Can I get some gamedev feedback on a finished game? Be brutal.
sideroller.com/Posted Dec 29, 2011, 6:01 PM UTC
3261
sideroller.com
I didn't play the whole thing, but they say the first ten minutes are the most important, so here goes.
Artistically this game is a success. Very polished, and full of nice touches all around. I especially liked on level 2 how the slamming of the piston objects was timed with the heartbeat. The music was good and the visuals and animations were satisfying (Especially the slam animations and the lightning.) Also the dialogue was witty. I approve of witty dialogue.
On the down side it's not really obvious who or what your character is. Was I the square at the beginning who got sucked into the vortex? Also there were a few instances of bad conveyance which could be cleared up. I was confused at a certain point at the intro level because I didn't realize you could slam sideways and somehow didn't notice or properly read the sign that told you how to do it. I managed to get to a part where the only way through was the side slam, and the sign was not visible at that area.
Also the Hud could be a little bigger. Considering it's a flash browser game, having an enlarged HUD would make it easier to see at a glance. And lastly I wasn't quite sure what role the card suits played, even after I was told about them. This is probably because there was no immediate and visually obvious use for them. It's best if you can convey your message with visual and audio ques rather than dialogue (Ex: The mushroom in SMB makes you grow when you touch it. No possible confusion there.)
In closing I'd like to say the game was damn fun, and succeeded in simply being enjoyable to play and control, which is probably the most important part of game design.
So, good job. If I were into flash games I'd probably play the whole thing. Make a version for x-box arcade and I'll buy it.
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When you collect the cards, the color it's on matters. The right color combination of each 4 symbols will increase your smash meter. Yes, I now realize this is ridiculously and unnecessarily complicated :) thanks for the feedback.
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Yeah. Out of curiosity what are the correct color combinations and how are you expected to figure them out?
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4 cards same color or 4 cards all different colors increases the smash meter. For a while I was thinking how traditional "rules" from board games / card games could be "stolen" for use in video games and that was the result.
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Not bad on paper, but hard for a player to accomplish while doing wall clinging ceiling smashes.
Also, I think most collectables (especially small ones) are typically an afterthought for the player.
Such a system could work, but you would have to make a big deal about it to make sure the player knows what you want from them.
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This game is honestly Fantastic! I Love the game, however it is overwhelming, between clicking things, learning buttons and the alternates, sticking to things shooting lightning etc... There really is too much I think. I think you should split each ability into separate levels, so that you may choose which power you want to use for which level.
Other then that, monetize this shit.
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Took me a while to figure out I could safely go here. I was ready to give up. It looks like the pits of death earlier in the level.
edit: I just died by touching the ceiling which looks exactly the same. There should really be different graphics for safe and unsafe zones.
Is it really necessary to have the camera move with the mouse? It's really annoying.
Other than that, it's very good!
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You can get through that part using sticky mode and the ceiling.
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No, you can get through the circled part by simple rolling through it. Other areas of the level look identical and kill you.
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disclaimer: only played for about 10 mins
There's a lot of independent game mechanics and they don't really gel together at all. The ball just seems to do a lot of stuff for no real reason; there's no exploration of combining these mechanics and even if there were, there's far too many for it to make sense to the player.
The mechanics are confusing. I never realised you could double-jump until reading comments here, and my lightning gun stopped working but I have no idea why.
The art quality is high and the style is good but it's a little over-saturated. The hint text in the wall gets lost a little bit because it's quite busy.
I liked how the levels are all one large area.
The music was good and fitted well.
Overall despite the serious clusterfuck in the game mechanics it is a fun game and the high production qualities kept me interested.
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the serious clusterfuck in the game mechanics
This is exactly the "brutal" feedback I was looking for :) In my defense, the later levels really force you to use the smash + stick abilities in tandem, but if I didn't get your interest in 10 minutes anyway I've got to look at what's wrong.
