PS, when I said more pictures I meant put more images in the actual thread rather than links.. there's plenty of actual pictures :]. Balance out the text with the sweet sweet graphics! don't hide them away

I just hit new game as soon as I saw it. I think you should consider the possibility that someone might not look at the controls, especially since it's next to 'delete save data' and the screen is about selecting a save slot. It's easy to take a glance and assume the buttons are to do with save management- which you don't care about yet since you're starting a new game.

this is awesome :D great work!

notes:

you hit a massive difficulty spike in the first purple goo rising level. the bit where you have to jump up the tiny ledges before the spinning boxes, is very tough for a beginner, mainly because half the time he fails to jump the right height and you fall back into the goop. I don't know why he was jumping half-height sometimes but it was pretty frustrating. I think you ought to put a checkpoint at the top there before the boxes at least..

if the jump-height thing on tiny ledges is intentional, I suggest you give the player some tiny ledges to jump up in a non-stressfull situation so they can learn them without being killed for making 1 mistake

I think in general the placing of checkpoints is a little stingy, since some of the platforming is pretty tough (well, for me it was)

well having said all that I think it's a great game, love the graphics in particular- really vibrant. I think if I had any minor crits there, I think the checkpoint pad isn't big and bold enough, considering how important it is- it's really just a little green circle. Imo a checkpoint element should really stand out.

Goo-d stuff! teehee

hey, just starting to play: one observation, after running into the first room and getting a text bubble, how am I supposed to know to press A? my first experience with your game was mashing all the keys on the keyboard . And why a/s not z/x?

awesome, way more enjoyable!

agree it might be nice to see either crashed pods stay or the X from their death position

other thoughts:

I'd love to be able to see a little map of my exploits, maybe when you die? (I mean, only the trails from your ship, but from a distance) So you can see the map you've created, maybe even plan your next route.

Also maybe a way to complete an asteroid- say, map out 80% of it (or whatever % based on intended difficulty / playtime)

Could start the game on a very small asteroid (lower gravity and less space to explore) then begin to crank them up in size to increase the complexity of the player's task

I don't know if you've tried it but I'd be interested to see what happens if you place the follow trail based on time rather than distance, so x milliseconds trail is placed. Maybe also vary the size of the trail / shape based on ship speed. In this way you could also map out the tricky areas traverse because you'll travel much slower in very tight areas. If you were using your trails as a map this is very useful info and helps your further exploration

don't get down epcc, user crits and feedback are the fuel of polishing! You can't do it without them. I think usability feedback should be carefully listened to particularly if you've only had a couple of testers, because it's very easy to get used to the way your game works over time, but someone new doesn't have that benefit and can find things difficult/un-obvious. I think you've had great feedback so far, just keep chopping those edges off till it's smooth

yeah, I was expecting something a bit more amnesia-like, but it was pretty good!

one thing, I think you need to communicate all the controls because I filled up my inventory with dupes and no way to drop any of them, but I'm sure I remember dropping something by accident once.

pour on the polish :]

ooooh wait, you mean the detatched bits of rope still count to trigger the exit??

damn, from the very beginning I thought I had to connect the start and end point

edit:
ok, yeah I beat it easily this time . However, that does raise an interesting way to make the game much more challenging!

also, if you want to keep with the detached method as it is now, I suggest making the very first level one where the rope is completely detached by default, because the first swinging one suggested to me I needed to keep it attached

i got stuck on the needle one.. didn't think it was easy at all!

good fun tho very nice simple idea

Hey thanks for the kind words everyone! really helps with motivation to push on

Starflier: definately taking elements from the other prototypes, but also bringing something new as the vid shows hopefully!

One idea I have is that as grenades pick up the items they gain strength for whatever their payload is, so the scattering of pickups can quite greatly influence how you approach an area, trying to shoot the grenade through as many as possible before it reaches an enemy for example. I'm just toying with this idea atm


here's a new vid and some pics of the 'collector grenade' and some bullets:

whoa! sweet, I want to play it :] get some more colour in there tho :D

artwork looks great, specially the screenshots get some more images in the thread!

ship speed feels seriously slow, yeah! why did you cut it by 70%?

also rather importantly, if someone begins playing this and uses the arrow keys, they will completely miss the ability to move backwards and forwards. why does up/down not do the same as w/s?

