[WIP] Rollo the Ball (First game)

Hello friends
I've been getting familiar with Unity for a while and this is the first real game I've made.
I just wanted to make something quick, it took me 6 weeks to do this. A few hours per day at most.

I got some feedback a while ago but got sidetracked for a while. I've taken some of the feedback in this thread to heart.

Webplayer link
(23 mb to load)

Some info about the game:
It's a top down shooter / coin collector. The map is randomized each game, but it does mostly look the same. You are a ball in a magical forest populated by monsters, coins, and crates. They all spawn at the beginning of each round, which lasts 30 seconds, and coins disappear in the intermission between rounds. The boxes can explode, heal you, or give you a gun. Monsters try to get coins and crates, and will also throw rocks at you. Difficulty increases each round, and monsters grow stronger the longer they are allowed to remain on the map. Everything but rocks and the teleporter can be destroyed.

It's now possible to "sniff out" the bombs in crates - ie, stand next to a crate for a few seconds and if it contains a bomb, that bomb will be revealed and you have just under one second to get away from the blast radius. In return, the % chance of getting a bomb in a crate is greater than before.

I've also made a scoreboard, which will calculate your score when you die or leave the map. A teleporter appears from round 10, every 5 rounds, where you can either spend coins to heal or leave the forest and get your score without losing points for dying.

Controls:
WASD movement, LShift to sprint. I will implement arrow buttons and R Ctrl to sprint (For you, GarBenjamin. I saw that you hate WASD in some other thread.)
Mouse to aim, LMB to shoot
Press TAB for some hints during gameplay

I've made some cheat buttons to make it more convenient to test out.

Notes:
UI is a bit clunky. Haven't reorganized positions for webplayer build.
Title is very much uncertain. Feel free to offer a title if you can think of a good one.

Here is the menu and a gameplay screenshot.
Please give it a try and give me feedback! I want to wrap this up soon.
If you won't try the webplayer, just give me feedback on my protagonist ... I love him so much..

 

It's actually very fun to play it, good job with your first project!
I'd say go for it if you feel like it. If you're satisfied of working with this project and you're enjoying the development, then don't stop!

 

Absolutely finish it.

1. Include a screenshot or two so people can see what is before clicking on the webplayer. Usually you'll get more feedback that way.
2. Go ahead and complete the game, if nothing else for the experience. Most people never even finish a game, so once you do you'll be a lot better off than most devs.

 

This is very cool. It's nice to see a 3D game that is different from the majority of them. A simple and fun game. Good weapons although I did notice that shooting enemies was more accurate from certain locations and from others although the bullets seemed to be hitting the enemy they obviously were not.

I agree with the others about finishing it. There is definitely potential here. It's different in a good way.

 

Edit: Fixed the shooting issue and updated webplayer.

I appreciate the feedback, especially since it's so positive. My reason for moving on would be the simple fact that I'm not very emotionally invested in this game. Which I suppose could actually be a good thing. It would certainly be good for my confidence to have completed a project, too.

 

nice to see my "monster" being used, keep it up!

 

Jimmy P!
Do NOT move on, 'till you've polished this game! From a fellow dev, here are my thoughts why:

---> If you make sure this is "presentable", then you'll have a great Asset for showing potential employers/project hiring staff that you can Finish & Complete a work which actually is fun, having thought it out, and made something unique. (If you don't finish this nifty work that you started, you'll have a piece of junk code, which helped you to learn, but is useless for the future.)

---> I can identify with the feeling of not much emotional attachment. (After my two working gigs, creating Quad King 1 & 2 , I was sick of them... ) Sometimes you just need a break from it, for a day or two.

--->Also, I'd strongly recommend polishing this up, in the sense of: making sure it's works well, (no obvious bugs) and that it looks ok. (again, no obvious textures missing etc.) AND (possibly very important) don't plan new features for this project. It should be finished/tweaked and polished as an asset in your belt to show others that you can actually do this kind of work, and complete something successfully!

---> If you get a really good idea, it would help you more in the learning process and (next project ) area, if you take that great idea/concept and work it into your next project.

Hope this helps! Rock on!

 

I agree with @jtok4j

Finish this game, but save any additional features for an eventual sequel. Make sure you know when you're going to call it finished, and stop there, as it's very easy to spend a year polishing.

My biggest problem was usability: there is no way of knowing whether a crate heals you, explodes or gives you a weapon. The monster AI is good enough, I'd focus on adding some way of seeing if they get hurt, like flashing white when they get shot.

Keep it up!

 

Thanks for providing it! It was amazingly easy to implement. I really don't like anything that has to do with animation, and I can't properly express how delighted I was when I saw that all animation was already taken care of

I wanted the crates to be unpredictable. It's an element over which you have no control. But they always have a higher chance of not being a bomb than being one. So the idea is that they are a gamble, in later rounds they get a lot harsher.
I was thinking of changing the explosion damage some, or maybe making it so that an exploding crate can't actually kill you, just bring you to 1 HP .. That might make it too easy though.

The monster AI is OK, its problems become evident around round 7-8 when there's a lot more of them running around. I think a hit indicator is a great idea though, I'm thinking some particle effect at the impact point and maybe a thud sound or something.

I've started working towards finishing this now. Interestingly, I feel more at a loss for how to go about it than I did when I first started out. I'm sure it will be an educational ride.

Thanks again for all your feedback and encouragement!

 

It's okay for the crates to be unpredictable, but having a chance of either loosing or gaining hp from identical crates feels unnecessarily risky. An alternative is to either have one kind of crate you always get hp from and one type of crate you can get either a weapon or an explosion from or dropping the explosions altogether.

I also noticed that you count up from one to three when a new round starts, that's a bit strange. Count down to a new round instead?

 

Updated OP. Added quite a few things to the project.

My wife reckons I should change the shooting sounds from proper gunfire to more pew-pew sounds. Probably a good idea, as this game's premise is silly, to put it mildly.

I'll probably also add some flowers and bits of grass on the ground, and some music and possibly some voice effects for the protagonist.

What do you think this game is lacking before I can ship?