next »

[havchr]

Hi, we just released Skybound for iPhone. I would love feedback on the game. Our next game will improve on the things we learn in the proccess! Especially when it comes to gameplay fairness and also scoring systems in boss mode.





here is the page, which also has a youtube video and link to iTunes
Skybound

Looking forward to feedback.

update:
we're now working on a patch incorporating the feedback!

update 2:
there is a lite version. and now we're working on a new patch. feedback is very appreciated! 

[Craig Stern]

Looks interesting. I love the art style! I can imagine getting carpal tunnel dragging my hand across the screen every couple of seconds like that, though.

[havchr]

Hehe, yeah, maybe. Or maybe you get exercise!

I get a bit tired in my arm if I play it laying down holding the phone over my head.

[Loren Schmidt]

This looks pretty well done! It seems like everything moves very nicely.

The title screen is nice, by the way. Who did the art?

I'd offer you feedback, but I don't have an iPhone.

[havchr]

Thanks!
We used a freelancer for the art, Erik Ødegård. He did a very good job!
Some of the art was done inhouse, but most was Erik Ødegårds work.

We just got a review of our app
Skybound review at appvee
I'm a bit annoyed with the reviewer as he's telling people that our game is not worth three dollars. I mean, come on, three dollars is like a burger meal or something!
Also, he complains about our game not having any story instead of describing why he would not pay three dollars for a game he says is fun.

Oh well, at least we've got our first review!


Also, if anyone of you have access to american iTunes and have an iPhone, I have five free gifts to give away (our game), since it's holliday and all! 

[Lord Tim]

This game looks awesome. I just bought it for my iPod Touch. I'll try it out in a bit.

[Super-Dot]

Also, if anyone of you have access to american iTunes and have an iPhone, I have five free gifts to give away (our game), since it's holliday and all! 

If you have any left, I promise to leave an honest review!

[havchr]

*review code sent*

[Super-Dot]

Honest review left! It was less than positive, but hopefully a wall of text will make up for it.

Fairness is definitely a problem; the difficulty varies wildly depending on what the random level generator comes up with. I don't feel like I have enough control over the ball's direction; I can see a brick, but short of drawing a vertical cloud and pwning myself in the process, I can't do much about it. The angle of the cloud should have more of an effect on the angle of the ball, or there should be more air resistance to make the ball's horizontal motion slow down faster. I don't feel like I have enough control over the ball's speed, since I can't aim toward or away from good and bad things. Juggling a red ball is really annoying, and it's frustrating when the ball flies up and scrolls the screen beyond the coins I haven't finished collecting. These would no doubt be less annoying and frustrating if I had any control over when they happened.

I don't like how I stop drawing clouds so abruptly. I can only estimate where the line I'm drawing ends, and if I estimate wrong, I get a cheap death. It'd be great if there were an indication that told me how close I am to finishing the line, an indication that I've stopped drawing, or if I didn't need to stop drawing at all. In  a similar minigame in Mario 64 DS, you can draw the line as long as you want, but Mario (the "ball") doesn't bounce as high. In a similar minigame in Warioware Touched, you can keep extending the end of the line, but the beginning of the line shortens as you do so, so you can move the line all over the screen, but it's always a fixed length. I think either of these would work pretty well.

When the ball flies off the top of the screen, it's annoying to have to guess where it's going to land, and if I guess wrong, there's another cheap death. It'd be nice if either the screen scrolled to keep up, or there were some kind of indicator to tell you where the ball is (and, ideally, its direction, like when you pause the game).

The art on the title screen and the background is beautiful, and the art everywhere is completely incoherent and inconsistent. You've got outlined, fading clouds, a gradient on a ball, textured backgrounds, a typewriter font on the title screen, a serif font in the menu, either plenty of different sans-serif fonts all over the place or a few which have been scaled a lot, shadows in some places, menu buttons with two parts (the text scales independently of the image (the image which, incidentally, is textured and outlined)), pixel art, and probably some other stuff I've forgotten. Some unification is in order! There should be one art style, two at the most if absolutely necessary. You're probably only likely to solve this if you have an artist in-house doing all the cleanup.

As an iPhone app, you need to animate those menus a bit. It would really help if you actually adhered to the iPhone UI guidelines; it took me ages to find my way around. The hierarchy is unclear and the text is poorly chosen.

Are they achievements or challenges? Use consistent terminology. Whatever they are, they're unreadable in that small yet upscaled white-on-black font at the bottom of the screen. I had to relaunch the app to read the first part of the welcome message; I missed it the first time around.

That "touch to edit" field? Make it selected by default. That, or increase the touching area; it's hard to aim for it.

Take your logo out of the background of the menu. It clutters up the screen and makes the text less readable. It's not going to make people happier about Tumbleweed Interactive.

The underlying game you have is really fun, and if you get rid of a bunch of little flaws, people will see that a lot more clearly. Cheers from a (visual/UI/game) design geek who enjoys nitpicking!

[aznmonk]

I have five free gifts to give away (our game), since it's holliday and all! 

Hey! Same here, I'll give an honest review for that little gift  Hope to play it soon!

[havchr]

First off, thanks for your honest review.

When the ball flies off the top of the screen, it's annoying to have to guess where it's going to land, and if I guess wrong, there's another cheap death. It'd be nice if either the screen scrolled to keep up, or there were some kind of indicator to tell you where the ball is (and, ideally, its direction, like when you pause the game).