keep at it and there's no shame in looking at a smup you enjoy and copying the values (speeds, pickup types, enemy attributes). Once you have something fun you can always switch things up to make it unique, but don't be afraid to borrow from the best of the genre

pineapple is delicious right?

mmm, pineapple daiquiri. Bacon sandwiches. Damn I'm hungry

haha a game without crates is like.. like.. a bacon sandwich without ketchup!

but don't worry too much they are placeholders rooms of the ship are themed (eg engineering, computing, storage, medbay) and the objects will be themed to add to the uniqueness of the areas

Netsu: thanks! I do put in plenty of effort tho I think partly since I come from a graphics background I'm just quicker at that part of the design process. I'm using quest3d, but in this instance the game could look identical in any engine since it's just fullbright low-rez textured models with filtering turned off . Most of the effort so far has gone into the random generation of levels, which barring the nonsensical door placement has turned out alright I think (then again I'm still a noob at level generation)

Hi folks! some who have seen my threads recently know I'm a bit obsessed about making a good top down spaceship exploring game. Here's the latest reboot: Pineapple Smash Crew!
so called because grenades are a big focus of the game.. (er, not yet pictured)

right now it's not really at the game stage, because I decided to tackle it from the opposite end this time and build the world I wanted to explore. So, I'd like some feedback on that for now while I add in something resembling gameplay Thanks for taking a look!

PS, it's all randomly generated so that's why there's doors in odd places atm.. I'll work on it

Youtube:




"rough" *ahem* logo:

pretty good fun! I got to 'the end' screen but I guess there's more? I didn't find that level

this is the only game I think I've played which makes the game *harder* each time you die . I never got stuck for too long, but I suspect if I did die enough times to really obscure the path that would be the end of the game for me . but, that didn't happen and fun was had 

1- couple things- first it seems really inconsistent when the enemies are going to break the boxes you place. for a while I thought they weren't going to at all, until I noticed some boxes broken. but I still had hordes pressed up against boxes which held them away

second, I found If I tried placing a lightning trap underneath skeletons it took the power away but didn't set the trap. that was annoying!

2- too easy. I think it's fine to start at that difficulty, but it takes way too long to ramp up imo. this could be compounded by the boxes not getting attacked though

3- the electro trap is by far the most enjoyable, since you've got some nice ragdoll in there.
it might be fun to have a variant which you need to set off manually somehow to ensure maximum damage

4- the slow difficulty curve. I played into level 2 and never felt in danger of dying.
I think boxes should cost more energy because I was able to build basically a fort and pick skeletons off at leisure until daybreak. also that EULA is kinda silly

5- if it was my game I'd beef up the feel of the basic gun, feels sort of peashootery right now. maybe add a charge-up blast, or some way to vary up the basic shooting

6- emm, I guess I think the firefly 'life' should be based on it's ammo not time. so it only dies once its fired x shots. also make each level shorter. if I could suggest an exercise for you, play some arcade games and try get some of their 'punchiness' into your design, it's all a bit clean at the moment.

keep on truckin'!

I sort of like the idea, but not the execution so much

for me, like kidchameleon, I hated hitting spikes or enemies I couldn't see.

what I think I would enjoy, is being presented with jumps that look impossible but when you switch you see blocks you can land on, and have to remember their position when in the other colour. What frustrated me was trying to dodge things I can't see *and* aim for things I can't see. mixing these two into one jump makes it really difficult.

I think you should design some levels where each jump you have to make you're doing one or the other, but not both at once.

hey, very fun to play around in! great start

my first 2 thoughts were:

this could make an awesome freerunning game, like cannabalt in 3d.. if you had to keep running and the path was unfolding at random infront of you..

secondly I liked to play it like AAAAAAAA(..) reckless disregard for gravity, where I created ledges beneath me and jumped off, trying to dodge them

some more random thoughts:

might be nice way to theme the game if somehow you curved the entire thing to make it into a tower. different levels are towers, with varying difficulty, different things to find at the top

climbing some kind of cube structure from the inside might also be pretty cool, adding chances to jump across the 'pit' to an opposite wall

some kind of subtle selection highlighting might be nice to show which wall you're going to push out. sometimes I did the wrong one when there was only a small bit of the one I wanted showing

again, the wand is pretty cool but I'd also love to see you playing with auto-generated path which morphed and changed depending on what jumps the player can make, so it changes if you miss jumps. just as a hunch that itd be fun and cool to see the path morphing as you run