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[yuji]

Hey everyone! I'd love for you to try out my first game and give me your feedback.

Dodge (still trying to come up with a better title) is an arcade high score game where you control a space ship (using the accelerometer) and try to kill as many enemies as possible. But you don't have a weapon: you kill enemies by dodging their attacks and making them hit each other instead. Each of the three enemy types has a predictable attack pattern that you manipulate to your advantage.

Since I haven't implemented a title screen or in-game instructions yet, I'll describe the three game modes now:

• Basic Mode: Just kill as many enemies as possible
• Boss Mode: You only get points for damaging and hurting the boss (the big enemy). This mode probably isn't very good, and I also haven't spent much time balancing it. Thinking about getting rid of it, but it's there for now.
• Shield Mode: All enemies have a shield, and are only vulnerable to one damage type. White shield can only be hurt by the charging white enemy, Green shield can only be hurt by homing missiles, and Red shield can only be hurt by lasers.

Here's a screenshot of Basic Mode:


And Shield Mode:


If you're interested in trying this out, go here: link removed for now, follow the instructions, and I should be able to set you up pretty quickly (unless I'm asleep).

I'd love to hear feedback on any part of the game, but here are a few specific things I'm curious about:

• Is the game fun?
• Do the controls work for you? How is the sensitivity?
• The look of this game is limited by my non-existent drawing skills. I'm still planning on putting in stars in the background and explosions or some other kind of death-animation for enemies. Is there anything else (ideally not too difficult) you can think of that would improve the game a lot visually?
• As the screen fills up with enemies later in the game the you become too busy avoiding death to concentrate much on killing enemies. At the same time, enemies will die more on their own so you don't have to worry much about killing them. Do you still find the game enjoyable at that point? (I made Shield Mode in order to prevent this, but it really only serves to delay this transition: once the screen gets full enough, enemies will start dying on their own even if they have shields).
• I'd also be happy to hear any other ideas for improvements you might have, especially for gameplay

Thanks guys!

EDIT: removing the Testflight link for now because I'm running out of test device slots.

[Quicksand-S]

Note: I haven't played it because I don't want to sign up for a testflight account. I kinda wanted to try it...

Anyway, it sounds like a decent idea. I actually kinda like the idea of Boss Mode. Shield Mode is interesting but sounds a bit annoying. Have you considered merging all three? Have one boss enemy, a lot of minions and give some of those minions shields. It might work.

The graphics are...I don't know. I feel like they could look decent if they were slightly higher resolution, or slightly lower resolution. As they are now, your drawings look like they're stretched out or something...at least, to me they do.

As for the name, it's not terrible. It's short and to-the-point, and it's kinda catchy. I can also see it looking pretty nice on a title screen, if you pick a good font/style.

[Udderdude]

I really like the concept, maybe you can add some non-lethal abilities which allow you to control the enemies further. 

Unfortunately I'm unable to test it, as I don't have access to an iOS device at the moment.

[yuji]

Thanks Quicksand-S and Udderdude for the feedback. I might put up a web build later with mouse movement because having heard what you've said I'm curious what you guys would think after actually trying the game.

Anyway, it sounds like a decent idea. I actually kinda like the idea of Boss Mode. Shield Mode is interesting but sounds a bit annoying. Have you considered merging all three? Have one boss enemy, a lot of minions and give some of those minions shields. It might work.

I've been thinking about combining them somehow—if I could make that work I'd prefer it to having multiple modes. Some experimentation is in order…

The graphics are...I don't know. I feel like they could look decent if they were slightly higher resolution, or slightly lower resolution. As they are now, your drawings look like they're stretched out or something...at least, to me they do.

I think part of the problem might be that my sprites are getting scaled on the iPhone (there's no good way for me to avoid this, since it's more important for me to keep the size of the game area constant on all screen sizes, so that high scores will be fair). Does this iPad screenshot (http://cl.ly/image/0z3s1x362f22) look any better? In either case I have been thinking about reworking some of the art to use even fewer pixels, so hopefully that'll help.

I really like the concept, maybe you can add some non-lethal abilities which allow you to control the enemies further. 

That could be interesting—I've also been thinking about temporary powerups/pickups too. I do want to keep things as simple as possible, but I'm definitely open to adding stuff like that if I think of something that would work really well.

[Quicksand-S]

A web build would be great.

You know, that iPad screenshot does look better. I think the issue may not be the scaling itself but the fact that the scaled sprites look blurry (extreme anti-aliasing?). If you could keep them pixelated on the iPhone, I think it might look better.

[Udderdude]

That could be interesting—I've also been thinking about temporary powerups/pickups too. I do want to keep things as simple as possible, but I'm definitely open to adding stuff like that if I think of something that would work really well.

