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[Mike Lee]

Ch_sm (or Chasm) is a Flash game I've been working on over the past week. I was trying to create a simple gameplay mechanic and couple that with some nice evocative atmosphere for something a little different. The graphics for the most part are intentionally minimal and I attempted to keep the gameplay itself simple yet hopefully compelling.

I'm interested in general thoughts on the game. Feel free to critique gameplay, sound, opaque-ness, anything. The game itself is functionally done, but I'm not against adding a few more things to make the experience a little more interesting.

Edit:
Updated the game to fix some minor bugs and improve pace a little.

Edit 2:
I'm testing a pretty significant change which is the addition of monsters and smashers! Because I'm unsure of this feature I didn't add the tutorial screen yet. But basically Z causes the spikes to come smashing down.

Why would you want to use these smashers? Why to stop the monsters from crossing the screen of course. A single monster crossing the screen will result in the end of the game! So be sure to smash any monster before they get across. Remember that smashing will also kill any people on that pillar also.

Edit 3:
More bugfixes! New flying monster! Adjusted pacing to emphasize monster versus people and let sinking happen at a slower rate.

Edit 4:
Bugfixes, better tutorial and instructions, and achievements (of sorts).

Link:
Play game here (Flash)

Screens:






Made with Flashpunk. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

Thanks in advance guys!

[goshki]

Unfortunately I can't start it on Linux. :/ Neither C nor Z work. I believe the problem is that you require the buttons to be hold for some time and on Linux Flash Player detects holding key as key-repeats. (I have the same problem on Linux in my game TTTCW).

[LegacyCrono]

It's pretty good! It feels like a simplified Lemmings, simple but it's quite fun.
The audio is great and it matches the atmosphere very well. It becomes rather repetitive after a while, or at least I got bored before anything different happened. I think that the moody atmosphere makes the gameplay feel even more monotone, though. It feels like it's missing something...  

[Coz]

I'm running Arch Linux, on Firefox 3.6.8 and Adobe Flash 10.1 r53. It works fine here.


Now, about the game:

- Holding Z to start then hold Z to skip? opposite actions for the same key one after the other where I might keep the key pressed? =/

- Then, the Z key does nothing during the gameplay, and I'm not told how to play. I can hear the frustrated players already =P

- About the game itself: I like the gameplay =]  I think that if you increased the speed of the people a little, the game would be more fun. Also you could randomize that speed a little, so that some humans are faster than others, and maybe those can be in a different color and worth double, to make the game less boring. You can introduce these faster humans after a few seconds( not right away ), to freshen up the gameplay.

[Tycho Brahe]

Wow, I love the sound and the graphics! It's kinda fun, but I think it needs a little more explanation, and perhaps some more variation of types of people (apart from the glowing ones). I only worked out the controls through trial and error, so that might be something to let people know as well.

Apart from that, great presentation, but It needs a bit more to keep people playing for longer.

[Draknek]

This is very slow-paced, I wonder if the gameplay could be made more hectic somehow without impacting the (excellent) feeling the music/graphics give. At the moment I feel a game goes on too long.

[lapsus]

love the feel and the pacing is nice (for me)
wish i had some way to control the music from controlling the pillars, but that is my usual wish with every game, to influence the music
the music is great, either way.

[kcaze]

I'd have to agree with Draknek. The game is pretty slow paced which doesn't suit it. I think you could make the speed of everything (the people's speed, pillar's speed, time till next drop) all dependent on a single variable and then speed everything up as time progresses. That'll make it more hectic I think.

btw, is 150 on my first try a good score 

[Mike Lee]

Thanks for the feedback so far guys! I've added a few tweaks for now that should fix some of the minor complaints, making movement and speed a little faster for everyone. I'm thinking about the pace issue and once I get a little time to set down post-GDC I'll try to streamline it so it's a little more responsive and faster. I've also been thinking about adding an additional hazard or two such as a monster that would create a little more variety with the gameplay.

[DLudwig]

Hi there,

Interesting game.  Sadly I was playing on a computer w/o sound, and didn't get to head the audio.    My comments will instead be focused on other aspects.

