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[LiquidAsh]

I'm working on porting the Cheapass Games card game TimeLine to HTML5, and am very interested in hearing what people think.

New HTML5 port.

Original card game.

[msilver]

This game fascinates me in how much I can't figure out what is happening. I've never played the original so maybe you are making assumptions that players know some rules already. Or maybe I am dum, idk.

I cannot predict how the paths will shift when you move, (Other than vaguely "upwards") are you supposed to be able to? Also I only have a vague sense of where I can move on a given turn. The tutorial started highlighting places I could move to and that was cool, then the highlights vanished and I just had to kind of guess that a certain dot was "close enough." Also, when the tutorial said I was supposed to go to the shop, and highlighted it, I got very close to it and tried to move there and it wouldn't let me. Eventually I got it to work but I was pretty far away, so that confused me greatly.

Then I tried a game and had no clue what I was doing strategically. (I barely knew the movement rules, let alone proper strategy) This is when I gave up. Hope that helps.

[LiquidAsh]

Thanks msilver... that certainly does help.  I tried to keep the text in the tutorial on the light side, but maybe it needs to be more verbose.

[Cheezmeister]

If you can though, keep the text terse and show, don't tell. That way your player can't ignore/skim Successful tutorials are really good at this.

[JMStark]

This looks amazing, but even with the aid of the tutorial I really could not figure out what was going on. It doesn't help that there are very few visual or narrative aids to help the player understand the relationships between the different parts of the game.

I didn't even know what my goal was. What is the game even about?

I went to the site for the card game and they did a far better job explaining what was happening there. "Oh, so I am a time traveler who is trying to get rich quick." This game does not communicate this to the player very well. This is the FIRST thing that should be said in the tutorial.

Also, imagery that is less abstract would do wonders in helping this game make more sense. Use the medium to its fullest!

Regardless of these major accessibility issues your interface works great and the game itself has a brilliant idea executed in a unique way.

[LiquidAsh]

Thanks for the helpful feedback guys.  I've added a bit of intro text to the tutorial that summarizes the premise of collecting resources and selling them for gold.  I've also animated  the motion of resources moving from the board to your inventory to hopefully make that more clear.  I tried adding arrows to make the motion more explicit, but that didn't seem to help much.  I also tried to make the text in the tutorial more clear (without being too much longer).  Very interested in hearing what you all think of this revision.  In particular, whether you are able to make sense of the rules for how you move around the timelines.  Thanks again for the helpful feedback guys.

[msilver]

Much better. AI seems well balanced I won most of the time but not all the time which I'm told is the correct AI intensity for strategy games. The tutorial sort of implies that you need at least 4 resources to sell, not sure how to reword it. Cool game.

[LiquidAsh]

Thanks again msilver.  Based on additional feedback about the tutorial's shortcomings, I've made several changes (hopefully for the better).  Let me know what you think: is there anything that you still find confusing after completing the tutorial?  Thanks again guys.

[Noyb]

Ooh, I like this. Took me a little bit to realize exactly how the tiles shifted, that the sell price is dictated by the numbers on the right border, and that the shop location is dictated by a solid line from the left to the right.

I'd suggest highlighting the possible moves more to cut down on frustration as you're learning how to move. Like, instead of highlighting the timeline, highlight the circles you're able to move to, both in the same timeline and in the same time block. Or maybe locking the token's position along the timeline when you drag it to tiles to the left and right.

The AI seems a bit too eager to offload stockpiled resources at awful 1-2 gold rates, when a little bit of maneuvering could get it 3-4 gold per resource. Seems to shoot itself in the foot often while I go for the hail mary 5x4 strategy.

Edit: oh, and the player token colors are really similar on my monitor.

[LiquidAsh]

Thanks for checking it out Nyob, and thanks for the helpful feedback!

[Norgg]

Been a fan of cheapass games for ages, enjoyed this and I think it's cool they're exploring computer versions of stuff.

I thought the tutorial was fine now and covered the mechanics well.  I had a couple issues with the clicking and dragging interface getting confused and showing a stop icon until I released the mouse, then having to click again to place.

Clicking and dragging seems kind of unnecessary as a user interface control here too.  Since you're only ever controlling your own piece, you could just click where you want to go (possibly with an animation of the piece moving there).

Lastly, I'm one of those annoying colour-blind people, and I had trouble distinguishing the red and green pieces, it'd help me a lot if each type of resource had a different shape or texture of some kind.

[thatbennyguy]

OK, I'm not an entirely smart guy, but I did the tutorial and still didn't understand what the heck was going on. Played a couple of games, and still had no idea. This game is really complex, but I couldn't even understand what was going on. Other than that, it looked cool, and I really liked just going random places and seeing the board shift. If only I could understand the game :S

[LiquidAsh]

Thanks for checking it out guys.

@Norgg: I'll have to look into that click not always registering thing... I'll also have to do some more thinking about the the dragging versus clicking to move since each has different pluses and minuses.  Also thanks for the color-blind info, I am planning on making some changes to the visuals as I polish the game up.  And this is an important consideration.

@thatbennyguy: Sorry the tutorial wasn't more clear.  Did you understand where you could move at any given point?  Or did you understand the goal of the game?  Just looking for some hints on what part needs more refinement.

[Laitch]

It seems like the kind of game I would really enjoy but I just had no idea how the paths would change when I moved, making it almost impossible to have any strategies.

(not related to the game itself) When I filled out your questionnaire I couldn't write anything in the text boxes (I'm using firefox)

[LiquidAsh]

Thanks for trying it out Laitch, and I'm sorry it wasn't clear how to play.  Did you attempt the tutorial?  Also, did you understand the goal of the game?

Regarding the feedback form, I learned about this a couple of days ago and have been trying to find a solution.  I still haven't figured it out, so I've commented out the forms until I do.  Thanks again for checking it out.