Title: Tank united
This is a first person tank shooting game. The player finds himself in the seat of a futuristic tank, battling enemy forces.
EmotionalIntuitivism : The game is hard to get at first. When you start moving around with the tank, you’re not sure what to do or where to go. The controls are easy to pick up but you don’t know why to use them. The radar, once you take a close look at it, is a big help. The problem is, at first, we don’t have anything that tells us exactly where to go. When enemy tanks are around, they appear quite clearly on the radar but the overall direction of where to go is not that intuitive.
Also, aiming and shooting is not as intuitive as it could be. We don’t see very well where we are shooting and where the bullet actually lands because of the eye shaped icon where we aim.
Moving around when the “move turret while turning” option is off can easily loose the player in my opinion. The game should start with the option turned on so that the first steps of the player are more intuitive.
Using the call option is not intuitive since we don’t know when to use it or what it does.
Another thing that’s not intuitive is the reload time for the tank. It took me awhile before finding out that I could only shoot when the blue lines appeared.
Immersion: Even if the game shows the player a lot of information, the general idea of being in a futuristic tank is well represented. We have various information and a chat-like command window that tells us what is going on, a very nice touch by the way, as well as interesting death transition effects.
I also like how the loading screen and re-spawn screen make us feel like we never really left the tank.
The game has a strong “tron” feel to it, very futuristic. It also helps to make the idea of fighting space tanks very believable. The sounds add to the overall theme and the lack of music gives the game a more realistic flavor. It’s just a little touch of realism that makes this game serious enough to believe that this tank war is not just for fun.
A problem that that doesn’t help the game’s immersion is the fact that you can move through small structures and other tanks. I don’t know if it’s a mistake or because you wanted to make sure that no one got stock in structure, but this feature is not very immersive.
An interesting thing to add would be transmission from other pilot. Just like when the tutorial or the briefing, other tanks would tell you when they are getting close or in trouble. So instead of having blue tank defeated, you’d have Joey’s tank has been destroyed or Anna’s tank is in trouble. Just a little detail to help make the game feel more immersive.
Experimentation level: The experiment level of the game looks promising. You have access to big maps and possibly levels with numerous possible strategies. Will we be bale to upgrade our tanks? Will we be able to choose our missions as well as our path to reach the last mission?
More elements of exploration and experimentation would help the experience of the game. Give us more goals than just finishing he mission. Give us sub-missions so we can explore a bit more the world that you are presenting us.
Make sure your next level have enough variety in them. Try to focus on different aspect of your mechanics, not only “shoot and survive”. Try to think of as much ways as possible to use the mechanics you have to make the experience more diversified to boost the experimentation level of the game.
Motivation: As mentioned earlier, we need more goals to the game. We have our short-term goals (survive, kill enemy, get glyph to structure etc…), one mid-term goal (finish the level) and one long-term (finish the game). Give us more mid-terms and long terms goal, such as improving your tank, get upgrades, have the possibility to unlock more missions that are secret, move to another region, etc….
All in all, the player will need more motivation elements. Try to find something that will make the player say “Yeah, I’ll play few hours just to get that”, besides finishing the game.
TechnicalMechanisms:
Moving: Moving is very simple, but different speed would be interesting, like a turbo or something like that. The reason to this is that you want the player to be bale to run away from danger when he is in a very dangerous situation. In addition, it would help to make long traveling time shorter. For example, in the demo game, you have to get a glyph then go to the reactor-type building. While doing the delivery, there is nothing happening. This traveling time is very long since there is nothing challenging us.
Turning: I found turning a bit weird. It felt like the tank was rotating when off the ground. I’m not an expert in tanks but I expected the tank to move accordingly to the turning. If I stop the tank and press the turning buttons, the tank turns with ease while remaining on the same spot. It felt weird. One note: it felt a lot better when I turned the “Turn turret when turning” option on. It was easier to move around.
Shooting: We need more attack speed. We should be able to shoot a lot more often. Since we can power up our shot, I suggest that you make the tank shoot at a higher rate but make very little damage. This way, boosting your shot will be better than shooting a lot but the option of doing it will be there. Also, maybe making the boosting up animation clearer would help a lot.
Aiming: We also need more accuracy. Although very simple, the aiming is not very precise. I still haven’t figured out how the bullets travel. It took me numerous times before I could shoot at an enemy at range. Maybe you could lock the aiming on an enemy so the bullet targets it? Anything is good as long as it’s easier to hit from a certain range.
Otherwise, moving and aiming is fine by my book.
Place land mine: There’s nothing much to say about this mechanics. Pretty simple actually and it works.
Call for support: I’m not sure that the correct term used in game. Actually, I’m not sure it actually does something in the game. I know I can press the e button and it says that I request something, but I can’t see anything new in game. Maybe making it clearer on what happens in game when pressing the e.
Economics: The economics are a bit weird in this game… Let’s take a look at the elements.
Health/shields: I know that my tank’s got some shield power, which is at the same time it’s health. No shields means destruction. There doesn’t seem to be any ways to fix my tank when it’s heavily damaged. So, shield is not gain but only lost
Mines: I have a pack of mines when I start the game, and a couple more every time I get re-spawned. I do not know where to get extra mines once I’ve placed them all. Once again, we have an element that you can only loose, never gain.
I’m not saying that it’s necessarily bad, but I can’t seem to find anything that actually rewards me from playing the game. I don’t have any kill counts or any statistics. I can capture enemy elements but they can catch it back.
Basically, I’m thinking that you should give something for the player’s effort. Perhaps not in-game, but after the mission. Perhaps there is, but I can’t finish a single mission so I can’t really tell.
FlowThe loading time is a bit long, but there doesn’t seem to have any loading while playing, which is good. The loading screen is also well done so it’s not a big problem.
It’s hard to say something about the flow of the game when there is little menus in the demo. At the moment, I believe the application flows correctly. We have easy access to what we need at the right time.
Ergonomics: Ergonomically speaking, the application very well created. All menus are displayed in the same fashion, we can customize volume, sound effects, remap buttons, change the way we control the tank, adjust the level of details in the texturing, there are messages when performing critical action such as quitting, pausing and resume the game is easy to do. The only problem I see is that the game screen may hold too much information, making the screen too crowded.
Another thing... In the starting screen, where we set the basic settings, what on earth are the Aa, Wbuf, Dith and Hmtx options? This information is definitively unclear to the player… At least not in English. Make sure that if you choose one language, make it so everything is in the same language. No tech jargon too, only plain English.
Stability: The game crashed after a couple of minutes of play in the demo fight. A memory access violation occurred while fighting another tank. I tried to make it crash again but couldn’t. The final product will need to have intense testing to find all the obscure bugs
Accessibility: The game is quite accessible. There are audio cues supported by text and people can easily adapt the game to their needs. Difficulty is adjustable to fit the players liking. Over all, a very accessible application, in my opinion.
ConclusionOverall, an interesting game that seems to be on solid grounds but needs to push itself a bit more. Pour more soul in your game and you’ll have something very special. Right now, it’s nice, but there’s nothing special about it. The stage is set, all you need now is to make the experience come to life.
Keep up the good work!
Guert
Developer