Here are a few of my thoughts and observations:

- the visual style was very neat, IMO.

- there were a number of times I would've liked to have been able to switch to a far pillar quickly.  I kept expecting to be able to hold down the left or right arrows and have the pillars start switching quickly.

- I found that the 2nd tutorial screen, the "save people" + "avoid falls", etc one, skipped by a bit too quickly.  On my first run of the applet, I went into it still holding down Z from the previous screen, and it skipped by a bit too quickly.

- a different way to illustrate the goal of saving people might've be nice, perhaps via a running "save" counter, or a more prominent visual effect indicating that someone had been saved.  I saw the numbers popping up in the screen's top-right corner, but I found them hard to read.  They went by very quickly.

- the "glowers raise" part of the tutorial confused me a bit at first.

[Ice Water Games]

I am a bit confused and maybe I just don't understand the game entirely, but I figure that's worthwhile as feedback as well.

I am trying to help the people to move from the left side to the right, without falling off of huge cliffs, I think? I do this for a little bit, and no matter how well or how poorly I do, it ends after maybe less than a minute, then moves to a score screen that says
"
1405 people saved
1405 people lost
"
And then I can either replay or go back to the menu. Maybe it just is still in a phase of big reworks? I just don't understand the scoring system, why it ends, or what that screen really means.



Anyways, I love the aesthetic, and the sound is really complementary. The game concept feels novel and simplified and like it has a lot of potential, and I think that a lot of that potential has already been put to good use. Nice job so far!

[GameDevLife]

I second the commenters that don't understand the gameplay.  I see that I can select columns and raise and lower them.  I see that people are dying when they're turning red.  Apart from that I'm lost.

Also, the "glowers raise" box doesn't tell me enough.  I see the glower -- is the raising that he steps up?

Nice atmosphere but...

[Mike Lee]

Hplus, fixed that bug with the game over screen. Thanks for point it out (accidentally left some debug code in).

I think the general feedback right now is that a lot of people still don't understand what they need to do while playing. I will try to implement more hints and subtle touches to help convey some more information about that.

[Ice Water Games]

Thanks for the fix; I really think this game has great potential.

I think someone else mentioned it earlier, but I'd like to suggest that you use arrow keys for menu related things. So many games have zxc keyboard commands, and asking me to use them to navigate the menu kind of implicitly suggests that I should try to use them later, in the game. You maybe could just use arrow keys as different menu options, to reinforce the use of those. I do think that clicking to start makes sense, since a lot of times people won't remember/know to select the SWF before trying to play, and it makes it frustrating for them -- this removes that as a possibility.

I'd like to see a higher challenge level, but that's my only concern for the game at this point (and I'm sure that was already on its way).

[Guert]

Alright, lemme start this by saying that I’m going to be very blunt. And I mean very blunt


I have absolutely no idea of what I'm supposed to do.


The game is reminiscent of a simplified "lemmings". I know I have to lower or raise pillars so that little people move from the left to the far right without dropping from too high. The pillars height changes occasionally so I have to keep moving my cursor form one pillar to another. That’s what I understand. Now what I don't understand...

The game abruptly ends without any warnings. Everything is going smooth; I got my nice stair case going on and then BAM! Game over. I saved 9 people, killed none. What made the game end? What did I do? Everything was running smoothly. Maybe I was doing something wrong. So I tried doing the opposite; let’s kill as much as possible. I just dropped the first pillar to the lowest point and managed to save 5 people and killed 32. How the hell did I save people by trying to kill them? No matter what I do, there are more “game-generated” results than anything I have tried to interact with.

The visuals are minimalist and the mood of the game is strong but I have no idea whatsoever of the message and the reason why that is. One of the reasons why I don’t understand the message nor the intention behind the game is that I can’t play the game in the first place. No matter what I do, it remains blurry noises. I know my main goal, which is to save people, but the game won’t let me do that. Even if I have an excellent strategy executed to perfection to save the entire human race, the game tells me I failed despite telling me I have killed none.

And then I stopped playing.

Sorry

[SplinterOfChaos]

I like the concept, but like everyone else, i was a little confused about why it ended. I could only save 12 people, but no one died at least.

I like the idea of push-and-hold Z or X to navigate the menu--how it slowly starts working, but the player should see something happen the moment they press it. This will reinforce that pressing the button works, but holding it is required to proceed. It works well enough as-is, though.

[Mike Lee]

Hey everyone, new version of Ch_sm is up for testing and feedback! Things got delayed due to GDC and post-GDC recovery period and I didn't notice that the old version had a game-ending bug that killed the game for a lot of people. Sorry about that guys.

Link to the newest version of Ch_sm

IMPORTANT NOTE:
I'm testing a pretty significant change which is the addition of monsters and smashers! Because I'm unsure of this feature I didn't add the tutorial screen yet. But basically Z causes the spikes to come smashing down.

Why would you want to use these smashers? Why to stop the monsters from crossing the screen of course. A single monster crossing the screen will result in the end of the game! So be sure to smash any monster before they get across. Remember that smashing will also kill any people on that pillar also.

Thanks guys, let me know how the monster/pillar-smashing mechanic works and of course any other bugs with the game.

[Guert]

Hey there!
I like the new version better. When I saw your update, I went straight for the game and didn't read your post so I missed the Z smasher thing. So when i played the game, I saw the spikes and figured that, if I raise my bars too high, they'd kill my people. When I saw an enemy, I tried to raise my bar high enough to splash him in the spikes. However it just went through it and did not die with a very high drop. I then played with the Z button and it was fun too.

Here's what I did: the first thing I do in the game is to raise the last pillar to the right to the maximum height (there's also a little bug where it can raise higher than supposed to). Then, i simply make sure my ground is all placed correctly to gather all folks next to the huge pillar. When and enemy comes on the last pillar, I just smash it. Then, All I gotta do is send the whole bunch of people on their way. Only thing is that I need to watch out on the left because, with the rumblings, the early people can die from a high drop.

I'd personally stick with the no button to smash. I played both ways and they are both fun. However, I kinda like the simplicity of having enemies react to the same rules as the characters. Maybe the spikes are too much and only have the enemy drop from pretty high could work. Like, you’d have to rise a pillar pretty high to make it drop and hurt. You'd have to make sure none of your folks are on it when doing so. And by raising a pillar, you block the road to further saves. To be honest, I’d try the following rules to really see which is better:

• Enemies can move to the left
• When enemies reach the white to the left, game over
• Enemies cannot climb
• Enemies can be killed by dropping from a high drop
• Enemies have 3 times the health of a basic character meaning the drop must be 3 times as high as a normal drop to kill them.
• Spikes could be removed

Maybe it would be harder, maybe boring, but by having a build like this you’ll be able to compare between using the smasher or not. It depends on what mood you want for your game. Adding the smasher makes it more action while using the existing mechanics makes it more strategically. I’d go for the strategy because it has a higher cost: if you want to eliminate someone, you take more risk and stop you form saving further people and it makes the enemies more “human” (taking that you are saving humans ). In all cases, you got something good going on and I like the new version

Good work!

[SplinterOfChaos]

Now that i could play it, i found it relaxing. When the platforms started to lower to the bottom of the screen, i kinda got a hit that the end game was coming and i'm not sure why i died at that point because i don't remember seeing a red guy at that moment. There might have been, if i just didn't see it or wasn't paying attention.

[RichMakeGame!]

hey there

my second play through made a lot more sense.. first time around for some reason I had the impression the red guy would kill my dudes so I was struggling to keep him away and neglecting the people..

once I realised the actual rules, it was more fun

the only thing which consistantly left me irked, was when a rumble/shift changed the landscape so that guys would instantly start dieing- eg, a fall gap would widen just enough to kill guys as they were coming to it.

in this scenario, I felt it was very unfair to be judged for circumstances that the game forced upon me.. I kind of wonder about ways to negate this a little, for instance keeping the guys still after a quake just long enough for you to react to this situation occuring. I dunno! but in lemmings, it feels like each and every death is your fault- in this, less so

but, I enjoyed playing, and love the whole mood you've created!
-rich