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[Arowx]

Project on IndieDB...



You can still play the old prototype here...

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Arowx/arowx-cancer-wars-v0-5

Oh yeah it's a cure em up...

Doc, link into your robo-nano-sub and go kick some slimey green inner zombie horde...

Instructions in game, basically this should run OK on low end hardware and very well on fast GPU's.

Note: ensure you set the settings to Fantastic if you have a high end GPU and to Fastest if you have a lower end graphics processor.

Let me know what you think of the performance (with details of your rig) and gameplay.

[Fallsburg]

Ok,
I skipped through any instructions and was a bit confused. I'm unsure why my ammo was draining even when I wasn't shooting, but I ran out of ammo and got reamed.

As for performance, it was spotty.  It was ~60fps the majority of the time, but there were occasional hiccups where it would lock up and then slowly regain until it was back to 60fps. 

I have a laptop with the following specs
Intel Core i7 (4 cores) @ 1.6 ghz
4 gb of ram
Nvidia Geforce GTS 360m

[Arowx]

Hi Tromack,

The ammo is an energy bar you use energ launching nano-drugs at the cancerous cells/spawners.  Tutorial is on the list for the next release v0.6.

Were you running on battery or mains or have anything else running in the background?
What browser were you using and have you tried a different one?
What patient did you operate on Flo, Jo, Wil or Glee?
Did you try the game in a lower graphics setting?

Thanks for the feedback.

[Arowx]

Version 0.5a has been optimized for perforance and fixes a few 'features'.

Video here

[Arowx]

[Guert]

The visual of the game has a simplistic style, which fits the game well. However, it’s execution is far too simple to deliver an impact on the player. The elements lack details. Details are not the amount of little noisy things you place on a character but rather the relevance of each element you place inside the design. The characters are mostly shapes of what they are supposed to represent and lack personality.

Another issue I have with the game is its lack of clarity.  Found in numerous aspect of the game, this lack of clarity spoils the game by making the experience nebulous.  One of the first major elements that suffer from this problem is the game’s economy. The rewards given and the behaviour of economical elements, such as ammo, are hard to understand. Upon defeating large red enemies, a greyish ball is dropped and is available to be picked up by the player. Unfortunately, its lack of distinction with the rest of the game’s actor makes it hard to tell whether it’s an enemy, a decorative prop or a power-up.  Little green enemies are difficult to spot on the map. They do emit a green glow but the overall darkness of the game makes pretty much anything more difficult to spot.  If we look at economical behaviours, ammo and health are confusing. Ammo will remain stagnant until a single bullet is shot. At this moment, the ammo bar bleeds constantly. Moving over a blue-ish patch on the ground fills the ammo bar completely almost instantly. The player takes only a few damage points from attacks and regenerates quite rapidly soon afterwards. This leads the experience to favour heavily on back-tracking for ammo, resulting a game session where the player explores and shoots enemies only to go back through empty areas to reload. It also leads confusion on whether the left bottom bar is actually health. Is there any risk when fighting enemies? Can the player fail? These questions are not tangibly answered by the game through normal play. It also removes any tension the player may have to explore and fight enemies.   

If we look at the levels, the lack of map in the game combined with the lack of interesting rewards makes the game repetitive and dull. Since the game requires the player to completely clear the host from all enemies and that small green enemies tend to hide in-between walls, on top of being hard to spot, the game is most likely going to force the player to explore the entire level a second time in order to spot the missing viruses. The radar is helpful but, as mentioned, the lack of map leads the player to wander around looking for the path to reach the enemies found on the radar. The levels are also redundant since they offer the same type of challenge over and over again. Shooting down a green or red enemy requires little learning nor investment; shooting down hundreds of green or red enemies becomes quite tiresome quickly. The levels feature many dead ends and no reason to check every corner. Adding hidden rewards  in dead-ends is a good way to make the player feels as if he has invested his time instead of wasted it.

Once a level is completed, there is no feeling of accomplishment. The patient is still available and in the very same condition as before the game started. Despite showing all other patients available to cure, which suggest long term goals, the game spoils the effect by not communicating effectively if the player has taken a step toward the completion of the game. Instead, the game tells the player he has not budged, despite his efforts.

All in all, the game has a long way to go before actually reaching a point where it can efficiently hook the player in its world. The concept isn’t bad but the execution needs more polish through and general flair to become entertaining. It is not impossible but what is being offered as of now is not satisfactory.