It's not about guessing. Most of your other criticism, I can agree with, and is stuff we have talked about internally. This part however, is something that would radically change what the game is about and how it behaves.


also, sent review code to you aznmonk , sorry it took so long, I've been in bed with a cold the last couple of days.

[aznmonk]

aww hope you've gotten better by now.  I have a few complaints about the game, and alot of suggestions, although it is up to you if you want to take them of course. (:


The First Impression
When I first started up the game I saw you're tumbleweed entertainment logo.  The logo was well defined, no cheap photoshop, which impresses me of course.  Then you're title screen's art style is impressive, kinda like "And Yet It Moves" but when I touched the screen nothing happened, then I touched it a second time and I got through.  Bug maybe?  Then looking when I saw that menu it was like a punch to the gut.sorry D':  The menu just looks awful, the buttons look like, yes, cheap photoshop and the font is just echhhh.  Consider making you're title screen, more interactive, like maybe having all the buttons lined up on both sides and having the bounce up and down on a trampoline and making the ball bounce and hitting the buttons to activate it, but keep the buttons tappable.http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc92/EnragedRoar/Tumebleweed.jpg  change the button style!!=> http://www.designvitality.com/blog/2007/10/photoshop-button-tutorials/I would try 14,16 or 19.  But thats just my opinion, I don't like the way your buttons look right now.  You're title screen looks really tacky, for such an addicting game!  Your text at the bottom of the screen that appears when you first enter the menu screen seems all squishy.  Oh yes and did I mention more animated menus? :D  The menu also seems a little cramped, try making the text smaller, or have small text, but when you finger touches button or text it magnifies!

Gameplay!
Loading up the game, it told me to draw a line, so I'm like wtf?!?! ehhh why not?  So I just drew a line, the ball dropped and I lost.  First thought running through my mind, this game needs a tutorial.  I figured it out the second time though! What can I say? I'm pretty slick!  And off I went into the great beyond!Or so I thought.  Running into coins and other whatnot I had absolutely no idea what everything did.  So I just randomly ran into things, thinking that everything's really good!  Seriously this game needs a quick tutorial, because I had no idea what I was doing the first 3 times I was playing, but after that I got pretty addicted pretty fast!  It's a good game, with really(sometimes)good art.

Now for the complaints about gameplay...when you are drawing clouds, could you maybe have a bar like in "Chalk", so you know how much you can draw.  I think you need more powerups in the game, there aren't that many, and powerups always make the game intersting.  And have power downs.  Like one, where if you touch it
where you draw, you draw on the opposite side of the screen!.  The point system is weird, but it works, what would also work is a system in which it actually measures your height as well.  And when you have the bottom guard it sometimes bounces really hard up and into a brick wall and bounces really hard back down, maybe if you made the ball invincible for like 3 seconds after the guard bounce?

Misc. Complaints/Suggestions
The darn brick walls are annoying, but its a good thing they're there.  I think you need more things that are detrimental though.  You need a lives mode, unlimited mode when you just want to bounce a ball just for fun, so when you die you just continue where you were.  And the boss mode, needs a different bosses that appear randomly!

Parting Comments
I've had an iPhone for a week, and have downloaded a bunch of games.  This is one of the first games I can say that I was truly addicted to.  People in my Chem AP class were trying to beat each other.  The only other game that was more popular than yours was "Wurdle" Hey! We're nerds! Well, I'm an indieNERD!  Your artwork varies, try to keep it the same as Super-Dot says, but other than that your game is freaking addicting.  How bout trying to add a customizable ball?  Like maybe a ball wearing a monk's robe.....?:D NEED NEEED NEEED NEEED a tutorial!  Sorry I took so long to respond, and sorry about making fun of your menu screen, it really needs to be cleaned up.  But other than that I and about 30 other kids in my ChemAP class have fallen in love with your game.  If you need any other help with any future games you make I'd be glad to be of help.  And on a last note sorry if my review wasn't helpful, but hey! i tried! :D  Till next time, I'll see you on the Skybound highscore board!  Do all the things I mentioned above and it would be worth more than three bucks!  Good Luck!

[havchr]

Thanks a lot! :D
This was a great read. We will most def. be looking to this thread for the updates patch on the game.
Especially the menu system will get a serious revamp!

Also getting a better introduction to how to play the game, is something we have to work on. When you are explained by a person instead of just "draw a line", people get it straight away. We have to communicate this a bit better!

Hopefully a patch will be out before the end of January. I'll let you know when it is!

[havchr]

Hi!
patch is nearing completion. Here is a sneak peak of the new UI.
(it is animated and has "sexy" iPhonish transitions as well, but an image does not portray that very well)

anyhow, here's the picture:

[aznmonk]

   much better menu! can't wait for the update!

[havchr]

Patch is now out and so is the lite version!

Really looking forward to hear what you think! 

[Super-Dot]

Holy whoa it's so much better now! The existentialist parts are great :D

[havchr]

Thanks!
And thanks for giving us spanking for the UI. The old one was really horrible, we deserved all the spanking we could get.

[havchr]

Allright. We're going to do a patch for this. Add some juice to it.
Anyone have feedback to what they want to see added to the game, now would be a good time to share it