Feedback Friday #90 - November 29 - December 2, 2019

Feedback Friday is now open!

Want design feedback for your work in progress and need some playtesting feedback?

Then you've found the right thread! Feedback Friday runs from Friday to Monday every week.

What To Show

• Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play > everything else
• How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)
• Post a link to a playable game, preferably WebGL. If you don't have a playable game, post something substantial, not just text.

How To Ask For Feedback

• Be concise.
• Specify what you want feedback on and what you don't.
• Resist the urge to write an immediate defense. Take the time to understand their points. Remember that your friends here are taking time out of their busy schedules to help you for free.

How To Give Feedback

• Be positive. Every game has redeeming qualities.
• Focus on the design, not the designer.

Feedback Friday #89 is here.

 

I'm working on a game where you construct a spaceship and fly it through space, kill pirates and collect resources to make your ship even better. I think it'll be quite a fun game loop but the progression seems a bit limited - maybe I'll need to add base building or something too?

Anyway here's some videos. What do you think its lacking? (besides juiciness and UI design )

Building a ship (puush is safe I promise :F)

https://puu.sh/EEoxo/bbb5017e74.mp4

Fighting an AI ship:
The objective in a battle is to take out the "core" (the green square) which shuts down the whole ship.

 

EDIT: I am wiped out by the holiday weekend and am a little worried this response sounds harsh instead of critical. Please understand that I intend it to be constructive criticism.

I like the creation of the ship. I'm assuming you intended for a very simplified, almost abstracted form of ship design, where there is no decoration. (Or decoration will come later.) Keeping it simple works though.

The space combat on the other hand was ... lacking. From the video, it looked like the method of combat was to rush in close and just circle each other like you were stuck on a tiny merry-go-round. It was boring to watch and would likely be boring to play.

It feels like that two things are needed:

1) Zoom out further. Having the combat camera that zoomed in removed any space-like feeling of the combat. If that game had been two microscopic cells fighting, that would have felt more right. (Space flight in the demo ship would be more interesting with some screen space to scoot around in too.)

2) The combat tactics need to be more than that. Actual moving around, maybe different weapons that are good at different ranges, some reason to actually apply some basic tactics. Otherwise, I think your core loop isn't going to last as far as holding people's interest.

Overall, the game concept and ship creating concept both appeal to me enough that I would be reading the description and reviews on Steam instead of just passing it by. But watching the fighting as it stands would not make me interested in playing the game.

 

@Socrates Thanks for your feedback! Harsh is good, I know about some of those things but it's good to get confirmation.

I plan on prettying up the whole thing once I've got all systems in place.

I'm going to add many more different types of "modules" with things like homing rocket launchers, grappling hooks, melee weapons, lasers, "space mine" layers, shield generators, tractor beams (for collecting resources and small ships).

I see your point about the battle being boring, I'm hoping the new modules will add some flair.
Zooming out and speeding things up a good idea - the circling strategy just sort of happened because my ship was larger and the AI just happened to work out how to get around my guns!

At the moment there are only blasters and directional thrusters, so there isn't much strategy. I'll add some weapons that work at different ranges, and add the ability to change your zoom level. A "sniper" laser of sorts would be a fun one to make!

That's actually really helpful and it's sparked my imagination a bit.
It's easy to lose track of the important stuff when you're blinded by code!

 

Thank you @Serinx for sharing your project and thank you @Socrates for providing with feedback.

This concludes the 90th Feedback Friday.