Good luck!

[SplinterOfChaos]

Hey, i gave you feedback back when you called his Cancer Wars! Cure 'em Up is an OK title, but it looks like everyone just has cancer. But on that note, having more variety in the ailments could be interesting.

It looks a hell of a lot nicer than before, but the mechanics haven't grown likewise. Hunting the turrets is kinda fun, but all those tiny cells less so. The stats at the end of the level seem arbitrary and relate to the gameplay in no way. Well, they do in that they're based on how you play, but i don't find incentive to pay attention.

Personally, i think that graphics are nice, but this game never needed a 3rd dimension as much as it needed to be expanded and refined. That might be a little unfair in case you're planning on working on that stuff later, i'm just not a graphics-oriented person and i don't see any non-graphical changes.

[Ice Water Games]

I'm with the other posters here. It looks like a lot of work has gone into the graphics, or like the graphics are relatively high-complexity, when compared to the gameplay. At this point, the thing that is least attractive about the game is the gameplay -- the game is very relaxed and slow-paced as is, and is pretty consistent throughout. It is like a long slog to the end of the level, hunting casually for each little bit of infection. The moments of highest gratification for me were on bumping into the things that turn blue and recharge your energy. I think that the game could do with more spontaneous gratification or moments of relatively increased interest like these. Whether this means designing in moments of gratification or just messing with the system dynamics in the game so that spontaneous discovery can occur is a personal decision.

[Arowx]

Ok thanks for the excellent feedback!

I'm looking at changing the name of the game as 'Cancer Wars' just has too many negative connotations for people and could put them off before they even give it a go.

So just to condense this down 'Cure Em Up'(Working title) needs more:

Depth
Rewards
Clarity
Danger
Surprise
Character
a Map

I'll see what I can do for version 0.6...

PS All additional feedback welcome!

[Uncade]

I actually really like the name Cancer Wars personally, it catches my eye better than just Cure em Up. I like the visual style of the game, but the game itself was kinda confusing. Were both of the bars at the bottom shield bars? I also wasn't entirely clear on what I was supposed to be doing, I think it was killing all of the red things.

[Arowx]

There is a help page in the game but I do need to add a tutoiral.

The radar is the key to what to do as it let's you know how many green 'Zombie' cells you have to track down and destroy, red 'Spawners' (ditto) and blue 'Pods' to reactivate.

Left bar Shield / Right bar Energy...

[Dropout]

Yep, nice I had fun.

Here was roughly my experience:

1 - Some menus, clicked off them without really reading
2 - Figured out how to move around and shoot
3 - Figured out i can kill the green guys
4 - Figured out i should be killing the red guys
5 - Figured out my rate of fire was related to the right bar, and could be recharged by pads on the ground
6 - Figured out that the red that i should go kill were on the map . At this point I wasnt sure whether they were procedually and infinitley generated or a set amount. if i found out they were prodcedurally generated [they arent], i probably would have switched off.
7 - Figured out killing the red things and picking up what they drop recharges shields
8 - Killed the last red thing, the game didnt end so i figured i'd have to kill of the green things i'd been ignoring. I closed it then because i didnt want to wade through 100 small targets

To that end i'd suggest starting with short operations while the player learns what they are supposed to do. The part that intriuged me most was the 'cash' counter in the top corner I asked myself - am i going to be able to buy upgrades based on my performance? because that would be sweet.

If so, the shorter initial ops would help kick off that feedback loop quicker.

HTH

Luca

[phubans]

Graphics - I liked the UI stuff, but the 3D felt like it needed more work. The environment just felt very plain and uninteresting. Maybe having a few props that lend a little extra detail would be nice.

Music & Sound - Fairly innocuous. Not memorable, not horrible... Just kind of there.

Gameplay & Design - It felt smooth and I don't think there were any bugs, but the gameplay itself was a bit derivative and offered nothing new or interesting. It didn't really try to do anything unique at all. I did enjoy destructible enemy bullets and was reminded that it's fun to have enemy bullets you can shoot down. After I neutralized all of the bad things, though, the game pretty much stopped. I haven no idea what my objective was, if any, and it wasn't made clear through the gameplay or HUD at all.

Overall - Woefully mediocre. Spruce things up with some more visual detail and sound effects, try to innovate in terms of gameplay. Having moving targets would be a lot better for this game since shooting is mouse-controlled. If I learned anything from my previous project it's that stationary targets in a mouse-controlled-weapon environment are like sitting ducks.

