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[UP_Kevin]

Hey, congrats on the release! I hope the launch goes well for you. I released my second iOS title, Pastry Panic, last week. Low sales but good press coverage. If you ever wanna talk about developer stuff, PM me.

[TriStarch]

Hey, played up through the end of the third set of levels.  Nice game!  The controls are initially pretty tricky, but I got the hang of them after a bit and they felt good.  The levels are fun and feel unique from each other so far.  I like the graphics and music a lot, too.

I've got some suggestions, though.  Here they are:

Interface

• I'm not sure what the flower icon in options does.
• I can see why you have "Pull to Pause" (using entire screen for gameplay), but it's the same motion as notification center.  It does pause when notification center comes down too, but I'd suggest something that doesn't conflict with iOS like pulling from the side or bottom.
• How to unpause was unclear, I hit the back arrow button and it quit out of the level.  I'd just suggest using the menu button (rather than arrows) and restart button and have touching anywhere else on the screen unpause.

Gameplay

• Maybe have a picture in the tutorial of how your tap relates to your jump arc?  It took me a little while to understand that the top of my arc would be where I was tapping.  It would help make your tutorial more visual, too.
• There's lots of trial and error/leap of faith stuff.  On many occasions I'd jump at a coin and go flying off into lava or spikes I couldn't see.  I think if you could do two finger drag to scroll the map it'd make deaths feel a lot fairer.  You'd always be able to look and see what you're jumping into.  If the player taps while the map is scrolled, then you'd bring it back to center so they can't use scrolling to make bigger jumps than are already possible.  You could limit the scrolling to only where the character is still visible if you don't want players to be able to view the entire level at any time.
• Not a fan of the turrets shooting you when they're offscreen.  The bullet speed is a little tough too, but getting shot by something you can't see is my main problem with them.  I'd either give them a range or only have them fire when they're onscreen.
• I'd use arrow signs for checkpoints rather than exits so you have the checkpoint pointing the way you need to go.  The levels are very free form and it's easy to forget what direction you're supposed to be going if you set the game down for a second.

Bugs

• Game crashed when I tried to unpause it in level 2-1 and 3-2.  I think I was also coming back into the game from the home screen when it happened on both of those too.
• The jump achievement keeps popping up a lot.

I'll let you know once I finish the game, which could be a while if things get much harder than level 3-4.

[Scottapotamas]

.... lots of good feedback

Thanks for trying it. I've heard a lot of similar things, and Im in the middle of trying to fix them. I am planning on making pause a two finger tap or something like that, and cleaning up the pause menu a bit. I've already added in arrow markers as per someone else's suggestions.

I have nerfed turrets, but I probably should limit them to onscreen shooting. Kinda forgot about that. I've already fixed the jump achievement issue (caused by a typo) and Im trying to improve the tutorial, things I thought made sense don't always work for everyone...

Oh, and the flower button toggles 'performance mode', where it removes particle effects and the background.

[TriStarch]

OK, just finished the fourth world.  First off, the tutorial section there was flawless.  You get introduced to the ice floors and walls before there's any spikes and it's pretty much impossible not to see how they work as you try to go through them naturally.  

The ice was really fun to play with.  The floors really get you nervous if you start going fast on them.  And I like how you can shoot up the walls if you keep jumping at them.  Really fun set of levels!

Only major gripe was that I flew into the exit on 4-4 when I was trying to climb up and get to the secret.  The exits for levels should be detached enough from the rest of the level that you can't accidentally hit them.

For making the flower icon more clear, you could have some kind of particles going in the menus so there would be some immediate feedback when it's pressed.

EDIT: Played a little more.  Level 5-1 was pretty fun!  Having no checkpoints definitely makes you feel more tense as you start venturing into parts of the level you haven't seen.

5-2 made me ragequit, though.  Made it a ways into the level and a turret I couldn't see sniped me as I moved to the edge to get a better view of where I was going.  I like the way 'no checkpoint' levels feel, but they need to be fair for it to work.

Now that I think about it more, maybe just lowering the bullet speed a lot would be the best solution to making the turrets fair.  As long as you can react to them, bullets coming from offscreen would probably be OK.

Anyhow, it's a fun little game and I enjoyed playing it quite a bit.  Hope to see an update soon!

[Scottapotamas]

Thanks TriStarch! I've fixed the turrets now thank god.

Im getting close to pushing a 'polish' update to Apple, which should fix the labels being cut off, play/unpause being a little hard to see, and some extra little markers etc.

I also made a little demo video, which is here: http://youtu.be/R2zqZ0FJ6yI If anyone is interested in recording gameplays from the device, and happens to be running cocos2d, take a look at Kamcord. Its in pre-beta, but provides a really good way to record the screen on the device itself!

[DanFessler]

So I bought the game and have been playing it a bit.  I'll probably write a more detailed response later, but for now I just wanted to leave my first impressions...

I think the game is pretty nice!  I like that this game was designed for the touch-screen.  I didn't get very far yet, but so far I feel like the game is a little bit dry.  There's not enough keeping my attention as I play.  A little bit of polish can go a long way.

[waxx]

Did you code in c objective or did you use other framework for like C++? Just wondering.

[initials]

Just got this game. It's awesome. I'm still looking for all of the secrets.

[Scottapotamas]

Did you code in c objective or did you use other framework for like C++? Just wondering.

Um, mostly pure Objective C, but I used Box2D for physics in C++. So say, 95% obj-c.

[Scottapotamas]

Version 1.1 has finally hit the AppStore, and its at the reduced price of $0.99 to see if I can get a few more downloads than 1 or 2 a day...

Includes some level balancing, distance limits on turrets, a fix for cutoff text, onscreen score multiplier and some bug fixes.

[TriStarch]

Hey, just got the update and something's wrong with the graphics on my device (iphone 4).  The menu backgrounds are half size and the level tiles aren't appearing.  I can grab some screenshots if it'll help.

[Scottapotamas]

Urgh. I think I know exactly what that is. I didn't get around to testing it on retina because my development 4G ipod took a swim. Ill fix that and submit and update asap.

Thats really unfortunate though...

[Jackson31]

I wanted to try this but I only have iOS v4.0, I'll give it a try when I can steal my brothers iPhone next

[Scottapotamas]

I wanted to try this but I only have iOS v4.0, I'll give it a try when I can steal my brothers iPhone next

It supports iOS4.2, because I wanted Gamecenter. Sorry about that