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[RyanT]

www.spaceslay.webs.com/

I am proud to announce that my game, SpaceSlay, has been released. It is currently in its alpha stage, but I would like to get some constructed criticism on the story, idea, and game play.

SpaceSlay is a short story game where you follow the life of a mysterious creature trying to rescue the Princess. But, it seems as if some mystifying creature has already found her. The game takes place in space in which there are three main planets nearby. The goal is to reach the planet, but beware, you have finite fuel. Though, the merchants can refuel you.

As seen the screenshot above, instead of using 2D graphics, ACSII is used. The interface is fairly simple along with the game play. There are currently two different endings to the game; one of them is extremely hard to achieve.
As you can tell, this game is still being developed. What I would like to accomplish is to have a dynamic game in which a user’s action could change the story. I would also like to allow the user to roam, by foot, around the planet they are attempting to conquer. Since I wish the experience to be different each time, the planets would be randomly generated.

I hope you have fun with what I currently have!


Download
(In order to play the game, you must run the .exe file, not the .dmb)

[starsrift]

It looks very interesting, might try it next week. Are you planning to come out with a graphical version / is this just a prototype?

[RyanT]

starsrift wrote:
> It looks very interesting, might try it next week. Are you planning to come out with a graphical version / is this just a prototype?

Perhaps, I'm not the best artist when it comes to space related graphics. But, I know the ASCII style turns many people off.

[RyanT]

I've updated the files, you can download it here.

The download stat counter claims that my game was downloaded only once, which is obviously disappointing. I am wondering, what does it take to make you willing to try this game out? I have a nice idea for the story, which is displayed in the game. Constructive criticism is highly welcomed as well.

[deathtotheweird]

this forum does not always have the fastest response time.

As for the game, while playing I have no idea what I'm doing or why I am doing it. It's like a roguelike without the interaction or strategy or fun.

Might I also suggest that you do this in something other than Byond. Pressing a button meant waiting a half a second for something to happen. Not very fun. Even though it's still in alpha and you're still working on it, I still suggest you move it to a better platform.

[RyanT]

As for the game, while playing I have no idea what I'm doing or why I am doing it. It's like a roguelike without the interaction or strategy or fun.

Might I also suggest that you do this in something other than Byond. Pressing a button meant waiting a half a second for something to happen. Not very fun. Even though it's still in alpha and you're still working on it, I still suggest you move it to a better platform.

I thought the game play was fairly straightforward, which is why I gave little information on what to do. But, of course, I programmed the game and know exactly what is going on. I'll write a detailed help guide once I have time. This project was more or so a test to see if I could create a game in a day.

BYOND is not to blame here, I purposely made a delay, which I will most likely remove. I'd say the platform I am currently using is fine. I'm not expecting to create some spectacular 3 dimensional MMO. I am more interested in story driven single player games, which the platform is also suited for. But, this thread is about the game, not the platform, so I should stop ranting.

[starsrift]

...my game was downloaded only once, which is obviously disappointing...

Step 1) Don't release on Christmas. Dragon Age, Modern Warfare 2, whatever, will beat out your game for people's time. That's just how it works.

Step 2) It can take a while sometimes.

Step 3) Don't release on Christmas.

I'm at work (and obviously bored, browsing TIGSource), otherwise I'd totally take a look. Will do in a few days though. . . Promise. :D

[RyanT]

I do not pay attention to mainstream/professional games, so I did not know of any big titles released around/on Christmas. Though, I'll take into consideration: "Do not release games on holidays/big evens".

Here is the basic gist of the game:
Your ship is the "±" character, centered on the bottom. As the side panel states, there are several enemies within the game, with "$" being the merchants who gives you fuel.

The goal is to reach the blue planet "Ø". Every time you move, the enemies will and you will use fuel. If you come within one tile of an enemy, they will attack, so take that into consideration. Although, it is possible to complete the game without attacking, it is not recommended. Upon completion of each level, your ship will be upgraded, the amount of kills affects how advanced you become.

There are currently three levels, with a semi-in-depth story.

[undertech]

I don't know what this byond thing is, and what kind of info it sends to the net, but I've blocked it. I would imagine a lot of other users have also, which may be why you're not getting the download info.

I haven't played it too much, since the gameplay wasn't really all that compelling for me. It didn't take long to grasp how to play it, but that was it.

The ASCII graphics and the turn based play reminded me of Kingdom of Kroz, which I would still prefer to this.

The story is really hard to read because of all the spaces between the letters, so I skipped it.

[starsrift]

Given that this is in Alpha and largely unfinished, I was unsure what to be looking at. You didn't specify what kind of feedback you wanted, so... A lotta cons here. :/

Pros:
- You've got something started. All ya need to do now is get it finished!
- I didn't really get into the combat side of it all, but the enemies seem to be kind of balanced. . . I could take on a fighter on the first stage, but not a patrol ship or that kind of thing. On the other hand, it's easy enough just to fly past them...

Cons:
- T h e  s p a c e d  o u t  t e x t  w a s  e x t r e m e l y  h a r d  t o  r e a d .
- How exactly combat worked was very unclear, until I noticed your post above in this thread. The controls seem to suggest that the move keys were used to attack, which I took to mean more of a Roguelike type thing.
- Despite not knowing how the combat worked, the game was not a challenge. Each time I just moved straight up to the planet, making a minor detour to get around satellites.
- There didn't seem to be the ability to do anything else but go to the planet, shoot up ships, or get destroyed. This seemed to have an inevitable result of getting lectured by the Decar and the princess at the end of the game on failing a seemingly arbitrary set of religious rules(sinning). As far as risk/reward structures goes, this design didn't leave me wanting to play again. It seems to be extremely silly to instruct the player to destroy a planet and tell them that they're guilty of religious crimes much less morally repugnant than genocide because of their motives for destroying a planet.

Suggestions:
- Tighten up the text to normal spacing so that it's readable, of course.
- If the game is planned to be dependent on the actions the player takes, the ability to do more than move and attack would be a good start!
- Unless you're targeting a religious market, telling the player they've failed as a person because they didn't conform to a set of arbitrary religious rules may not work. Or, you could suggest to the player what these rules are and how to avoid breaking them.
- More information all around would be good. Who is the princess and what is she to the player? All I knew is that I had to get to the blue 0 because that's what the text at the top right said. (And doing that failed the game.)
- A more radical suggestion, but this sort of game could be greatly improved by using a tick count to update enemy positions. This would nicely increase the difficulty as well and make it nearly impossible to simply go directly to the planet each time.

:
- There were unidentified(in the legend) yellow asterisks around the map. I tried going to one, could share the same space, and tried hitting the action button(space) and nothing happened. Are they something that was only partially implemented?
- Why does BYOND to access the internets? [Blocked!]

[gorgyme]

I agree with Starsrift, gameplay didn't leave me wanting more, and I didn't understand what was going on half the time. I mean... sure, avoid the red, aim for blue, but otherwise there's not a lot else you can do.

Combat was seemingly random, you flew near to an enemy, you shot them, they shot you, you possibly shoot them again if you stay in their zone. You are always more likely to die than them, and it makes combat a bit pointless.

I agree that ASCII is a bad choice. simple little graphics - a 2D birds-eye view of the situation like the original GTA games - would give the same effect, but be more pleasing to the eye.

There is no replay value. Once you've done it, that's it, there's nothing new. Obviously being in Alpha comes into the equation, but you might want to think about why I might want to play it more than once, other than to give you feedback about why I might not want to play it more than once.