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To further this: Texture-wise the art is quite high contrast in itself and between things (background to buildings). The visual grouping of different layers is good but it'd be nice to soften the whole environment with lower contrast within tiles and more mid-range colours (not just dark colours and white). As well as softening some of the detail so it's not all sharp edge stuff.
I echo others' thoughts about the controls but just want to add that I kept pressing up as if it were jump. Adhering to universal platformer controls makes it a lot easier on the player.
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Very fun, but as other people have said there's a lot going on. As other people have said either introduce them more slowly or remove them. I feel the stickiness and being able to move objects has to be limited as I just sat on a can and flew it to the moon. I thought the dialogue and over all premise was good and it's very polished.
I kept pressing left-click by mistake a lot because the button to zap and the button to move stuff is the same. Also the WASDQE control scheme confused me a lot. W and S were fine for the flame on thing but Q and E felt really dodgy. The HUD was also very small, I just kept pressing buttons until it ran out before I realized there was one.
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Linuxey minority here, but still — something seems very wrong with the mouse controls under linux flash player, it (and the game itself) becomes veeeeeery slow, lagged and unresponsive as soon as something interactable is under the mouse cursor.
Other than that, what I saw (tutorial level that is) all seemed charming in a lovely way, many controls didn't annoy me and all looked quite fun.
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You have no idea how many times I cursed my decision to build on the Flash platform. That has to be the reason for poor Linux performance. Do other Flash games generally run poor over Linux?
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No; even though the flashplayer under linux is in some weird and too-often-crashing state (and, if I recall correctly, adobe dropped its support at all), I haven't seen issues like this, the games usually run just fine.
Maybe in this case there are more mousemove events sent to the underlying objects than in Windows — and some expensive redraw gets called too often, or something like that.
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That's strange. One of these days I'll have to set up a Linux partition so I can test this stuff. I'm running all kinds of experimental Adobe stuff (Pixel Bender, Alchemy, etc.) so it could be anything. Thanks for the feedback, regardless.
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Using flash with Ubuntu on a Core 2 duo and when I had to interact with the mouse the whole game stalled for a sec. It made the game unplayable.
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Pretty neat controls but there is a lot going on. One criticism I have is your method of teaching the player how to play. The mechanics seem really cool but damnit I hate tutorials. I hate looking at controls. I hate feeling like I am being 'prepared' to play your game.
Instead just make the levels teach me my moves. Make me figure it out, but give me good indicators. For example instead of plastering "JUMP TWICE TO DOUBLE JUMP" on the screen, put some bonus item just out of reach of my regular jump. Then I'll try to jump for it, realize I can't reach it and figure out that I can double jump. Then I feel accomplished! Like "haHA! I figured that out all by myself!".
Then for the sticky mode mechanic do something similar, but put the bonus even further out of reach from my double jump. So I'll double jump for the first bonus, but then see another bonus even FURTHER up along the wall. And I'll think "Holy crap how do I get that one!?".
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I'm gonna have to disagree with this. Figuring out the game mechanics and controls should not have to be a puzzle since they are often arbitrary. Few are going to have the patience to figure out how the sticky walls mechanic (hold shift, roll on the walls) worked, and rightly so.
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Figuring out the game mechanics and controls should not have to be a puzzle since they are often arbitrary.
Figuring out the game's mechanics should not require reading a book, and should not feel arbitrary. Look at Mario for the NES. First Level. You can't move left, so you try going right. Also, theres a question box leading you in that direction. You head that direction. Oh shit a Goomba! What do you do? Well the boxes are up in the air...maybe I can jump!?
Notice there are no signs or annoyances telling you how to play. Megaman X also teaches the player how to play without telling them how to play.
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If you don't want arbitrary controls, you shouldn't be playing games using a keyboard and mouse. Mario had the advantage of being played on a console, where there was only a few buttons on the controller and there was never any real complexity to the game. On the other hand, put Mario on the computer: any button you pick for jump will feel very arbtrary. Add even more options besides jump and suddenly you've lost the user.
