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[NightPatrol]

Hey, everyone!

I'm in the last stages of my masters thesis in interaction design. I am concentrating in game design for the project, and my perspective being the exploration of the design and development of experiences and how they change throughout a particular design process. More specifically, I'm exploring methods for designing around juicy feedback or "juiciness" and trying to explore how juicy feedback affects experience in games. This of course is a pretty broad concept and it's hard to have anything more than a vague description, when it comes to experience, but the whole project involves a lot of experiments, which makes it an interesting subject to look into... for me at least

For the final project of my thesis I developed a small game prototype - it started as a very simple idea, but eventually the overall design of it brought it to a "shmup" style of gameplay. I called it Biseibutsu - Japanese for microorganism or microbe. I called it with a Japanese name to hone the classic shmups, since I simply love playing those. I've taken inspiration from many shooter games, such as Ikaruga, Super Stardust Deluxe, DoDonPachi (one of my all time faves) and so on.

Here's a screenshot of the game:


Update:


- You can no longer kill the + units. They are now the enemy bullets. However if you have the same color shoot mode on, they can't kill you either, so that you can escape tough situations.

- The range of the enemy bullets is now much higher than before.

- The game is now timed - you have to survive a wave of 20 enemies and gather as much score as you can. Or you can survive it in a peaceful way

- The enemies will float for a while and then fly away.

- Both shoot modes are identical in damage and spread now, only the color is different, so that they are balanced, yet they are both useful depending on colors you want to dodge or if you want to rack up higher score.

- Release the fire button to attract the score pickups.

- Player can now move in all directions.

- Some visual changes.

I need feedback on the visual and audio feedback the game gives. In other words, the way the game responds to your action or presence in the game. Do things such as the way the pickups fly around, or the way the enemies move or pop, affect your experience of the game in any way and if it does - how? If there is anything else in the game in the form of feedback that enhances or hurts your experience, please share them.

I can't really offer anything else in return, than returning the favor at some point and of course, list you as a tester in the Acknowledgements of my thesis (if you want to be listed).

You can play an online version of the game here:

Biseibutsu Web Version

Or try the Win32 version here:

Biseibutsu Win32 version

Once you have tried it out, you can leave a reply with your thoughts here, or fill out this one-question form, and please be as thorough as you can:

One-question form


Thanks a lot for taking a look and I hope you enjoy the game! If you have any further questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them!

[Udderdude]

You clearly didn't do your homework.  This game has infinite milking situations everywhere, thus making the score value useless.

All you need to do to set up an infinite milking situation is kill all of one type of enemy (best type to kill off is green), then position yourself where your shots aren't hitting the enemy, and wait for them to keep shooting destroyable bullets at you and rake in the points.

Your best bet is to just make the enemies fly away after they've been on the screen for too long.

I think the scoring/enemy color system itself could be cool if put into a shmup with structured levels and shot patterns, and no randomness.

Although it might just be possible to also use rapid fire to switch between your shot modes and still be able to kill all of the enemies and their shots.  I will test that out next.

Edit: Well it doesn't look like it's possible to use rapid fire mode switch to break the game, although it does create an amazing siezure/strobe light effect that's really hard to look at!

[NightPatrol]

Thanks for the feedback, Udderdude. I got other similar responses, so I made some changes to the game so it makes more sense as a "shooter" game.

- You now have to release the fire button to make the score objects flow towards your ship, otherwise they float away as far as they can get. It doesn't exactly work flawlessly, but at least it gives a reason to having a fire button at all, instead of just firing non-stop.

- The microbes now slowly move forward and after they are gone, a new one (more evolved than the last one) spawns.

These changes definitely made the game more challenging. You can use the same links to get the updated version. However since I'm trying to focus on other things in the game, designing the mechanics really isn't in the scope of my project. Therefore I also made small additions/changes to the kind of feedback I'm looking for.

Anyway - thanks in advance to any other people that are interested in this - your feedback will help me a lot in fixing up my final report.

[Udderdude]

Yeah, it already plays better and is definitely more difficult.

[marcgfx]

i like how the game feels and the general idea, but i really miss the challenge. i stopped playing after reaching 20k points. only then did i realize, that it was not required to collect the "money". just stop shooting. ok. reaching 20k would have been easier if i had known that.

the game gets easier the more enemies there are. chain-reactions and slow downs help a lot. as they only have a very limited shooting angle and i know when the shots are, its kind of hard to die after a while. i would much prefer less restricted movement of the ship and no limit to the firing angle of the microbes(?).

presentation is good, the game itself is boring.

[NightPatrol]

Thanks for the replies so far! I just uploaded an updated version of the game. Please have a look at the first post for the download links, a list of changes and updates on the type of feedback I'm looking for. Thanks again to everyone who has, is and will have a look at the game!