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[porousnapkin]

Pretty simple arcade game. It was originally supposed to be a Geometry Wars style game without guns but most people see it as Snake with enemies (PS: you can touch your tail).

My goal here was to stick to some simple mechanics and make something that was "pretty". I usually spend all my development effort and time on mechanics and think it would be good to learn a thing or two about how to make things look and feel good as well. Any feedback is appreciated, but I'd especially appreciate feedback on the look and feel of the game. Thanks!

You can play it here:
http://monoplexgames.com/donthitthewalls/

[tequibo]

Game looks and feels pretty good.
But what's up with dots? it Says I should collect them, and sometimes I can, but other times they kill me? So I should kill them with tail I guess? what is the difference between squares and dots then? And smaller squares only add to confusion.
And I think difficulty curve is too step. Not sure, but can enemies spawn close to the head?
Not sure it's good idea to change colors every level, that means only way do distinguish power-ups from enemies is shape/size, colors need to be re-learned. For every level.
And, I think that background blinking become annoying and maybe distracting after some time.
Other than that, I think, game has potential.
I think you doing ok with learning how to make eye-candy, but don't forget about practical use of design - think team fortress 2 characters and how they are different and easily recognized.
Hope it helps, good luck with your game!

[porousnapkin]

Thanks for the feedback! It's all very helpful!

The small circles that slowly move towards your head are enemies. The small squares that alpha out and are the color of your head are the collectible dots you need for scoring. I can see how that would be confusing. I will add some text (probably "Collect!") that will appear next to the first few collectibles to help the player know the difference and so he knows what he's going for. Maybe I can also make the visual difference more pronounced as well(homing enemies could be triangles, I think the corners imply pain so that might work...).

[TriStarch]

This was fun to play and nice to look at!  I liked the controls, specifically how you leave a trail of nice smooth curves.  It was fun just playing around with that and seeing what kind of shapes I could make.

Gameplay is initially really confusing, though.  Without your post explaining it, I would have given up after a few dots killed me.  I think you should use more distinct shapes as a way to tell recognize does what.  You could use something easily recognizable as good like hearts or stars for the good powerups and give the enemy pieces jagged edges or something.

Also, I had a few Unity physics moments with the circles where I pushed them around with my head and didn't die.  I had a similar problem on a project at work and was able to fix it by making a slightly bigger trigger collider around the circle for player hit detection.

Anyhow, good luck on this!

[AVataRR]

I'd echo what all the other guys have posted so far. This is such an interesting concept. It's not overly mind bending, but it's still refreshingly different. The imagery invokes the old Snake games - but it's quite a novel thing to have to catch things with your tail as opposed to hitting things with your head (and avoiding your tail).

I do agree with TriStarch somewhat. The in game instructions were a big vague. When it said "collect points", I took it to mean that we should collect the dots and avoid the boxes. It wasn't after a while that I figured out to kill the big dots with my tail and catch the residue with my head. (I didn't read porousnapkin's post initially; I just went straight for the link).

Very nice sounding, nice looking, nice playing game.

[porousnapkin]

Sweet! I really appreciate the feedback. I will try and differentiate the shapes more and clarify the intro tutorial text. (The pickups as hearts or stars is a great suggestion!)

And yeah, the Unity physics doesn't seem to work the way I expect it to quite often. I'll try implementing your tip TriStarch.

[eddietree]

Holy shit this game is all up in my grill. This ain't no barbeque!!

[Blink]

Love the style/art/music/gameplay, but the controls are bugging me actually. Left and right is fine, but there's no quick way to turn around or method for controlling my speed (eg. press up to go 2x speed). When I'm in a tight spot, and my turning radius isn't that good, or I'd like to dive for some points, it bugs me that I have to wait on the speed of the snake to get there.

Would like to see this on mobile devices though or at IGF!

[porousnapkin]

I haven't had much time to implement suggestions here (succumbing to work and Diablo 3 and moving), but I did change out the point dots with point hearts. I think they read a lot better now, it's very clear you should pick them up. I changed the text to match so that should help with the confusion a lot. Thanks for the suggestions and critique on this point.

Haven't been able to mess with the Unity physics, but that's next on the agenda. And maybe changing the homing enemy to a triangle with its point pointing towards you.

Blink: while I appreciate wanting more control in the game, I really dig the current simplicity of only having two buttons. When I get a chance, though, I will try implementing a speed up button and see how it feels.

[seigiac]

Really nice game and awesome music! I can't stop listening to the track. Thanks for putting the link to the music.

I love sincerity in video games, and this game imho is just that, very sincere. It relies in its game mechanics and it is memorable, so congrats for that.

[Hijinkz]

Really dig the feel and style of the game! I wasn't feeling the music until the 23 second mark when it starting going crazy awesome.

[porousnapkin]

Great! Glad you guys enjoyed it!

[annyfm]

Hey

I quite enjoyed this, but had some feedback, and decided to write a quick review of it:

http://indieasfuck.co.uk/dont-touch-the-walls/

Don’t Touch The Walls is, at porousnapkin’s own admission, an interesting amalgamation of Geometry Wars and Snake. You control a coloured dot (initially blue, ‘leveling up’ to red) with a tail of light, forging eternally forward but able to turn in a circular motion. On starting play you are greeted by the few instructions: “Don’t touch the walls. Kill enemies with your tail. Collect hearts.” And then you are left to defend yourself from an onslaught of spawning enemies; bigger squares drifting carelessly about, and smaller dots that trail behind you in pursuit. Your trail destroys these enemies, who drop point-giving hearts, but if an enemy touches the dot first then… game over.

The introduction of Snake player mechanics to a Geometry Wars-like environment results in some interesting requirements for survival. Firstly, without control of your speed, maneuvring around oncoming enemies requires instinctual forward planning of a curve so as to avoid hitting anything else in the vicinity. This takes the most time to get used to. Secondly, your trail is both your only weapon and your only shield; it’s difficult to safely move in a single direction for longer than two seconds as your dot becomes exposed. After some experimentation, it seems to me that a reliable tactic is to continually weave backward through the trial, creating spirals and figure eights: an electric fence, in a sense.

Unfortunately, once you get to a stage where you’re confidently looping back and forth, the game gets no more difficult. With only two types of enemy spawning at a constant rate, the surprises are exhausted. Similarly, the soundtrack is excellent, but experiences no variation from game to game; listening to the same 20-odd-second intro repeatedly gets tiresome, especially so because the rest of the track after that is super badman. (Perhaps in recognition of this, the author graciously provides a link to listen to the song separately: Metropolis EP by Alexpowrs.)

All of that said, Don’t Touch The Walls is currently just a trial version. No doubt the existing mechanics could easily be transposed into different game modes, and certainly a more ambitious main game with a greater variety of threats and with, I’d hope, a less definite difficulty cap. Judging by the contents of his (incidentally new-looking) blog the author’s interest is clearly piqued when working in this genre, so perhaps he’ll pull more aces out of his sleeve yet.

[porousnapkin]

That's great! Thanks for the writeup and feedback!

I hadn't actually planned on adding much to the game other then basic clarifications (like the heart thing) and bug fixes (some collision issues mentioned above). The "trial version" thing in the corner is because I'm using a trial version of Unity Professional (for the bloom effect). However, your final paragraph makes me wonder what this game could be. I may have to revisit it when I get some time.

I made this game after playing Terry Cavanaugh's Hexagon (stole his level system and control scheme). I think he handled his music much better than I did. In Hexagon, after restarting it seems to start you at random preset positions in the track so you're not always listening to the same thing. I'm not sure how well that would work with the song I used since it has a very defined starting place, but I will mess with it sometime and find out.