I've actually been working on a game with a lot of non-lethal abilities, which are the main focus of the gameplay.  Maybe you can get some ideas from them.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=27088.0

[eigenbom]

hey dude, i tested this for you (ipad3).

i think this game has potential, but is currently not fun. i think the simple graphics work really well. but you need to go back to basic mode, forget the others for now, and try to come up with some things to increase the fun of the basic gameplay. some ideas:
- simple sounds will make it seem more tactile
- need some STURCTURE to the way the enemies move (in galaga, space invaders, etc., the ships just aren't moving randomly -- their patterns add a lot of fun as your brain tries to match and predict them.)
- allow the player to make mistakes (e.g., have a shield with 3 life bars, that slowly recharge)
- this game could have a LOT of comedic value in the designs of the ships (and their guns and behaviours and sounds) AND in the way different ships weapons affect other ships (e.g., an e.m.p. could cause a certain ship to fly off in a whacky trajectory)
- the game needs to start off really simple, e.g., just two enemies, then add waves of ships, etc... (this could integrate with boss mode, the bosses could just be special waves)
- i want to hold the ipad upright, so i think you need a calibration screen to determine the neutral orientation

good luck!

[eigenbom]

Oh and I just had an idea for another mode: puzzle mode. A set of predesigned scenarios where you have to destroy all the ships. A trivial example would be two ships spinning in place on either side of the screen. They are spinning at different rates and so you have to cross between them when they are both facing each other.

[yuji]

That could be interesting—I've also been thinking about temporary powerups/pickups too. I do want to keep things as simple as possible, but I'm definitely open to adding stuff like that if I think of something that would work really well.

I've actually been working on a game with a lot of non-lethal abilities, which are the main focus of the gameplay.  Maybe you can get some ideas from them.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=27088.0

Ooh good idea! Your game looks very cool—I'll have to take a look later for sure

[yuji]

hey dude, i tested this for you (ipad3).

i think this game has potential, but is currently not fun. i think the simple graphics work really well. but you need to go back to basic mode, forget the others for now, and try to come up with some things to increase the fun of the basic gameplay. some ideas:

Thanks for trying out the game and for the feedback! Definitely a lot to think about.

Now, as it turns out a lot of my testers have said that the game actually is fun (also I enjoy it a lot too), so what you've said is slightly perplexing to me. Quick question just to rule out the possibility that a) this game just isn't for you or b) the game didn't communicate very well to you what it wants to be: Do you like other simple, unforgiving arcade high score games on the platform, like Super Hexagon, CUBES, Irrupt, Ziggurat, or Bit Pilot? These are all games about twitch, pattern recognition, and gradually improving one's skills by playing many times (and dying a lot). And that's what my game aspires to be as well. If you do like games like that but still don't enjoy mine, then we should definitely try to figure out why.

To respond to your specific points (not necessarily in order):

- simple sounds will make it seem more tactile

Yup, agreed. It's on the todo list. In terms of making things more tactile, I implemented explosions the other day, which makes killing things a lot more satisfying. Still lots more to do on that front though.

- this game could have a LOT of comedic value in the designs of the ships (and their guns and behaviours and sounds) AND in the way different ships weapons affect other ships (e.g., an e.m.p. could cause a certain ship to fly off in a whacky trajectory)

I'll definitely have to think about this. Will be hard for me to do this since I can't really draw, and I'm not sure if funny is what I'm going for, but I do want to add more personality to the game.

- allow the player to make mistakes (e.g., have a shield with 3 life bars, that slowly recharge)

Can you elaborate more on why you think this would help? Most of the games I mentioned above don't do this—if you screw up, you die. Bit Pilot, which is also a game about dodging stuff, is an exception in that you start with a certain number of shields, you lose one each time you hit something, and you can pick up more through a powerup. This does add a lot to that game, but for very specific reasons:

• The more shields you have, the bigger your hitbox. This makes the game play differently depending on how much shields you have left. Also, it means that the closer you are to death the easier it is to dodge things, making epic comebacks more likely.
• Bit Pilot is purely a game about dodging. Normally you just stay as far away from asteroids, but having powerups to pick up means that sometimes you have to decide whether or not to fly into a risky situation to pick one up.

Now, in Dodge you already have a tension between a) trying not to die b) trying to maneuver in a way that kills enemies, so there isn't as much of an intrinsic need for a pickups to add complexity to the decisions that arise. Conversely, not having shields adds tension and excitement to a game since you are never more than a step away from death.

