Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

 
Advanced search

1411430 Posts in 69363 Topics- by 58416 Members - Latest Member: JamesAGreen

April 19, 2024, 06:25:23 PM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsDeveloperPlaytestingThe Sixth Chaos - a puzzle platformer, looking for feedback (WIP)
Pages: [1]
Print
Author Topic: The Sixth Chaos - a puzzle platformer, looking for feedback (WIP)  (Read 810 times)
CrispyVitamin
Level 0
*


View Profile
« on: October 23, 2014, 11:23:29 PM »

Hi guys,

The Sixth Chaos is a puzzle platformer with simple controls and intriguing puzzles.

The playable demo is here:

DL Link updated:
MIRROR 1
MIRROR 2
(NOTE: Win 7 and DX 11 compatible hardware is required, XP machines will have material error)

#UPDATE: Thanks Quicksand-S for his feedback, we've made some changes to this demo.

Change list:
-Switched controller X/B input.
-Fixed level colliders
-Character no longer floats when he hits the ceiling(yep this was a bug  Embarrassed)
-Tweak some of the label texts
-Temporarily disable the story text labels until we managed to proofread them
-Level adjustments(modified terrain, item generation)
-Sound adjustments
-Some other minor adjustments

Currently there're 3 of us working on this game.

Here's the trailer contains both WIP pre-alpha levels and levels with completed arts:




And here are some WIP GIFs so you can have a quick look:










Some screenshots with actual arts:










Control schemes:





Finally, our Steam Greenlight page and Kickstarter page if you want to support us:
Steam Greenlight
Kickstarter


Feedback I would like to have:
-Art style: Do you think it's good? Or it's just lame because there're so many Limbo-like games already.

-Control: Is character control ok? Is it easy to control? Is there anything you think we need to improve?

-Puzzle design: Do you like the design? Do you think hints are enough or there should be more hints? Have you experienced trouble in levels?

-Bugs: Any bug or bug-like behavior you found?

-Kickstarter Campaign: We've been on Kickstarter for about 14 days, but only few backers supported us.
I don't know if it's because lack of promotion or this game just didn't hit the spot.
Any thoughts, suggestion about how can we improve this situation?
We'd appreciate that if anyone can shed some light.

Thank you for your time reading this and providing feedback. Have a great day.  Smiley
« Last Edit: October 27, 2014, 07:16:59 AM by CrispyVitamin » Logged
Quicksand-S
Level 10
*****


View Profile WWW
« Reply #1 on: October 24, 2014, 01:39:04 AM »

I love the title-screen music, so the game started off by giving a great impression. I realize it's pre-alpha, but I'll write out all my comments anyway.

-I find the gamepad controls a bit weird. I'm used to X being important and B being less important (because it's more awkward to press if, for example, you want to jump and throw something), but you have them switched.

-Configurable keys would be nice, and configurable gamepad controls would be even better.

-When I started the first level, my character wouldn't move until the tutorial text appeared. That just made me think my gamepad wasn't being detected. If someone knows the controls, why force them to wait?

-The "Or you can use this button" text seemed weird because I naturally expected the image of the button to be either part of the text or displayed to the right of it, not the left. The button images also didn't stand out very well when they were drawn over the grey.

-The character's animation looks funny. Maybe it's intentional, but it has this determined, grumpy, "power-walking" look to it.

-I found the separate rain sound emitters in the second area distracting. Is there a reason you didn't just play the sound globally? If you're using multiple emitters, it might be worthwhile to make them sound different as well, so rain near rooftops would be different from rain out in the open.

-I felt like the air-control could be increased a bit. Trying to make that question-mark jump was annoying because holding the jump button only increases height for the first bounce and you don't really move right very far unless you get a good running jump onto the question mark. I came up short the first six or so times. The extra height also doesn't always kick in, even on the first bounce.

-This may be intentional, but I found it weird that my vertical velocity wasn't set to zero when I jumped against a ceiling. I just hovered there for a while.

