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[JoeCool]

Hi fellow game devs,

in the last few weeks I have been hard working on my new game Neo Circuit, a casual strategy game where you have to conquer the circuit inside a computer against enemy processors.

The game currently has 20 Levels, where 4 of them are tutorial levels. I have planned to add 10 more levels for the final game. I will release very soon on Flash (different portals), iPhone, iPad and Android. The game uses the flixel engine.

GFX, SFX and Music are final, only some minor tweaking will happen. My main concern is the level order and AI balancing.

If you have a look at the game I would greatly appreciate if you could write down for each level you play, if you find it too hard or too easy and what you think about the AI.

If you are interested in a dev diary you will find it at my google+ stream:
https://plus.google.com/115759205578788214765/posts

GAME LINK:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14102488/NeoCircuit/NeoCircuit.swf

Here are some screenshots for you convenience.

[Fyren]

I've played a couple of very similar games in the past, but their names escape me.  It seems you tried for a new mechanic through different types of nodes, but I'm not really clear on their differences.  RAM has a higher capacity, which is easy to see, but even after finishing the game I didn't really understand the difference between CPUs and GPUs.  It took me a while to realize upgrades let me make more connections. 

The AI seemed really terrible on the checkerboard-like level.  It basically killed itself by spreading to hubs and not taking a CPU.  The level with four colors with CPUs in the middle, GPUs on the bottom, and hubs on the top played out really chaotically each time I tried.

On a lot of later levels, it looked like it should be hopeless for the player, but I won anyway.  The AI doesn't seem to care about potential threats.  For example, in the last level, the AI's second and fourth CPU will empty out at some point and then you can take those two nodes easily.  It seems like there's no consideration for how quickly the opponent could potentially move units around or how "vulnerable" a node is.  Even when I push out to a hub adjacent to the two empty CPUs, there's not really any reaction.

Overall, it probably took me 30ish minutes to complete, with the last 5-10 levels taking a few tries each, usually.  It didn't feel really difficult, since playing the level a couple times I knew how the AI would act more or less, and so could deal with it.  It was less easy on the four color maps because there was a lot more unpredictability.

[JoeCool]

Fyren,

thanks a lot for your valuable feedback!

To clarify some game play aspects:

Node Types
- RAMs are superior defenders, have slow production and lots of space.
- HUBs have no production, but transport powers very fast.
- CPUs do produce powers very fast and are  medicore attackers and defenders.
- GPUs are slow producers and superior attackers and bad defenders.

Those node abilities are mentioned in the tutorials, but obviously not clear enough when playing the game. I thought about increasing the power size of GPU's, to make it clearer to the user, that powers processed by the GPU have more attacking power.

It's a casual strategy game, so I didn't want to be too strict with the rock paper scissor model. 30 Minutes for level 5-10 is actually quite decent, but only if you had fun while playing!

AI
Your analysis on the current AI is very good. It doesn't care about which node it is attacking. Its just very aggressive and tries to build defending supplies. So there is lots of room for improvements. Thanks for pointing out the checkerboard level here!

Its also true, that as soon as you have realized how the AI acts, you can win a lot easier, because there is no randomness in their decision. That was actually done on purpose, because I didn't want to frustrate the player with random AI movements. Maybe a wrong decision, but my target group is as mentioned not the hardcore player.


I will try to improve the AI a little today and see what I can come up with to make the roles of the nodes a little more obvious to the player.

[superbank]

I played till level 6.

It's cool but nothing is explained clearly enough. I don't know too much about the innards of computers so maybe that's it? I dunno. I mean, I know the RAM is memory the GPU is the graphics, CPU is the central processing unit etc. The game said certain things had better defense and offense but in the game there was no visible difference to my untrained eye. I noticed the RAM was slower to produce memory and that makes sense based on my limited knowledge, so I linked things up to the ram to store memory then linked the ram to an enemy to overpower it. I didn't even know what the oval nodes were since there's no label. And CPU/GPU were the same basically.

What ended up happening was this:

1. Link things to uninhabited nodes
2. Link to enemies
3. Cut connections of my CPU/GPU so they can upgrade and increase attack speed
4. Reconnect
5. If that doesn't work go back to step 3

Is that how it's supposed to be played? I felt like I was missing something because I didn't fully understand how to play.

Things I liked:

- It's an interesting concept.
- The visuals are charming.
- The music is catchy.

Things that could improve the game:

- Improved tutorial section.
- Visual indicators of stronger/weaker defense/offense/whatever
- Do different chips send stronger/weaker data packets (or whatever)? If so, a visual difference would be welcomed.
- Label for the unknown oval chip.
- In level 6 the four chips are very close together. Trying to break a diagonal connection in between them was somewhat difficult. I'm imagining doing that on my ipod and it would be annoying. Improve that somehow.

Hopefully it doesn't sound like I'm being too harsh. It's a cool game just it's hard to understand.

Played some more. It looks like the oval chips send things really fast so they're good for a single quick attack.

edit: Also on the chips that haven't been claimed, it's hard to read the number. Dunno if that's on purpose though.

[JoeCool]

Superbank,

great feedback! Thanks a lot, this is really helpful!

How you play
Your description is somehow correct, about what to do in the game. Additionally you can build support lines, to prepare attacks to stronger nodes or defend strong attacks.

Things that could improve the game
- Tutorial improvements are obviously necessary
- Visual difference for attacking/defending - I have to think about that and talk to my artist.
- The unknown oval chip is the hub and I agree, it needs a description and a level indicator
- Yeah, the game was originally planned for the iPad and I need to adjust chip sizes for the platforms I guess.

You don't sound harsh at all, I appreciate what you pointed out! Thanks a ton!

[Fyren]

Node Types
- RAMs are superior defenders, have slow production and lots of space.
- HUBs have no production, but transport powers very fast.
- CPUs do produce powers very fast and are  medicore attackers and defenders.
- GPUs are slow producers and superior attackers and bad defenders.

Those node abilities are mentioned in the tutorials, but obviously not clear enough when playing the game. I thought about increasing the power size of GPU's, to make it clearer to the user, that powers processed by the GPU have more attacking power.

I still don't really understand this.  I can see RAM as a good defender just because it holds more units and that CPUs produce units faster.  But it's not clear if there's some innate bonus to attacking/defending with GPU/RAM.  Is one unit not always equal to one unit?  If so, that's hard to convey to the user when you show numbers like you do.

[JoeCool]

I still don't really understand this.  I can see RAM as a good defender just because it holds more units and that CPUs produce units faster.  But it's not clear if there's some innate bonus to attacking/defending with GPU/RAM.  Is one unit not always equal to one unit?  If so, that's hard to convey to the user when you show numbers like you do.

Actually the units are not equal regarding defense and attack. You see those data packets or power points wandering between the nodes. If a GPU is attacking, those packets have the double attack strength compared to a CPU. A RAM for example defends a GPU better than a CPU and I agree its currently not visible to the user.

I need good ideas to visualize that! As mentioned I would increase the packets in size when they leave the GPU but that won't help realizing that those RAMs could easily defend it. 
 

[JoeCool]

I have updated the game!

PLAY LINK

- The tutorial has now 30 steps instead of just 5. A lot of people obviously had problems understanding the game mechanics. This should be much clearer now.
- There is a direction indicator of connections shown, its not very obvious, but it might suffice
- When you conquer a node, the node gets 5 POWERS, to reduce permanent owner changes a bit
- The AI is now slower and gets better with increasing level count
- Levels 1-6 were completely redone

Next steps is to improve the AI and the leveldesign, especially the order of levels. Thanks for the feedback so far.