I spent a while today thinking about what other reasons are to have shields/extra life in games. The vast majority of games that do this do it because otherwise it would be too easy to die and lose a lot (possibly hours) of progress. IMO this isn't a concern with Dodge because you never have much progress to lose—you're never going to live more than a minute or two, tops. And the important progress in this type of games the improvement in player skill, not progression through the game itself.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on this.

- the game needs to start off really simple, e.g., just two enemies, then add waves of ships, etc... (this could integrate with boss mode, the bosses could just be special waves)

Not sure about this: anything less than the current five enemies that initially spawn becomes incredibly boring once you've achieved a certain level of competence at the game. But I still think that five is still manageable enough that you can still learn the game

- need some STURCTURE to the way the enemies move (in galaga, space invaders, etc., the ships just aren't moving randomly -- their patterns add a lot of fun as your brain tries to match and predict them.)

You're right about Galaga and Space Invaders. And I'll admit that it's a bit lame that my enemies move randomly. I'm not convinced that it's a big problem: the game already provides a whole lot of pattern prediction/matching for your brain with homing missiles, spinning lasers, and chargers, all of which move in a completely predictable manner. And once you progress just a little into the game and the screen fills up with enemies, most of the enemy movement is just being determined by collisions (instead of their own movement).

- i want to hold the ipad upright, so i think you need a calibration screen to determine the neutral orientation

I'd like to do this, but I'm not sure that it's technically feasible. For example, CUBES, which I think is one of the best accelerometer-based games out there, doesn't do this. The problem is that if you hold the device upright, then tilting the device left and right (i.e., rotating around what would be the Y axis if you were in landscape orientation) has no effect on the accelerometer reading. Gyroscope is another option, but I haven't figured out how well that works in Unity, and it also opens another can of worms (like if you're playing on a moving vehicle that turns 90 degrees—now you have to recalibrate).

[eigenbom]

No problemo. I'm definitely not a fan of games like Super Hexagon or the Bit series, but I can still see that they are fun, well made, and address a certain target market. And those games in particular have a musical/rhythmic component which adds synaesthesia, can lock the player into a flow state, gives breaks between waves, etc. If you showed me a prototype of super hexagon, for instance, I would've said that the core concept was great and that the game had potential. So, yeh, I'm saying that it's not fun (atm) because I don't think that many people will enjoy it, but if you're getting lots of people tell you the opposite then that's good and you can take all this with a grain of salt.

I can give my opinion on those other points for sure, but you've no doubt thought about it a lot more than I have. And if you play these kinds of games regularly, then you surely know what's fun about them or not.

Comedy

Actually I think the ships already kind of have a funny look to them, and making them look all serious with realistic designs would change the mood for sure. The missile ship charging up his missile put a smile on my face, so its not necessarily an explicit humour I'm talking about .. more of a slightly off-kilter design. Where what a 'computer game ship' is is skewed, and the same with the effects of weapons etc.. At a guess I would say its about giving the ships a slight bit of character or intention.

IMO this isn't a concern with Dodge because you never have much progress to lose—you're never going to live more than a minute or two, tops.

If this is the design goal then you don't need to prolong the players life with hit-points etc.

Difficulty/Waves etc

I think you need some structure, and I'm betting that all those games you've cited have structure in the order that things move or are presented (whether its apparent to the player or not).

A simple example is that in Super Hexagon, you can get runs of hexagons that are rotated by one turn from each other. Those are extremely satisfying because your mind gets a partial rest. A more complex example is that the hexagons are grouped into short sequences, separated by space. I think this dynamic probably contributes a tonne to the replayability/addictiveness of the game. If it was just a random set of hexagons one after the other, in slowly increasing speed, then I doubt it would be as fun.

So to come back to your game, I think it would be hard to give it this dynamic without some structure in the way the enemies appear. Even if 90% of the screen was structured and the remaining 10% was looser that would probably be ok too. Like in Galaga I think where occasionally a ship will break rank and come after you.

Anyways, good luck with this!

[nachobeard]

hi Yuji,

I signed up to your testflight thing because I really like ziggurat, super hexagon, irrupt and so on and your screenshots looked interesting.

anyhow, about your game.

some initial impressions (playing on ipad3, basic mode)

control feels pretty tight, particularly considering you're using accelerometer/gyro/whatever.  the game might benefit from using touch controls so that when you slide your finger on the screen the main character moves in that direction (would probably feel more accurate to me).

the game is quite fun, but I would need more variation for it to keep my attention (probably more enemy types or enemy variations).