Suggestions - Maybe those red hubs you have to destroy aren't the enemies, but the enemy generators; and they send out harmful enemies that will go around attacking the cell walls, so you'll have to race to stop them from breaking down the body. You could indicate the body's overall condition by a percentage which decreases as cell walls/tissue are destroyed. This would keep the gameplay you have intact while adding an element of urgency and challenge.

[Arowx]

Cure 'Em Up is being improved and enhanced for iOS and Android platforms.

The aim is full on mobile 3D Nanosub action!

Towards this goal I have put the game forward for crowd based funding on 8bit funding.

http://www.8bitfunding.com/project_details.php?p_id=175

I will update as I progress and will probably need some webplayer based beta testers ;0)

Thanks for your help TIGsters!

[Arowx]

Also available for funding and pre-order on IndieGoGo.com

http://www.indiegogo.com/Cure-Em-Up-A-5050-Donationware-Game

Well it's worth a try, even if you can't afford to help fund the game why not forward a funding link to a few people you know who might be able to afford to!

[Arowx]

Currently working on a HUD system for the Nanosubs...

V0.1 can be seen here:

[Dragonmaw]

Tried it. A virus spawned outside the first level, making me unable to finish it. That's a pretty awful first impression.

The graphics are tedious and uninteresting. There's no breaking up the outlines and such. All of the objects in the game world are boring and flat and uninteresting. They also don't seem to reflect what their function is, which also makes it a bit difficult to understand what is going on at first. This is compounded by the mechanics, which are fairly derivative and uninteresting.

Overally, it's straight mediocre. There's nothing particularly awful about it, but it's just not really worth playing. It needs some serious refinement first.

[Arowx]

Here is the new GUI and HUD in action...





@Dragonmaw Check out the new video the game is going in a whole new direction! ;o)

[GameDevLife]

Greetings!

Disclaimer: I deliberately avoid written directions in games and the feedback of others.  I avoid written directions because I believe that most casual audience members don't read them and I avoid feedback because I want my input to be untainted.

So -- I played most of the way through flow.

Presentation:  On the plus side I feel like your interface elements and info/startup screens are clean and clear.  On the other hand, the style choices are all over the map.  Cutesy characters, star trek style interfaces, techno-ish sound track, arcade style sound effects, semi-retro 3D graphics.  It's too much and it fails to take a position on what it is and who its for IMO.

The actual gameplay graphics are muddy and difficult to read.  The problem is you've got little contrast and too much transparency.  It's hard to focus on the avatar and harder still to see the tiny green spikey things.

Gameplay:  Controls felt good and it only took me a brief moment to sort them out.  I feel like starting the player in a barrage was a bit of a missed opportunity.  I support the SMB1 style of early level design: invite the player to learn.  If it were my call I would have had a non-firing enemy near the player at the start and skipped the onslaught.  This invites the player to experiment in relative safety and also gives them an approachable target.

Interest:  I didn't really feel like the game was giving me much reason to continue playing.  I have to admit that I'm not a bug fan of arena shooters so your game is at a disadvantage to me but I didn't feel I was getting a visual, aural or other kind of reward for my effort.  Moreover, I felt like the only real potential for challenge was tracking down the last of the green things -- that's why I quit before finishing flow.

You've clearly made a significant investment in this project but I don't think you've quite found the "it" factor.  Keep it up though -- it's waiting to be found.

[Spooner]

Some suggestions after playing through a single level:

* Require something like 80% kills to complete a level, so you don't have to hunt the ones stuck in corners (or glitching between cells).

* I liked the red slugs, but the barely visible greens were just annoying; I killed them mainly from looking at the mini-map and spraying, because I couldn't make them out in-game. My own ship lacked character and could have done with being more interesting. The environment was nice, but as others have said, too dark and indistinct for good playability.

* Have some antibodies in that attack you, but that you should not attack back (perhaps the more you kill, the higher percentage of cancer cells you are required to kill to complete). They could move slowly, so you can outrun them rather than kill them. This would stop me just killing everything willy nilly or just spinning with my gun on to kill the barely visible green cancers. Could have similar with the wall-cells being tough, but destroying them could have a significant side-effect (such as spawning more antibodies).

Good luck; the game definitely has potential but isn't there yet.