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[soulareus]

  Hi everyone!  I am new here and this is my first post.  I'm really excited to hear from people with more experience than me, and I'm eager to learn.

I made my first (polished) game called HARD LANDER.
  It has been compared to QWOP in terms of difficulty.  I have gotten quite a bit of bad reviews specifically related to it's difficulty.  However, a small group of people get so addicted to it that they play for days in order to get a perfect score.  I am wondering what you guys think.
  I am also really interested in what to do with a hard game.  Do you have any advice on how to find people that enjoy hard games?

GAME LINK:   http://www.kongregate.com/games/soulareus/hard-lander
VIDEO LINK:  



Thanks everybody!
-Nic

[Mittens]

I beat 4 levels, this game made me very frustrated

[trilby]

It's so hard!!  I love it, I hate it...  It's too hard for me!!

[DDR]

I'd nix the lives system. I played it until I ran out of lives, several levels in. That level after the two no-thrust zones. Anyway, I'm just not willing to replay the first levels. It was fun until then, though. Oddly, tapping right and up makes you go left and down, if you do it in the right way.

[MooCowG]

I thought this was great! At first it seemed pointlessly frustrating until I got the take-off down. After that it got really interesting. I gave it a couple playthroughs and must have gotten through level 6 or 7ish.

2 suggestions:

One would be to maybe rethink the bounciness of the craft. Maybe just tone it down a little bit. Not getting rid of it all together, but the challenges that are inherent to the flight are only amplified by you bouncing off the landing pad into oblivion. Yes, the player shouldn't be encouraged to fall really hard to the ground, but even safe-feeling landings still killed me. Just a suggestion. I can respect what you're going for with it, though.

The second would be some kind of grouped leveling progression. Right now it seems that if I got all the way to level 10 and ran out of lives, I would have to go through 1-9 yet again. I would find that balance of how many levels is too many levels to replay. Consider having maybe 1-5 or even 1-10 grouped together so that if the player gets that far, they are rewarded with a save point, or something. I love high stakes gaming (permadeath, one life to live, lose all your shit, etc), but it's one thing to make a hard game and it's quite another to just flat out punish players for playing your game. Carrot AND the stick.

Anyway. Take it or leave it. That's my 10 cents.

At first I didn't succeed, and the anger was rising, but I learned to love the flight pretty fast. Maybe because it reminds me of a couple classic games that are sadly pushed into history a little to willingly. I love thrust based motion, and I'm glad to see it here.

Peace,
Gerald

[broden]

Created a similar game for Windows Phone last year...




Getting the difficulty right is really hard. Got reviews like "to hard! impossible to play!".
Players need a challenge, but they also need to feel good at what they are doing (even though they are total newbies) to stay in the game. I did not really succeed...

But forget about that. We are here because we make the games we want to make. And to be honest, I find punishing the players for playing my games more and more enjoyable... 

// Broden

[tnr]

It's pretty fun, but I can't say that it is as difficult as QWOP. It took me about 5 minutes to get used to the controls, and then I was pretty much set.

I think that the bounciness of the ships engines is a bit too high. Not a ton, but it could be lowered a small amount. I also second the idea of a checkpoint system, because this is definitely the sort of game that needs them. Starting all over again from level one is infuriating.

[MooCowG]

At the mention of QWOP I just realized why that game is so satisfying: The high score.

Yes you have to start all the way at the beginning of the race, but it's only one track, and you have a record of that awesome moment of clarity when you went a whole 5 meters.

Gerald

[soulareus]

Yes the game is really only fun once you learn to fly the ship well.  The problem is that it takes a while to learn it. 
  I have gotten a lot of great suggestions from you guys which I would LOVE to implement.  Unfortunately because I have a scoring system, if I change any of the physics of the Craft (including the fine suggestion of reducing the bounciness) it may make the game easier and thus devalue the small group of people the really enjoy the game.  If you log into kongregate you can see the lifetime crashes for instance. 

  Here is the real issue:  One player from Portugal has crashed 1,439 times.  The same player has scored a Perfect (complete the game with no crashes)and still comes back to play the game.  I feel compelled to not make any changes that would disrupt his enjoyment of the game.  I know it would be more successful if I made the changes that you guys are suggesting, but I feel this responsibility to make him happy.  Has this every happened to you with your games?  I know making the game easier would make it more accessible to more people and it would be more successful, but I can't seem to do it.  Am I making the wrong decision?

[tnr]

You may be making one. If you choose to focus solely on the small group of people who enjoy the game now, because of it's difficulty, you will essentially be alienating the players who would enjoy it if only it were a little less difficult. You just have to weigh whether the current fans of the game are worth more than the potential fans of the game.

Or you could just make an easy mode or some such, with the provision that the scores in the easy mode do not get added to the leaderboards. It would keep the current players happy, and potentially get you other players as well.

At least, that's what I think.

[MooCowG]

That's very thoughtful of you to be considerate of you're current audience. I do have to point out that you posted this in the "feedback" forum, so suggestions of how to change it are inevitable. Ultimately, it's up to you, as the designer, to decide what to do.

I just took another look and didn't notice earlier how many plays it's gotten in such a short time. Congratz!

As a compromise, if you do decide to try some changes, you can do more then a couple tweaks to it and release a separate version and call it something like "Hard Lander: The Hardening" or whatever.

If you're satisfied with how it is, we can't really tell you otherwise. All we can do is suggest how to make it more "accessible".

Peace,
Gerald

[cplhasse]

You can have a game that appeals to different kinds of people, you just need to ramp the difficulty up at the right pace. If people start feeling that the game is getting hard by the third level already then your game will probably only appeal to a small segment of people. It's kind of an obvious example, but Super Meat Boy has a great difficulty curve as well as range of difficulty. Most people who play the game will find it too difficult at some point, but there's still enough content to satisfy them before the reach that point. The hard part, I suspect, is making the game fun for skilled players even as they're going through the easy parts.

So I think you should experiment with having a wider range of difficulty in the game and make the progression a bit smoother.

Also, I don't think taunting the player on the start screen does your game any favours.

[soulareus]

Also, I don't think taunting the player on the start screen does your game any favours.

Great suggestions.  You are totally right about taunting (I'm assuming you are talking about the video).  I did change the "angry birds" statement in subsequent builds.  I had this idea (that was dumb in hindsight) that it would appeal to "hardcore" players, give them a laugh, and feel good about their skills.  I realized afterwords that "Love is not Rude", and it was a bad idea.  I think it offended some people, and incited anger and bad reviews.  I'm 31 years and it's amazing to me that I still make such bad design decisions like that.  But, I hope to never stop learning!
Cheers friend!
-Nic

[Justsometoast]

Remove the lives system. Seriously. That's the only way this game can be any fun to me.

[Indievelopper]

I have to agree with Justsometoast. This game is awesome, I've had a lot of fun playing, and since my lives piled up I didn't really care. But when I used my last life I got really frustrated. I kept trying to do the first level with a triple frontflip, managed to do it, and quit.

[soulareus]

I will defiantly remove the lives requirement in Hard Lander 2.  Thanks for all the fantastic advice guys!