Looks awesome! I just had a similar idea, though my thought was to build the ship itself rather than building walls in the arena. Feel free to take that idea if you want

Anyway, looking forward to it. I subscribed to your blog.

Finished all the puzzles. Didn't really grab me like SCALE did, though I did like "Getting a Foot in the Door" and "Like A Rolling Stone" puzzle-wise.  

- Kind of buggy. In "Getting a Foot in the Door," I can grow beyond the bounds of the initial room and totally break the collision detection. In "Take a Deep Breath," I dropped the block into the first pit, only to have it get stuck in the lower-left corner, unable to grow or shrink. 6A's solution usually involving a block getting stuck in a toggled floor felt a bit wrong.

- Finicky timing puzzles like "Getting a Foot in the Door II" and the last level I didn't find that satisfying to solve. Nor the continual jumping needed in the shrink laser levels.

- I expected to spawn near the "next" level in the level select screen after beating a level.

- Level design doesn't always respect a player's time. e.g. Starting 9c on the wrong side of the pushable block just adds complexity and time to the level in a way that's trivial and unnecessary at that point in the difficulty curve.

- Special cases like blocks growing and shrinking with your character, needing to hold "F" to make them grow, and blocks attached to invisible springs need to be visually communicated to the player in much clearer ways.

- This game doesn't really feel playtested. Suggestion: wrangle up some students at your university to help test the game. Watch their playthroughs without offering any help or commentary.

The last one is indeed annoying - it may be better suited as an "extra" puzzle.

Don't feel you need to include every level you design, even as an extra. Sometimes a shorter, more polished game can leave a better impression than one whose length is padded with self-described "annoying" levels.

Thanks for your detailed feedback! It's very helpful and I'll address it soon. I playtested a bit but I plan on doing much more. Some follow up questions:

- Do you have a copy of SCALE? The link on the TOJAM site is broken. I'd love to play it - hopefully I'm still doing something new with the mechanic

- What was your solution to "Getting a foot.. II"? That wasn't meant to be a timing solution, so I need to fix the layout if you found one.

- And, I'll definitely consider cutting Level 10. I've cut many puzzles already, and if I can't "extract the essence" of that solution, then I'll cut it.

Thanks again!

I didn't play all the puzzles but I think you will find you need to focus a lot on the way the puzzles work and in what order you present different mechanics to the player so as not to alienate or confuse the player. I have been reading a lot of stuff about game design lately which I had lost sight of in all the code I've been looking at, so sorry if I go into too much depth about that, just been on my mind lately but I think it is very important in a game like this.

I'm with TheAdam, that last level seems too tricky or maybe I missed something in skipping ahead too quickly.

I did enjoy a little moment in the first level when I realised I had to grow really large and just jump over a small area I previously passed through. It is a nice little introduction so the player knows that this game is going to mess with their perception of scale.

I also liked the scale up and scale down areas and they could work for some interesting puzzles. Slowly introducing these kinds of things to the player then when the player has seen it work, bring something else into the mix and make them see it in a new light and how to use it differently, that will help with those ah-ha moments I think.

I think it has some potential with more polish and really well planned puzzles.

Thanks for the advice. Indeed, the design and structure will make or break this game. Was there anything in particular that you found confusing?

Really cool idea, and well executed for the most part. There are some little collision problems, but nothing game breaking. The one thing I would say could stand to be improved is that a couple of the puzzles made me feel like I had to almost break the game in order to advance... like use collision glitches in order to advance. Not sure if that was the case or if that's just what worked for me. I can't for the life of me figure out how to finish the last one right now... it seems like I probalby have to jump and shrink and hope to fit in the hole. If that's the case, I'm not really a fan of that design. Seems way too hard.

Also, I really like what you did with the art in terms of simplicity and elegance, but the player character seems slightly out of place in my opinion.

Thanks for the friendly feedback! I agree about the collision issues and the art, and they'll get fixed eventually.

Could you give more details about what puzzles you feel you had to "break"?

The last one is indeed annoying - it may be better suited as an "extra" puzzle.

Cheers!

Hi folks,
"Pupil" is a puzzle-platformer based on the ability to grow and shrink your character (the little box dude). There aren't too many puzzles in there right now, but I'd love some early feedback.

Play in your browser (Unity FTW)

The prettiest screen shot I have so far:



INTRO:
I'm Steve, an aspiring indie game developer. I've worked briefly at a AAA studio as an engineer, but decided to do a PhD instead (almost done). But, I think I will definitely go back in to the industry in some form, whether indie or not, cuz I just love making games that much. My background is mostly in graphics and gameplay programming, but I have a strong desire to grow as a designer as well. So, here is my first prototype submitted for your approval. I've been working on it for over half a year in my spare time, and although it's far from finished, I figure now's a good time to get critical feedback.

