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[handCraftedRadio]

Hi guys,

This is the game I made for last week's GB Jam. It's called Farm Dog.

You play as a farm dog named Scruff who is tasked with protecting the farm's crops and cattle from wild animals. To do this you must guide your rifle-wielding, mostly-blind, owner to aim his gun and blast the invaders away.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but it definitely can be improved a lot. I'd like to to get some good, critical feedback on the game. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!





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[ohaiguy]

Hey! So, I played the game a couple of times. One change I'd make is allowing the player to jump on the top ledge. I found that, when trying to guide the scope, sometimes I liked lead it over to me and then jump over it. On the top ledge, you can't do that and it led me into situations where I just led myself to getting shot.

Other than that, I really like the game after I figured out how to play it. It was neat to have your weapon be your enemy too 

[ndke]

It is a really fun game after I found out how I play the game. But reading the text that shows up was a bit hard because it kept moving when it was typing on the same line. It would be great if you could change that . Running from your own weapon is really fun to do.

[handCraftedRadio]

Thanks for the feedback!

@ohaiguy: I don't really want to make it possible to jump at the top, however I agree that it feels like you should be able to jump anywhere when playing. I think maybe it is because I made a "jump" key so it feels like you should always be able to use it. For the game I want it so there are 3 levels and you can move between them. So maybe if I change it to the up key it will make it feel less like a "jump" and more like switching between 3 levels.

@ndke: I'll see if I can make the text print out better for the updated version. I also want to change some of the dialog. I wrote that at the end of the jam and I was really tired, so I didn't get it as good as I wanted it. I think a few small changes to it will give the game some more character.



A few things that I'm looking for specifically, in terms of feedback, is the pacing of the game and the point system.

Right now it feels to me like the pacing off. I started the game out slow, with only 1 cow in the game. As you play longer another cow comes out and then later it caps at a total of 3 cows. Starting with one cow is great for learning the game, but once you get the hang of it I think it gets pretty boring starting out so slow every time. It feels like it takes forever for you to get anywhere interesting. There isn't anything interesting you can do at the beginning of the game and there is no way you can play it better than any other run.

The other problem I have is the scoring system. There isn't really any good way of getting any more points from game to game. The score is basically a timer for how long you survived. If you don't kill the animals you will lose and be unable to continue. I want to have some way of taking a greater risk in order to get more points, but I can't think of a really good way of doing that. A friend of mine suggested changing it so that losing crops does not make you lose the game, but makes it so you would get fewer points. His idea was that each crop generated points every few seconds, so the more crops you had the more points you would get. That way, you would be rewarded with more points if you took the risk to kill the animals quicker. I might try implementing this.

Do you guys have any ideas about either of these things?