Congratulations on shipping. Most people who want to get into independent development never even make it past alpha, if that.
Really, I think the basic idea is alright, but the actual gameplay and design need a bit of polish.
However, as soon as I opened it up I got a warning from Windows. If I have to choose to let your app through the firewall that's a bad sign. I feel like a beta shouldn't be making network requests and posting my score to a remote server (which is what appears to be happening here.)
The text seems too difficult to see in some cases. For instance - the red text on the grey dialog box background in the tutorial. Some of the UI elements are difficult to read as well, and seem superfluous. I kind of feel like the only thing I need to have is an immediate idea of my health and maybe the score.
I thought the tutorial was a bit condescending. The mechanics of the game aren't that complicated, I just want to know what the controls do, what the basic premise is, etc.
I feel like one or more of the following are probably true: the enemies are too small, the field is too large, or the controls are not responsive enough. Maneuvering to catch the enemies seemed to take far more effort than needed. Perhaps if the movement were restricted to a grid or some kind of graph the actual puzzle aspect of the game could become more prominent. I understand it's supposed to be difficult, but the difficulty in this case seems a bit artificial.
The klaxon sound effect was annoying, and to me sort of detracted from the general sci-fi action feel of the game.
The background isn't doing much to enhance the experience to me - this game would be just as enjoyable (and be a smaller download) if you just had a simple background. It would also make everything else a bit easier to see. Then again, it isn't hurting anything either.. it's just uninteresting.
Being told that my scores were too low for the leaderboard was a bit aggravating. It's never a good thing to be told the game you were playing is a test and you failed it, since I wasn't actually intending to play for a global leaderboard to begin with. Maybe allow my scores to sit on a local scoreboard, then give the option to send the highest score?
Overall though, if this were on Greenlight, I might consider it. It's not yet at a state that I would be willing to pay money for, but it's got potential. It might work well as a mobile game.
Thanks, and yeah I've been stuck on alpha for a long time now. Since your comment is so detailed let me go into a bit of the thinking behind it.
One of the leading goals I've been following is design by subtraction. The idea that you should take away everything but the core gameplay and let that drive the game. So the format settled on focusing just on the color matching gameplay and each gate that comes adds its own mixup of the core. There were times when I tried messing with the core gameplay and tried some more complexity, but it just didn't feel like BoxByte anymore.
It could always use some more polish, I'm really a one man team though so it's been a struggle to get even what I have lol.
I'm not sure what's up with the warning. I think that's just a Unity thing because there's no actual networking code in the game itself.
I agree about the text. I find ui design to be some of the most boring work involved with a game so there are some instances where the ui could definitely be better.
The tutorial seems to be something that people are the most divided on. Some people really like it and some really hate it. I just think that's how it goes with tutorials. No one wants to be stuck reading when they want to be playing. But I found it was really important for people to understand the game. I tried to make it as short as I could if that helps :)
It's funny that you mention those three, because every one of those had significant changes in the past three months. Ultimately the game is one big challenge though, so what I did was try to focus on what the hardcore BoxByte player would want. The downside of course is that there are a lot of cool things later on in the game that some players will never see. In the end I just didn't want to make it easier at a detriment to those core players who will play it most.
I really would have liked to have had more puzzles, but it's mostly a game about skill and tactics. However I don't agree about there being artificial difficulty. But I definitely think it could be too hard and that's part of the reason I'm posting this to hear experiences.
What makes you think it's a general sci-fi world? It's actually a very dark oppressive world. Is there a game world? ;)
I can't comment much on the background, I've already said too much on the world... But all is not as it seems...
About the score, I guess it could be handled better. But it's really meant to be a kind of goal. I don't really want to gravitate towards a kind of participation award though. Of course that leaves it with some sharp edges but that's part of what makes it BoxByte. It's unforgiving but always fair.
With a game like BoxByte I don't think it's something that can cater well to every demographic. I definitely made efforts to try to smooth it out, but in some cases I decided to leave it as is and hopefully the demographic that likes it will like it more for that.
Having said that, I might be completely off. This isn't an exact science after all. In that case I'm definitely willing accept that and take input :)
>I find ui design to be some of the most boring work involved with a game so there are some instances where the ui could definitely be better.