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You're talking about controls, while i'm talking about mechanics. Yes I need to know that I should be using SHIFT as part of the control scheme, however the game should let me figure out how to stick to a wall.
You know how Donkey Kong Country solves this? They put grass on the wall with a few bananas in a row.
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I think OP has done rather well with the tutorial. There was a bit of that teaching going on - like only being able to progress by slamming twice, through the "tunnel" of boxes. You are right though, there could have been more.
I would have like the new abilities to be brought in more slowly, so that you play a few levels with a new ability, and there are many challenges that you need to use the new ability to overcome. Then, over time, you can be taught to effectively use the ability in combinations with others, and that skill can be expected for later levels.
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Well, at least I didn't give you a giant mandatory wall of text to read :) I hate tutorials myself. I think trying to introduce a ton of mechanics in a way that doesn't annoy the player is a problem I see in a lot of games (even AAA titles). Thanks for playing!
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I personally like the different buttons for different slams.
So maybe the OP could make it an option?
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I agree with both of these points.
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I disagree with your first point. The clockwise, counter-clockwise movements are far more intuitive to me. It would be greatly annoying if I was holding right and went upside down only to reverse directions.
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The first time you jump and stick to the ceiling, it's very weird that left is right.
In sticky mode, I would have WASD mapped to up, down, left and right. So when you're stuck to the ceiling, you can press left and right in the intuitive way. But when you reach a wall, you have to switch to pressing W or S.
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I'd rather it be weird the first time I jump to a ceiling than difficult and unresponsive every time I roll up a curve.
If your walls were 90 degrees then switching from right to up would work well since it's a stop and change of direction. If your main controls are a thumb stick or even a d-pad it would still work on curved walls. However, switching from "D" to "W" to "A" to roll up a curve that flips you upside down would be uncomfortable and destroy the flow of rolling, IMO.
Again, I know what you mean, but in this particular case, personally I prefer the controls being mapped to rotational direction rather than based on perspective.
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The smashing controls really confused me. Maybe that's just me being simple, but never mind.
On another note, I see you got sponsored by MoFunZone. Out of curiosity, how did you find them? If you don't want to answer, that's cool, but I got a game sponsored by them a few months ago and I found them very unhelpful and generally bad to work with.
On the plus side, their API is quite nice...
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MoFunZone made the highest bid on flashgamelicense.com. My only complaint is the game runs a bit slow on their site, other than that they've been really nice to work with. What was your game?
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Yeah, same with me. My game was my LudumDare 20 entry which I spruced up a bit, it's called "Alone".
It's less that they weren't nice to work with, more than they ignored half my emails - I think I had to email them 4 times over the span of about a month after they put my game up before they finally paid me.
Also, when I sent them the final version, the walkthrough link went to mofunzone.com. I replied to them with a corrected version when they emailed me to say, but they didn't bother changing it.
I have a feeling that it's to do with the fact that it's a fairly bad game, and they didn't pay much for it, so I'm assuming it wasn't high on their priority list, but still.
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I found it very confusing. You can jump, fireball dash, attack things, click on things, drag things around, hit buttons, go into portals, dash through walls, there is changing gravity, you can stick to walls, etc, etc. Each room becomes a kind of memory game, which button do I need to press to get through the room? Other than that, it's pretty easy and not all that fun. I just think you have way, way too much going on here.
The artwork is good though.
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Really enjoyed this game! The only problems were learning that E was the forward dash and it was a little hard to hit Shift while moving sometimes. This could make some money, I'd definitely enjoy playing it as a part of a bundle or a Steam game.
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Absolutely amazing game, but WAY too much going on at once. You could spread all of these mechanics out over tons of different levels.
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Most of my feedback's already been said, just one annoying bug. If you move away from the first emoticon and then move back, he says all his text a second time. Also some of the fonts in there were hard to read.
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When I was in sticky mode and I rolled on that first curve and the camera rolled with me...
...I haven't experienced a moment like that in a game in a long time. The only word I can use to explain it is orgasmic.