although the game is not frustrating to me, I don't feel like I'm improving over time either.  getting the enemies to kill each other feels more like plain luck to me, and for that reason it doesn't satisfy, because when it happens I just didn't plan for it.  when I'm playing I just have time to dodge bullets and hope for the best.  I feel the homing missiles should disappear after a few seconds, otherwise it's just impossible to survive (for me anyway) for more than 20 seconds, if that. maybe putting some of your own gameplay videos on youtube might help?

regarding graphics, I think the chunky pixels are funcional and easy to read.  if you want to "improve" them I wouldn't increase resolution, but add more sprite animations (for example to make the worm more crawly), and also more "transform" animations (eg make the enemy recoil back when it shoots a laser or missile, or scale things up and down for a "bouncy" feel).
for the laser, I think it would benefit from making it quite a bit thicker when it's shot and change colours all the time because it's kinda hard to notice when it's firing and you're focused on something else.

maybe look at how this guy (http://youtu.be/57Xy2p2mpG0?t=45s) does the lasers.  they vibrate with power, the whole screen shakes when they're fired, they feel great, yet require virtually no art

so yeah, regarding the graphics, maybe put more juice into it! explosions, trail effects, screen shake, white flashes

might help for inspiration?

I don't see the connection with helix, gameplay seems totally unrelated to me, and I've played both games

shield mode I didn't play very much at all because I can barely survive in basic mode.
boss mode seemed... the same game but with one oversized enemy sprite.
as already pointed out I would personally try to get one core thing "right" rather than add different modes (but you're probably just experimenting with different modes so in that case that's great!)

I would keep it one-hit kill.
I like that, even though the game kicks my ass every time.
it allows for short bursts of gameplay which is good for mobile and also I don't get frustrated when I die because I can just restart.

incidentally I'd love to get some feedback from like-minded individuals for my current game project.  that would be super cool because we seem to draw inspiration from the same sources.  check it out in my sig if you're curious!  (testflight link http://tflig.ht/RwXE6V)

good luck with your game, I'll be following this thread.
-nachobeard.

[yuji]

Comedy

Actually I think the ships already kind of have a funny look to them, and making them look all serious with realistic designs would change the mood for sure. The missile ship charging up his missile put a smile on my face, so its not necessarily an explicit humour I'm talking about .. more of a slightly off-kilter design. Where what a 'computer game ship' is is skewed, and the same with the effects of weapons etc.. At a guess I would say its about giving the ships a slight bit of character or intention.

Glad you liked the missile charging. I originally had a much more subtle charging animation but it was difficult to see, and making it a little over-the-top made it look much more interesting. I definitely want to add some more animations just to give the enemies a little more character.

Difficulty/Waves etc

A simple example is that in Super Hexagon, you can get runs of hexagons that are rotated by one turn from each other. Those are extremely satisfying because your mind gets a partial rest. A more complex example is that the hexagons are grouped into short sequences, separated by space. I think this dynamic probably contributes a tonne to the replayability/addictiveness of the game. If it was just a random set of hexagons one after the other, in slowly increasing speed, then I doubt it would be as fun.

So to come back to your game, I think it would be hard to give it this dynamic without some structure in the way the enemies appear. Even if 90% of the screen was structured and the remaining 10% was looser that would probably be ok too. Like in Galaga I think where occasionally a ship will break rank and come after you.

Yeah, that's definitely something that works very well in Super Hexagon. I'll have to think more about ways to do this…

Anyway thanks again for all your feedback! The gameplay stuff is going to take a lot of thought and experimentation on my part, but I'm hoping to at least make some graphical improvements for another build soon.

[yuji]

Thanks for the feedback nachobeard! ("What kind of beard doesn't belong to you?")

control feels pretty tight, particularly considering you're using accelerometer/gyro/whatever.  the game might benefit from using touch controls so that when you slide your finger on the screen the main character moves in that direction (would probably feel more accurate to me).

Yeah, I think the accelerometer works surprisingly well. You eventually get to a point where you get maybe 90% of the accuracy of say mouse control, which I think is good enough for me since the accelerometer has other advantages (like how badass you feel when you pull off a difficult maneuver with it). I did try out touch controls for a bit and they were slightly more accurate (or maybe just easier to learn—hard to say since I didn't keep them for too long), but the main problem is that it just doesn't work with an iPhone since your thumb covers up too much of the screen.

the game is quite fun, but I would need more variation for it to keep my attention (probably more enemy types or enemy variations).

although the game is not frustrating to me, I don't feel like I'm improving over time either.  getting the enemies to kill each other feels more like plain luck to me, and for that reason it doesn't satisfy, because when it happens I just didn't plan for it.  when I'm playing I just have time to dodge bullets and hope for the best.  I feel the homing missiles should disappear after a few seconds, otherwise it's just impossible to survive (for me anyway) for more than 20 seconds, if that. maybe putting some of your own gameplay videos on youtube might help?

