so far! I can live with the shield, still waiting for those puzzles though!

@Gigiwoo
Day 6 and still no phone..Hopefully I'll have a replacement by the next feedback friday and finally give you some feedback :L

 

I think I'm going to stay between TD and RTS. I may not go for full fledged RTS. I fiddled with option of placing soldiers anywhere on the map, but it's opening up multitude of options and really not helping the game that much. Also, needs a larger map for RTS as well.

@Asvarduil idea is cool. Trying something on that line. Also changing some other stuffs to make it more engaging. Making the creep from passive to active etc.

Two things I'm trying to avoid is economy and upgrades. Let's see if I can design this around these two.

Yeah, ww2 is a over cliche. But I still love dioramas from that era more than modern dioramas. Also, in this game you will be playing the defending side, be it axis or allies. Like in d-day battles you will play as Germans.

 

Another week has come to a close. Feedback Friday #7 is here.

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the states!
Gigi