Pretty neat game, but yeah there was a lot going on.
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This game is fucking awesome. The textures look a little rough for the nice effects in the game. I was a little confused on how to do the side break, maybe I didnt pay attention enough? It looks great bud! Keep up the good work! More graphics!!!! :)
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Can I suggest a modification to the controls?
'w' for jump, and space for smash. Have the smash fire off in the direction of the mouse.
The textures and patterns are beautiful, but I don't think the space levels look very nice. There are a lot of inconsistencies in the details. Different stoke widths. Soft corners with sharp corners. Textured objects in stark contrast with flat vector elements. The end result is muddled. The nightmare (love the blood splatters outside the game frame) and pretty green style levels work much nicer.
Also, any time I see a circular gradient I immediately thing I'm playing a cheap flash game, which this game certainly isn't.
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played for 2 mins and hit a bug i started getting thrown all around the screen for some reason with no way of stopping
loved the idea tho one issue tho, the screen / playing area is very small
really enjoyed what i did play tho
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Do you know exactly where it happened? Internally levels are broken into regions that are turned on/off and it sounds like you busted out of a region somehow.
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There's a /lot/ going on here. It's a polished product with a lot of potential fun, but at the same time I'm feeling overloaded. You've got, what, nine interaction styles? Rolling, Jumping, Double-Jumping, Firing, Clicking Buttons, Dragging Objects, Clicking to Shoot, Power-Boosting, Sticky mode... not to mention the fact that moving the mouse also nudges the camera.
It's just far too much to handle at once. If these elements were introduced gradually, maybe two or three per level, it wouldn't feel like such an overload. There were also moments that I couldn't figure out how I triggered- I was rolling to one guy, and suddenly he's replaced by tons of meaty gibs? Did I pass a barely-visible tripwire or something?
One thing I really disliked was that clicking a sign brought me out of the game and into a new browser window. Yes, it's cool to have bonus info like that, but please keep me inside the game. Don't make me leave. When I leave, I'm not coming back.
That's not to say it wasn't fun, because it was. Good work.
Yeah I think I got too ambitious with the number of mechanics. People expect quick bite-size, simple experiences from Flash games. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Lesson learned, thanks!
I think people will get used to the overload, but you have to give them the mechanics in pieces. Like when you're teaching a kid to read, you don't give them a dictionary, you give them a simple two word per sentence book.
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It's not a quantity-of-mechanics problem, but a vision problem. The game you have is literally "a pile of mechanics," not a unified "play concept." It's like a sampler dish of everything that has been tried in the platformer genre, which is confusing and disengaging if you haven't already seen those mechanics, but dull or irritating if you have - so it's in a bad spot either way.
Next time, aim for coherency of concept. Do the game pieces invoke concrete imagery? Is the vocabulary of the game creating a "dialogue"? Does the player have access to appropriate verbs to communicate their intention? Trying to attack these really fundamental questions about "why am I playing?" will let you question both the mechanics and technology, even things like the existence of a scrolling 2D camera or the usage of platforming physics(and what kind of physics). Adding things at random is a good way to start the experiment, but trying to filter out the excess is what makes the game clear and coherent.
Even Tetris has a concept lying behind its abstracted mechanics: "Fit the shapes together." The line-forming, gravity, score, and rotation rules are not the parts that really excite people - those just make it more structured and invite the player to come back for more.
I'm not sure I agree with you completely but you've definitely got me thinking in new ways. For games of this nature the question "why am I playing" I think should be answered "because this is a compelling universe/story I want to explore further". The game mechanics then should be presented in a way where it's clear to the player that mastery of these mechanics is necessary to fully explore this world. I don't think I reinforced this enough. later in the game you've got to use all your powers in conjunction to progress but it's not clear to the player why they have these skills when they are introduced.
Other games might answer that same question "to get a high score", or "to get achievements", goals which I personally find shallow and cheap from a design perspective, but do work to hook people in.
Most thought provoking response I've got here though. Thanks.