Defender Blender v0.3: Feedback Analysis

Well, I got some feedback for Defender Blender from Reddit and Unity forum. I must admit I thought more people was going to provide some feedback, however even with some few opinions it was a really enriching experience!

First of all, some really nice guy recorded himself playing the game! It is just great, even when his voice is sometimes almost impossible to hear, it was a really good test because I could see exactly how he played and the video recording eliminates the pressure of having the developer watching you playing his game (i.e. people tries to be nice when you -the developer- are present in order to avoid offend you).

Here is the video:

I notice a lot of things about this test. In summary:

1. Difficulty in controlling the character (this actually encompasses a lot of changes).
2. Pressing space for regenerating is not good, people ends jumping involuntarily and is hit by enemies, this causes frustration.
3. Level design feel unfair, sometimes the enemies seem to be unreachable, even when originally I thought people was going to understand that they were doing something wrong, they don't, I need to tune the level design in order to avoid that feeling of unfairness (which is one of the worst impressions you want to make to your players).
4. I need to make it more clear in multiple points.

On the other hand I had a couple comments in Unity forum, they were quite different:

TonyLi gave me an overall positive feedback, he was satisfied with the game and understood very well why I'm using Mega Man resources - in order to go and test the game mechanics right away. However he didn't completed the game, so I think that indirectly tells that something in the difficulty and fun was not right for him.

On the other hand Asvarduil gave me a very detailed and specific feedback, in short words he summarizes: "You've got a good concept for a refreshing take on the platformer, but you've got a lot of opportunities for improvement in both presentation and tuning."

Some interesting things about his feedback:

The good:

1. The overall game mechanic idea was somewhat refreshing for him. I'm glad he thinks so because honestly I'm using a new mechanic in here that I haven't see in other game so far.
2. He thought I was using some ideas for game design from ExtraCreditz, but I actually designed the level by myself, which I think is good because somewhat shows that I understand the idea behind the design, I'm not just doing whatever someone else told me to do :).

The bad (not bad :P, just opportunities for improvement):

1. This blog somehow captures the space bar button and makes difficult for people to start playing, this is a horrible mistake, I will put a workaround in the game's page until I have a definite solution.
2. The audio balance was not good for him. He recommends offer to the user audio adjustable options, however I think that those kind of options only works for experienced gamers or developers, I will try instead to find a good balance, maybe the music is just too loud.
3. He didn't like the text in the air, i.e. the texts must be part of the game universe. I agree, however I would integrate them to the game once I have my own graphics.
4. He said my grammar made my game look really inexpert. Well, as you might have noticed I'm not native English speaker, however is good to know how bad impression I can make due to that :(
5. Again, I need to tune up the character's controller, also he recommended some useful tips about the tiles and the height the character can jump (use the tiles as measurement unit, the players seem to understand that easily and identify how high they can jump).
6. He also found the game kind of unfair, this is again related with the level design.
7. Finally there were 3 points for which I think it would be more complicated to explain them than just copy/paste his opinion and my answer:

Asvarduil said: ↑

Similarly, the player's melee attack range is far greater than that of the animation. This is a problem particularly in the tutorial level when you have to jump and attack in order to clear the increasing block towers. I wound up doing it, but it was very wonky and unsatisfying.

"In previous versions some people told me that the attack was kind of small ranged, also I found necessary to expand the attack area in order to make the gameplay work because sometimes you need to attack enemies that are above you. I think I will address that fixing the animation, however I still need to analyze it, probably the fixes I'm planning to do in the jumping will help."

Asvarduil said: ↑

The Space/Z to recover energy mechanic also does not work.

"I have seen a few persons playing this game and when they run out of energy they seem to be pretty clear about being speeding up the regeneration process by pressing those keys. I think that maybe the problem is that it's not quite clear how much regeneration comes from the automatic increment and how much from the player input, I will look into that."

Asvarduil said: ↑

The POW and Health bubbles in my opinion would benefit from just going to to the cannon on collision, as pickups, instead of having to hit them to the cannon; as the level got more frantic, I found myself having to skip pickups, because I had other concerns (smiting foes.)

"Well, I actually like that you need to hit the bubbles because it forces the player to take decisions: should I jeopardize the cannon's health in order to get some pow? should I let those enemies to continue walking or attack them and loose that health bubble? should I hit those enemies even when I will push the bubble in the opposite side? In other words, I think it is a fun factor I want to keep, anyway you're not the first person that expected the bubbles to be picked up automatically by the cannon. I will think about how to make clear that you actually need to hit them."

Well, all this feedback gives me a lot to think of, I will work on that soon, however I'm also planning to work in some other projects I have. Let's see how following weeks go.

Thanks for reading!

Looking for feedback: How-to-play for Defender Blender

Defender Blender v0.3 is finally here :), I made this looking for feedback about the How-to-Play level. I also tweaked some stuff and fixed a few bugs.

Please take a look, I really appreciate your feedback!.

You can play it here!

Edit:
Lesson learned: Seems like Friday is the "official" date for look for feedback in Unity forums and Reddit, so I posted here:
Unity feedback Friday post
Reddit feedback Friday thread

I really got inspired when writing the Reddit one and wrote this, a little dramatic but I hope it will grab some attention:
Defend the secret Laser Cannon while it traverses the land to protect you people from an imminent attack!! Your willpower and hope to survive this challenge have converted you in a immortal killing machine, were you be able to use all your power to defend your people?! Don't be afraid, you are not alone! With your help, the Laser Cannon can gather power and destroy all the enemies in screen with a single powerful laser beam!!

Will it work? We will see :P

Game progress: Defender Blender - How to Play level

This week I had a little time to design my How to Play level.

The idea behind make a How to Play level is to make the player to understand the basics of the game, in this case these are the basics I wanted to cover:

1. Attack and jump. A very Mario starting I would say.

2. Get down of thin platforms. Additionally I put another enemy in order to remind the player how to attack the enemies.

3. Recover energy. This is a weird one, you basically make a suicidal jump. The idea is to teach the player that you actually don't die when your run out of health.

4. Items and health behavior. After attacking a bunch of enemies, hopefully the player will notice that the health points are also lost when attacking. Here I put an item to recover health and provide a little more explanation.

5. Jump attack. In this one I decided to not put any explanatory text, I believe it would be kind of obvious for the player that the jump attack exists.

Hopefully next week I will have a playable version and share it in Reddit looking for feedback.

Thank you for reading, see you next week!

Game progress: Defender Blender - Making walls

I started to write this telling how busy my week was and the problems I was having to make the walls work, then I thought that it would be much better to spend a little time trying to fix them rather than write a big post here, so I did it and I managed to make my walls work :)

I'm not going to go into many details this time. As I said in my previous entry the difficulty in make my walls was that I'm doing all my characters movement kinematic, i.e. not affected by the physics engine, instead I write how all the collisions should work, it gives me more control as developer but more headaches too.

Well, this is my results for this week:

1. The walls stop my character if touched from the sides (i.e. it can't go through the walls)
2. The character interrupts its jumping if hit a wall from below
3. The character can walk on the wall as with other platforms

1. 

2.

 3.

Next week will work on the how-to-play level design using this walls. Maybe I will need some other new elements but I'm not sure yet.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!