A gameplay video is a good idea; I'll try to do that with the next build. I think the problem here is that until you get very proficient with the accelerometer, you don't start learning the kinds of maneuvers you need to use in order to proactively kill enemies. This wasn't a problem with the original keyboard version, where there was no learning curve for the controls so you'd immediately start doing interesting maneuvers.

I think this is the biggest problem with the game right now—there's a very high learning curve at the beginning, and for a long time you're not even really playing the game as intended, but just fumbling around trying to learn the controls. I'll have to think about ways to ease the player in more…

regarding graphics, I think the chunky pixels are funcional and easy to read.  if you want to "improve" them I wouldn't increase resolution, but add more sprite animations (for example to make the worm more crawly), and also more "transform" animations (eg make the enemy recoil back when it shoots a laser or missile, or scale things up and down for a "bouncy" feel).
for the laser, I think it would benefit from making it quite a bit thicker when it's shot and change colours all the time because it's kinda hard to notice when it's firing and you're focused on something else.

Yeah, I was thinking more animations. I'm not necessarily happy with most of the actual sprites I have now, but I am pretty happy with how the pixellated look has worked out in general. Transforms make a lot of sense too, and actually recoil for example could also give some structure to the missile launcher enemies instead of them just moving around randomly. Will try some of this out soon.

maybe look at how this guy (http://youtu.be/57Xy2p2mpG0?t=45s) does the lasers.  they vibrate with power, the whole screen shakes when they're fired, they feel great, yet require virtually no art

That's awesome—super easy to implement, and definitely easier to see. I'll give that a try for the lasers.

so yeah, regarding the graphics, maybe put more juice into it! explosions, trail effects, screen shake, white flashes

might help for inspiration?

That's really good stuff too—thanks for sharing these!

I don't see the connection with helix, gameplay seems totally unrelated to me, and I've played both games

Yeah I guess I was being a bit paranoid. The only connection is that they're both shooters with some kind of twist about how you kill things.

incidentally I'd love to get some feedback from like-minded individuals for my current game project.  that would be super cool because we seem to draw inspiration from the same sources.  check it out in my sig if you're curious!  (testflight link http://tflig.ht/RwXE6V)

I've actually been wanting to try Hook Love since before I started this thread! I signed up with the TestFlight link and everything but it doesn't seem to have gone through? TestFlight can be such a pain sometime…  Anyway thanks again for all the feedback and hope I can try Hook Love at some point!

[nachobeard]

hey yuji!

tilt controls

good point about screen size on iphones.
I think I haven't played enough games with tilt controls to be good enough to make the most out of your game, though I still see the appeal (and have played it probably more than most games I buy on the appstore).  my max score is only 12 but I've gotten to the point where I feel more in control, and although I can't reliably make enemies kill each other I can favour them kill each other.

level of difficulty

I can see what you mean about easing players in.  you could maybe tone difficulty down a bit, but I'd try to keep that mysteriousness that surrounds difficult games.

about the learning curve, I've been thinking about this a lot, because I'm also working on a survival game where you start from the beginning every time.  but how can you make the beginning of the game interesting for experienced players without making it too difficult for new players?

ziggurat starts the same every time, and if you've played it a bit the first couple of minutes is always boring (even though they tried to do things like the ufo to keep things interesting), so that's no good.  super hexagon instead adds unlockable difficulty levels but that doesn't seem like a very elegant solution.

so I guess I'd like to try a game which makes itself harder the better you get at it, so it's always challenging the minute you start.  but that's probably not possible, nor desirable because players will never feel like they're improving at the game.

I think punch quest does something like add more enemy types (right from the beginning of the game) as the player improves, so you don't get bored of killing the same enemies all the time.

testflight

I'm so glad that you noticed my game earlier! but I had no idea that you signed up to be honest I don't really know what the process is with testflight because no one has signed up so far.  but when I sign into tesflight I don't see any notifications or anything so I'm not sure what's going on there.

what has worked for me in the past is add testers manually (by adding their email address), so if you don't mind sharing your email address I'd be glad to add you!

bye!

[nachobeard]

Got killed a couple times today by enemies that spawned on the edge of the screen.
Felt a bit unfair!
Just a small thing to keep in mind 

[yuji]

Got killed a couple times today by enemies that spawned on the edge of the screen.
Felt a bit unfair!
Just a small thing to keep in mind 

Thanks for pointing that out! That's been partly fixed, as well as a whole bunch of other changes. Although I haven't really had time to address most of the major concerns yet. But anyway, new build coming soon…