FEEDBACK DESIRED:
The main questions I want to answer are: 1) Do the controls feel good? How could they be improved?  2) Are the puzzles interesting and give you that "ah-ha!" moment? 3) Did you have fun playing it, and would definitely be interested in playing more puzzles with these mechanics? 4) How do you like the music?  5) Anything else that comes to mind, such as puzzle flow, design, points of frustration, etc.

I went to the NYU jam, and our team was proper awesome! HORSE Beat-Off Xtreme, we won for best audio (although plenty of other games had awesome audio): http://globalgamejam.org/2012/horse-beat-xtreme

Download it for OSX here: http://globalgamejam.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2012/4289/osx%204.zip

Yeah I guess that's fair. I guess there are so many amazing services out there that are free, like DropBox, my expectations of what I should pay for are completely skewed.

I'll start using MailChimp then - it seems popular and I like the interface.

Thanks folks!

Dynamic patrol routes make the game less about manipulating a set system and more about reacting to random elements. There might be little or no way to ensure that the player can beat a certain stage because as a designer you don't have a clue what the conditions of that stage will be.

But the designer does have a clue, if the dynamic paths are well designed. You can make the AI choose paths that none of the other guards are also wandering down, so you never get three guards in a corridor all watching each other's back or such. You can give the player ways to subtly modify guard's behaviour (MGS: tap on walls to create a distracting noise). There are ways this is entirely possible.

Also, completely forgot this when posting before: in Batman: Arkham Whichever, there is this kind of dynamic patrol AI - though it only really happens once you begin to terrify the guards.  Once they are sufficiently scared (by finding KO'd bodies) they'll start teaming up, looking over their shoulder, deviating from their normal routes, randomly investigating hidey holes you may or may not be in, shooting at the ceiling... and for me, that bit was the most fun :D

Keep in mind though that Arkham Asylum was a very different stealth game from most. I loved it, but the challenge (and fun for me) came more from being efficient rather than getting past the level at all (which in itself, wasn't ever too difficult).

Just as a general rule of game design: You can do ANYTHING you want, you just have to make sure that everything else in the game supports it properly.

Hmmm I'm a bit surprised that these sites charge at all for anything...cuz really I all want is the ability to maintain a list of email addresses automatically (subscribe, unsub, etc.). Are the services that these sites offer worth it for indie devs?

mood is kind of vague; it's hard to know whether some use of graphics qualifies as mood or not.

Yes, there isn't a dividing line. But I think the Keep-It-Simple principle applies with mood, as it's less about what is made, and more about how it is made.

So we don't aim to generate mood by adding lots of new things specifically for that purpose; rather we aim to generate it mainly by refining the things that already exist (or are needed) to communicate the game state.

this seems to contradict what you said earlier, because now you're saying that mood should only be generated through things which give information about the game state. wouldn't this mean that, for example, graphical elements which communicate no game state at all are always bad? for instance, the rain effect in a link to the past during the start of the game. or the little animals which run around in knytt and knytt stories and within a deep forest that the player cannot interact with. or shooting stars in the background of a starry sky. or little sparkle effects that occur on bodies of water in various games. i think it'd be a pity to remove things like that just because they don't provide information about the game state

Or the dialogue in Portal 1/2...

I think you absolutely can and should add things that only serve to set the mood. They should not, however, contradict or get in the way of the gameplay (unless you're doing this on purpose to make a point). "Keep It Simple, Stupid" is more of an engineering principle rather than an artistic one.

I just want ppl to be able to subscribe to an announcements mailing list. What good ones do people use for their games?

I got a ticket for the NYU jam. I like the idea of going there and getting everything laid out, and then teleconferencing for the rest of it... sounds easier than, say, sleeping over and I can use the fancy programs on my PC...  

Just bringin my macbook and a sleeping bag

I'll be at the NYU jam next weekend!

I think presentation is absolutely important, but "good presentation" can mean a lot of things, and it totally depends on the game. You don't need AAA budgets and the latest shader tech, but you need to put good thought into it.

Sound can help greatly as well. I love the click of the jewels when they drop in Bejeweled, and I think it really adds to the fun of the experience. It's kinda dumb, but hey, humans are drawn to aesthetics.

But ultimately, all this stuff is moot if the game play sucks

Kind of echoing what people have said here... but a lot of shmups already have light RPG elements in them. And they're quite fun! So I definitely would be interested in such a hybrid. One of the things I dislike about most JRPGs are the menu-driven battles...

So go forth and prototype! And show it to us