Feedback wanted on game project [PC Web] *self promotion

[Albuquerque]

It's been seven months since this thread had a new post, so I thought I'd come add some flavor

I've played your demo off and on for the last week or so, trying different "builds", and I'm still not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing and what the various slots or (what I assume to be) power-ups are meant to do. Some of the powerups seem like they're non-applicable to certain weapons, but then they do unexpected things like add a second firing method? And sometimes it looks like I get powerups but it doesn't ask me which "slot" to install them? I haven't really figured it out.

I'm also clueless about how much damage I'm taking, or if I"m taking damage.

Finally, there's three of what appear to be character traits down the 2nd to right most column of the character build screen or whatever it is. However, I have really no clue what any of those traits really do? What's the chess piece about? An echoing ball? A lightning bolt makes me go faster or gives me more energy or?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Much appreciated! But I sidelined the project for the kind of reasons you've experienced. It ended up a real struggle and so it's been turned into something new and exciting, a passion project.

A fair amount of player confusion stems from me wanting the interface to be intuitive and language-agnostic. Some people immediately got my symbols and some didn't. I guess if you knew what the things were that were being represented, the symbols would be more obvious.

Onboarding is a really difficult part of game design!

You have two weapon loadouts, Yellow and Grey, and swap between them. Each loadout has three weapon slots and some character slots. When you get an upgrade, if it's a new weapon, you'll be asked which loadout to add it to. If it's an existing weapon, it upgrades it. The icons attempt to convey the upgrade as More Bullets or More Damage. If it's a character upgrade like Speed or Health, you'll also choose a loadout.

Upgrades are either weapons with fancy weapon graphics, or character with the spaceman/woman/being. Character upgrades are Health, Energy, Speed, Armour, Resistance...maybe a couple of blanks. So the Chess Rook card was damage mitigation I think, -1 damage per hit kind of thing.

It's very interesting how some games manage no instructions whatsoever and some fail. Is there a guaranteed visual language that can convey things? Does it need to be presented piecemeal to give the player a chance to learn? Also it seems people react to 'unknown' in two fairly distinct ways, either positively or negatively. Some don't like 'hand holding' and love to work things out themselves. Others get frustrated when they are lost and just want some instruction to make sense of it. I think it becomes harder if you are taking something that's very understood, and the Survivors formula has already established a mindset of expectations, and then mess with the formula so it no longer matches those expectations.

 

[Albuquerque]

Yeah, the difference between a card with the character and a card with a weapon made it obvious I was changing the related "thing". Some of the symbology made good sense, like a gun and a stopwatch seemed to "obviously" mean less time between shots. The character with a heart or shield icon meant more health or more shields. The icon with a ball and a "growing" radius seemed to indicate a larger area of effect... Counter examples were the character with a lighting bolt -- obviously energy, but there's no indicator for energy on the status bars along the left edge. What does energy actually provide my character? Speed? I'm pretty sure I found speed as the ball with the progressively larger arcs behind it. Shields? But shields have their own icon. Weapons power maybe?

Anyway, I'm still playing it. Some day I'll figure them all out haha

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Energy is for more powerful Energy Weapons which consume energy to fire. These are identified by glowy blue highlights on their line art.

Yeah, that communication is a bit of a stretch.

To be fair, the main interest was if people understood the loadout swap mechanic and if they liked it, or if it just made the genre too complicated. There's loads more to do to balance and inform.

 

[Albuquerque]

Ahhh, I didn't realize some of the weapons require energy. Does that mean they're stronger, or fire faster, or reach further, or some combo of the three?.

The loadout mechanic was intuitive enough, although I still haven't really mastered how to tailor each weapon to my liking.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ahhh, I didn't realize some of the weapons require energy. Does that mean they're stronger, or fire faster, or reach further, or some combo of the three?.

Yes. I think there's two? They use the same blue colouring in their weapons so you know they use energy. Only one I remember if the 'toxic cloud' gun. Those clouds get very powerful. It's not at all well balanced though and it's more a collection of concepts and ideas - pieces of fabric somewhat cut to shape waiting to be assembled into a gorgeous suit.

The loadout mechanic was intuitive enough, although I still haven't really mastered how to tailor each weapon to my liking.

Ultimately there's a deckbuilder mechanic under all this. You'd collect upgrades and choose the upgrade path for each weapon, so you might prefer firepower on the flamer, or range, or number of shots on the blaster, or firerate.