I kind of feel the same way. Unfortunately, if you're going to do this all on your own, you're going to have to find a way to get interested in everything. I've only finished one game myself (a very poor Space Invaders clone, without Unity) and getting text to work was definitely one of the most boring and tedious parts of it.
>The tutorial seems to be something that people are the most divided on. (...)
My issue with the tutorial wasn't the length per se, but the presentation, which seemed a bit to be talking down to the player. Honestly, I figured out the gimmick as soon as I saw the button changed the color of the player sprite and that the other sprites had similar colors, it's not that complicated. I think maybe just tone down the anthropomorphism and it will be better.
>It's funny that you mention those three (...)
I just found the balance to be off somewhere I couldn't quite pin down. It might just be a matter of taste though - I'm more used to shooters and bullet hell games. If other people complain about it then it might be a problem worth looking into, but you're right that you can't please everybody.
>What makes you think it's a general sci-fi world?
The general visual and graphic theme seems to be technological and futuristic.
Good luck with it.
Since you are using Unity, have you considered putting a build for the web up somewhere? I don't even know if it would work, but it might be worth it to put a browser-capable demo somewhere.
>I kind of feel the same way. Unfortunately, if you're going to do this all on your own, you're going to have to find a way to get interested in everything.
Oh yes I definitely agree. I don't want the game to be worse because I couldn't bring myself to do something boring XD
> I think maybe just tone down the anthropomorphism and it will be better.
That actually bugs me a bit too. But I had chance to gauge the response at a convention and I found that female gamers actually like the game a lot and they react positively to the tutorial. But I'll have to see the general reaction and I may end up throwing it out.
>The general visual and graphic theme seems to be technological and futuristic.
Sounds like a good facade.
>Since you are using Unity, have you considered putting a build for the web up somewhere?
I tried an online build but it seems like unity webplayer is being phased out for the html5 backend. I tried it out in that but the performance was horrible so I'm not sure if there's an easy path on that.
Thanks for the encouragement! Do you have a website yourself or something I can follow you on?
> Do you have a website yourself or something I can follow you on.
I have an empty Wordpress that i'm being lazy about updating with a child theme and actual content (I kind of fell out of blogging a few years ago.) I am planning on doing (and maybe blogging about) the one game a month challenge[0] starting next year, so maybe I can post it to HN then. I'm not good at selling myself and I really need to work on my online presence again.
I'm on twitter at @kennethrapp but there's nothing interesting there either.
Really, I think the basic idea is alright, but the actual gameplay and design need a bit of polish.
However, as soon as I opened it up I got a warning from Windows. If I have to choose to let your app through the firewall that's a bad sign. I feel like a beta shouldn't be making network requests and posting my score to a remote server (which is what appears to be happening here.)
The text seems too difficult to see in some cases. For instance - the red text on the grey dialog box background in the tutorial. Some of the UI elements are difficult to read as well, and seem superfluous. I kind of feel like the only thing I need to have is an immediate idea of my health and maybe the score.
I thought the tutorial was a bit condescending. The mechanics of the game aren't that complicated, I just want to know what the controls do, what the basic premise is, etc.
I feel like one or more of the following are probably true: the enemies are too small, the field is too large, or the controls are not responsive enough. Maneuvering to catch the enemies seemed to take far more effort than needed. Perhaps if the movement were restricted to a grid or some kind of graph the actual puzzle aspect of the game could become more prominent. I understand it's supposed to be difficult, but the difficulty in this case seems a bit artificial.
The klaxon sound effect was annoying, and to me sort of detracted from the general sci-fi action feel of the game.
The background isn't doing much to enhance the experience to me - this game would be just as enjoyable (and be a smaller download) if you just had a simple background. It would also make everything else a bit easier to see. Then again, it isn't hurting anything either.. it's just uninteresting.
Being told that my scores were too low for the leaderboard was a bit aggravating. It's never a good thing to be told the game you were playing is a test and you failed it, since I wasn't actually intending to play for a global leaderboard to begin with. Maybe allow my scores to sit on a local scoreboard, then give the option to send the highest score?
Overall though, if this were on Greenlight, I might consider it. It's not yet at a state that I would be willing to pay money for, but it's got potential. It might work well as a mobile game.