-In the third area, I fell into that pit right away. There was no way for me to know it was to be avoided. It also takes about three times longer than I'd like for it to realize I'm dead and respawn me.

-You'll probably want to double-check some of your collision boxes. If you jump left from the second switch in level 3, you go through the wall a bit.

-The atmospheric sounds are quite nice, except for that really annoying and overly-loud bird near the orphanage.

-The time-limited switch really needs some sort of indication of when it's going to run out, and of what it does in the first place. I was so confused by the statement about a "book I picked up" (which wouldn't let me pick it up) that I didn't notice what the switch had done.

-The ability to look up and down (especially down) would be helpful. There are some blind drops, like near the beginning of level...4? (The purple level)

-Some of the slanted "valleys" in the purple level caused movement issues. If I walked into one and then tried to walk out, it took a couple of seconds before my character would actually move.

-There are quite a few typos and grammatical issues in the text. Normally, you could save that sort of thing for later but since you're showing this off to potential investors it might be a good idea to get someone to proofread it.

For the most part, I really like the graphics. I really preferred the orange and purple levels to the grayscale ones, though. The main character could maybe use some tweaking. He/she/it just doesn't have a very interesting silhouette. The rest of the models in the game were quite nice.

I found that the story didn't really grab me at all. It felt disjointed (I had no idea what "It" was, even though "It" was mentioned a lot) and some of the text faded quickly or was too far off my path (ex. down near the bottom of the screen when my focus is on what's coming up on the right). Near the orphanage, I actually had to stop and go back because the text started to appear after I had mostly passed by.

As far as the controls, apart from the extremely limited air control I thought things felt fine. A lot of the time, when an object appears it sits on my head as I walk and then falls off. It's misleading because it looks like you've automatically grabbed it.

The puzzles were pretty simple, but fine. The purple-level ones were more interesting. My main issue with them was that they generally relied on me to randomly wander into a spot that gave me an object out of nowhere. I was happy to see that the objects respawned, because I lost my floating heart at one point. I did encounter a bug, though, where hearts kept spawning infinitely if I stood near that statue in the purple level.

It might be a good idea to just add another sound or two while showing the game to potential investors. The character feels a bit lifeless with no sounds for jumping or any interactions.

I got some slowdown in the purple level (with graphical settings that worked great on the previous levels). It wasn't too bad at first, but it got pretty bad later in the level.

I stopped playing after dying in the purple level (shortly after the platform-moving cutscene) and realizing there were no checkpoints.
Logged

My Old Game: We Want YOU - Join the Fight for Freedom

Twitter - Mostly comments on games, old and new.
CrispyVitamin
Level 0
*


View Profile
« Reply #2 on: October 24, 2014, 02:46:31 AM »

Thank you for your detailed feedback!   Grin

We're looking into the issues you mentioned, including controls, text labels, sound emitters, level models/collisions and other problems.

These are indeed parts we didn't notice and didn't think carefully before.

We're glad you can point these out for us, thank you.  Smiley

I stopped playing after dying in the purple level (shortly after the platform-moving cutscene) and realizing there were no checkpoints.
Purple level is the final level with art model in this demo, there're 5 more prototype levels.

If you have time, would you try the prototype levels in the demo? It's the second button in title screen.

We've put some interesting puzzles in there and we'd like to get some feedback about level design of these levels. Thank you.
Logged
CrispyVitamin
Level 0
*


View Profile
« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2014, 07:22:13 AM »

#UPDATE:

Thanks Quicksand-S for his feedback, we've made some changes to this demo.
Including following:
-Switched controller X/B input.
-Fixed level colliders
-Character no longer floats when he hits the ceiling(yep this was a bug  Embarrassed)
-Tweak some of the label texts
-Temporarily disable the story text labels until we managed to proofread them
-Level adjustments(modified terrain, item generation)
-Sound adjustments
-Some other minor adjustments

Original DL links are also updated to new version.
Logged
Pages: [1]
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic