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[esayitch]

Hiya!

Glacier Hall is an arena platformer in which you fight incoming hordes of vikings and wolves. The game is somewhat influenced by Super Crate Box but it has a tower-defense twist as well.

It also has an interactive tutorial and retro-pixel graphics. Can you get a highscore?

Here it is:

http://www.mimogames.com/glacierhall

Any comments on the difficulty curve are useful (I've received comments saying it's too easy, while others say it is too difficult...)

Any other comments are also welcome!

[lapsus]

Nice little game!
First off; I really like the tutorial - teached me everything I needed to know.

For me the game was quite hard - at first but then I realized it all came down to what power you got in the first big box that appeared.

If I got something like lokis trickery it was basically game over since I had not the other power ups to manage the increased number of enemies.

However as soon as I got the "max-everything"-powerup from the first box the game got trivial.
I no longer had to move around to pick up other power ups and could stay on the upper platform, I killed my self when I got close to 60k points (all time #1 !) since it became boring By then I hadnt even been close to dying.

So yeah, nice game but lacks a few more enemy-types and the difficulty is random depending on what you got in the box.

[esayitch]

For me the game was quite hard - at first but then I realized it all came down to what power you got in the first big box that appeared.

It's supposed to be easy even if you got something bad... the secret is to let the first wolf get to the bottom, and even if the first box held monsters, to also let them get to the bottom, as that's what the defenders are there for

I killed my self when I got close to 60k points (all time #1 !) since it became boring  By then I hadnt even been close to dying.

Sweet! I normally get the power ups even after I'm maxed out, and sometimes hurt myself really bad doing so, which is why I've never been able to last so long. But essentially if aiming for a high score it just becomes a game of endurance: how long can you -not- make a mistake that will cost you the game?

Thanks for your comments and I'm glad you enjoyed it

[dbb]

Yeah, I like this game, and I  really think it would be worth re-working a little to sort out the difficulty curve.

Like Lapsus, I found that the game got easier as I went on, rather than the other way round. In the beginning with basic stats, I couldn't kill any of the wolves at all, but then as soon as I got everything maxed out I could kill everything easily. Also, as Lapsus said, once you've got everything powered up to the max there's no incentive to move around the arena to collect more.

I think one of the things that makes Supercratebox work so well is that it constantly forces you to run around to random points in the arena, preventing you from just camping in a safe spot and killing everything as soon as it appears.

Maybe don't introduce the harder enemies until later in the game, once a certain time has passed, or the player is powered up to a certain level? Maybe have powerups wear off after a while, so you have to keep collecting them?

Finally, the other thing I think would improve it would be variable-height jumping, depending on how long you held the button down for. It would give a greater sense of control and make the physics fell less floaty if you could do quick, little jumps just by tapping the button. Again, like SCB.

Overeall, though, I really like it. I prefer small, tightly-focussed games like this to big, overambitious, messy ones, but I do think that it's even more important with games like this to tweak the gameplay so the balance is just right.

If you do carry on working with this I'll be really interested to see how it develops.

[esayitch]

I'm toying with the idea of making a sequel with some story, abilities, levels, etc. when I get some time (probably end of Feb), so it's going to be tweaking this one or making a new one altogether, for sure .

Your comments were really helpful, if you need my input on anything, just point me there  .

[Desert Dog]

It's loading, or at least, I think it is. I just see a big blinking ad saying 'play now' with no indication on where to click if you want to play your game. So have a 'loading game' button or something, I think. (maybe it takes longer to load on my computer, I don't know.) I do know I clicked the title banner a few times to see if that'd make the game play.

It did load, and I hit the play button. It's fun game, I wouldn't say it was too easy, and can easily see why people would say it was too hard. I think it's o.k. as it is.

[simono]

stupid as it sounds: i too had problem locating the start button

Was a fun little game! and second' everything dbb said. wolves were very strong at first, but I assumed that's to show me, that the game is not over just because one bugger got through

[lapsus]

Just a minor thing;
Thinking about the game again much of the problem was that the difficulty never ramped up enough.

With max upgrades I could kill the enemies fast enough to never have more than one enemy "active" at a given moment. Making them spawn from both sides at the same time would make it much harder or perhaps spawn something on different parts of the level that I need to pick up so the player can't just stand in one spot the whole game. (bad example but ... it is cold and you have some kind of stamina that decreases and you need to pickup mead or whatever to maintain it or you will freeze to death)

[esayitch]

@Desert Dog & Simono
I added some feedback in the preloader about the loading progress, thanks for alerting me to that (was in a rush to get it done on time).

@lapsus

Thanks a lot for your input! I'm planning on making a sequel later this month, and your suggestions are really helping me design it

Also, the game launched on Kongregate and Newgrounds yesterday, so if you liked it and feel like helping a dev out, here are the links:

NG:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/561205
Kong:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/esayitch/glacier-hall?acomplete=glaci

[supershigi]

I thought you did a nice job with the tutorial; it was succinct and cute, and it explained everything well.  The controls felt very natural, and it was easy to get into the game right off the bat. 

Unlike the other posters, the first time I played I actually never found a "sweet spot" to stand in (and I missed a few of the power-ups), so for me the game did become more difficult as time went on and I was eventually overrun.  But I can see how that would happen if I played more times... The best suggestion I can give to combat that problem would be to come up with a counter for all of those "too easy" scenarios.  For example, if players are always camping the same spot, you can design an enemy that avoids the player's reach either by jumping or having a special shield which forces the player to move.  Or, you could design levels in such a way that the player is unable to progress unless they grab an item that is outside of their comfort zone. 

Overall I think you did a great job, and it seems like there's plenty of room to expand the gameplay for a sequel as you mentioned.

[Falmil]

I found the video ads to be intrusive. After dying I got a video ad and my cursor disappeared so I couldn't get to the "skip" button. This happened again after I died again and got a bit irritating. I don't have any problem with the image ads though.

[AdamB]

Haha realy cool game man! i quite like the Viking feel to it, And i like a man who has enough axes he can just throw them about willy nilly