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My game Bloom has been reviewed by the online games magazine Thirteen 1 (page 40). According to the review Bloom is too hard and / or fast, and I also seem to remember other people having similar opinions. This gets me thinking; would there be a way to fix that? Since the game is already released and has sold at least one copy Indeed I feel very motivated to learn from this experience, and I'll surely try some ideas out. Stay tuned! |
Submitted by johno
Tue, 07/14/2009 - 09:32
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, I can't really get away with completely changing it (this would also mess up the replays), but perhaps I could add stuff to it that allows people to play it in a way that works better for them? Since we do iterative and collaborative development here at Spell of Play, it seems only natural to me to continue tweaking the game for the benefit of all users.
You could add another 'game
You could add another 'game mode' to it. Similar maps, but with better controls. Don't know what to say right now. Gonna download the game, and play it to get a better opinion.
Ok, I played the demo. The
Ok, I played the demo. The graphics are indeed very well done, and the sound is great. Now, regarding controls, I find it a little weird having to press A or D when wall jumping. I think it would be better to have things automated, like after wall jumping the wall in front of you, don't press the A key to wall jump the one behind you, and then press D to wall jump the one in front. That's what makes it frustrating. But besides that, everything seems really neat.
Aha!
Maybe that is the big misconception; you really don't have to press A or D to walljump, you just hold down K. Trying to steer with A or D while bouncing around will indeed probably just reduce your horizontal speed.
I guess that people implicitly think that it works like classic Super Mario or similar, in that you have to actively do air-control, which you can but really don't have to, especially when doing the "back and forth" walljumps.
I would suggest that you run towards a wall using A or D, and then jump with K and hold it down, while releasing the A or D keys. This way you just bounce around like crazy, which is the intent.
I assumed that the review didn't like the fact that as long as you hold down K, you continue to wall-jump. This can result in a lot of frantic bouncing around if you don't release K precisely.
My thoughts on changes (right now) are:
1) A time scaler (to lower the global game speed), so that everything remains the same but is just slower. This should give people a better chance to react to game events.
2) An option that makes wall-jumps manual, i.e. you have to press K for each jump. This was the original intent, but some of my friends convinced me that the current "automatic" wall-jumps made the game easier to play, since then you don't have to time jumps all the time.
3) Reading this back I realize that showing the keystates (what people are pressing) on the screen would help people learn even better when watching replays. Would this be useful?
Any other suggestions are of course welcome!
/johno
"you can't stop the change"
I played it again, and yeah,
I played it again, and yeah, (wall)jumping seemed fairly easy right now. What I noticed right away is the speed the player is moving. Extremely fast, including when jumping. Also, you show the keystates just on the first level, to get people used to the controls.
All I can say is learn,
All I can say is learn, change, iterate!
So I definitely think you should try out some changes. Possibly keeping stuff as options as you describe.
Absolutely! /johno "you
Absolutely!
/johno
"you can't stop the change"
i personally liked the way
i personally liked the way you bounce while holding.. it may just need to be clearer. it took me a while to figure out too. and it does cause some excessive jumping when there's too little space after narrow passages which is really the only downside here.
heh am i the only one who bought the game?
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Solid Core Entertainment
Developer of Roadclub
I played this using wine (on
I played this using wine (on ubuntu) and it ran in about half normal speed, I found this not only easier but a lot more fun.
D
More options in the works
I have implemented a number of different speeds and am going to implement an auto-jump option. Up on hUb ASAP.
/johno
"you can't stop the change"
great!
great!