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[mluongo]

Webpage

Direct Download Link (28.5 MB, .zip)




Hey all. This is my first major GM project that I am finally bringing to a close. It's an overhead sci-fi ship combat game, heavy on action, with a lot of focus on unlocking weapons and ship upgrades. In all, it takes about an hour or so to complete.

If you like twitchy action games, blowing up alien ships, and/or lots of unlockables, you may enjoy it!

As far as the kind of feedback I want, I'd like you to tell me what you feel the game's strengths and weaknesses are. What feels solid, and what feels weaker or underdeveloped?

Visit the webpage for the full features list and.. well, more of what you see in this post.

Thanks!

[jrjellybeans]

Somebody hasn't learned how to load files externally yet.  For GM, it's pretty much mandatory to leave all of your sound files OUTSIDE of the exe.  Particularly, don't ever put background music into the exe.

Having you move to right of the screen and then appear at the left side was REALLY annoying.  Just don't let the player move past that area.

It felt like I couldn't skip the text at the beginning.  It was like the game wasn't recognizing my button presses.  In any case, don't start a game with an entire long section that I can't skip.

Overall, I felt it lacks polish.  It's a good idea, and it's obvious you put in a lot of effort.  It's just not quite there yet.

Good luck!

[mluongo]

wow, I thought I had this thing really well polished

Guess that's why it's good to get more opinions. Thanks for downloading.

I've got the background music and the background images externally loaded, but not the sound effects. The biggest (and only?) drawback to that has to be the loading time -- and even then, the sounds aren't preloaded.

The intro sequence can be skipped with ESC; that is the only way. I should let the player know that.

Moving to the other side of the screen is simply a design decision, akin to older arcade style shoot 'em ups. I wanted less restricted movement. I suppose this one is a matter of opinion.

[mluongo]

Dang, not getting much action here or on GMC  Is it the download size?

I've cleaned up the original post a bit.

[mluongo]

Bump

[Makai]

So after about half an hour of trying it out, here's what I think so far:

Pros:
 - Nice variety of weapons and accessories.

Cons:
 - On the base screen, I have no way of knowing what each weapon does or how it acts. I'd say either let me shoot while inside the base, open up a small training area where I can test things out or something else to let me know what they do.
 - It took me a while to realize that the box on the top right was a button to open the menu. Maybe because none of the other interface elements are click-able, you might want to change the look on it so it stands out a bit more as an actual button.
 - Maneuverability. Right now because of the speed at which the ship flies at and the enemies zoom by I end up just doing loops and figure-eights to unsuccessfully dodge them. Maybe adding some rear thrusters so 'S' can move you backwards might help?
 - The wraparound the map would work if I could see where I was going to end up. Right now what ends up happening is I just teleport on top on an enemy on the other side and take big damage, I turn back teleport back to the other side of the map and eat some more enemy fire.

What you probably need to do at this point is really get some more feedback on the game from family and friends. There are some interface and polish issues that would probably be better worked on by iterating on them based on feedback from people close to you.

Keep at it though, it does take a while to get to something that feels truly finished. 

[mluongo]

Thanks!

Playtesting seems to be what I need the most. I've actually received very little feedback the whole way through because I took a while to post it anywhere, so it was very much a solo project.

Two questions for you, concerning things you didn't understand:

1. Did you know that you can right click the buttons inside of the base to read what they do? You're right, you can't actually use most of the weapons inside of the base, but there are descriptions for them.

If you didn't realize that, I will change it make it more obvious (perhaps by changing the cursor on mouseover, as you described)

2. Did you mean the clickable box on the top left (you said the right)? The computer terminal?

[Makai]

1. Did you know that you can right click the buttons inside of the base to read what they do? You're right, you can't actually use most of the weapons inside of the base, but there are descriptions for them.

If you didn't realize that, I will change it make it more obvious (perhaps by changing the cursor on mouseover, as you described)

2. Did you mean the clickable box on the top left (you said the right)? The computer terminal?

1. If the user doesn't know about the feature, it's the same as if it doesn't exist.
But yeah, a mouseover after a couple of seconds hovering over it might work.

2. Yeah, I meant left, typed right instead. It took me a little while to figure out that it wasn't just eye candy.

[mluongo]

Been doing a lot of work on my website. I got a better gameplay video up along with newer screenshots.

Still looking for more suggestions. So far:

1. Inform the player that the introduction can be skipped by pressing <ESC>
2. Make it obvious that the player is hovering their cursor over usable objects inside of the base