I gave this a shot:
* Your 'Share on Facebook' button has some graphical artifacts around it. Clean that up.
* I could barely get anywhere my first 5 playthroughs. Starting out in that narrow hallway is rough. In general, the gravity could be a little gentler.
* When you lose, the way the character falls and just starts bouncing around looks awkward.
* The 'Current' and 'Best Score' and 'Score' indicators are often invisible when over the environment.
* On your title screen, you should definitely center the 'Best Score' indicator.
* I notice an occasional graphical hiccup on the left side of the screen. Like the environment isn't rendering all the way over there. Seen this several times on the title screen.
* I'd make your Play button bigger since it's the only button on the title screen.
* Consider making the hit box for the character a little more forgiving.
* Other graphical hiccups - sometimes there's a visual black seam in the background. And once the level environment disconnected while the title was scrolling.

That's all criticism, but I actually think this is a decent little toy game. I like the graphic style. Gameplay, while not wildly original, was solid. I wasn't playing with sound, so I don't know what that's like.

Good luck with your updates.

Have you looked into 'standard' design patterns that aren't necessarily game specific? They typically appear in games pretty often.

Be careful about trying to shoehorn your designs into a pattern. The old adage "If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" definitely applies. For instance, Singletons are used way, way more often than they ought to be because they're convenient and understandable but are rarely the best available tool.

Yea, you really want the number of vertices to be equal either via subdivision or some other scheme. Ideally, you'd have some scheme to map the vertices to each other so it's clear which vertex in the source relates to which vertex in the target (otherwise, your vertices might start to cross in weird ways and create visual artifacts).

Usually best done at authoring time, but since you're using procedural shapes, you'll have to take care in how you generate the shapes. You don't want the top left corner of a cube to map to the bottom right of a sphere, because that'll definitely create artifacts.

I can't stress this enough: getting your legal advice from a forum, no matter how well-intentioned the people, is not in your best interests. I'm already seeing some advice here that I find... suspect.

I know for indies, especially ones with limited finances, talking to a lawyer may be difficult. But it's really the route you want to take for legal questions.

[Update 5: Units & Enemies]

Update 5: Units & Enemies
I spent most of the weekend adding the vast majority of units & enemies that will be seen in the game. The majority of the implementation details were already there: the game already supported most of the attack types & buffs that units would provide.

I created a simple test level to make sure everything was behaving - that units were attacking and moving correctly and nothing exploded.



So here it is, the full cast of Pixel Space Horror:



The units aren't done-done. Visually, most of the attacks use stubs. I want to add flashy VFX (particle systems, camera fun, full-screen effects) to make the game fun to watch. Not quite Atlus-level. I don't have those resources, and also I don't want to slow the game down the way Atlus does in their games. The stats need heavy tweaking - heavy, heavy tweaking after a lot of playtesting - and the writing for them isn't final.

Here are some ideas to tweak the animations a little:
- For the walk cycle, rotate his body a little.
- Add a little 'bob' to the idle animation. Right now it's a bit static.
- You really need some animation where the toast pops out of the toaster for a brief while. I was hoping the jump would include that.

For enemy robots, maybe other household appliances? Why not watch Brave Little Toaster for some inspiration?

If you're not confident programming, do you need to program? Have you considered GameMaker or something similar? Or modding some sidescroller? Not sure what's out there, but I would imagine there's something...

Anyway, good luck.

The visual style has potential. It's reminiscent of Don't Starve. It's still a little early to provide more thorough feedback (it looks like you have a lot more to do). I'd flesh out the gameplay a little more - it's unclear where you're going with that aspect.

I'm not crazy about the 'persuade depressed NPCs to suicide' feature. I'm not opposed to violent games, I've performed my share of Finishing Moves, but that strikes a nerve. I don't think I'll be alone on that.

This is looking really good. Love the familiar/summon/golem system (I'm a sucker for having 'pets' that follow me around and behave autonomously).

I think bdsowers and MorleyDev are onto something. With this approach, I'd have to scale my positions: Position.X * ScaleX, Position.Y * ScaleY.  Also using a similar approach with sprite sizes, tile sizes, and collision rectangles.  Or, could I only scale when drawing and do calculations based on the virtual resolution and actual asset sizes. Just trying to wrap my head around this.

Try whichever is easiest first. I suspect the latter solution will give you the same stair-stepping effect.

Gave the Mac build a try. Looks fine, but controller bindings still don't work.

In Unity, the Mac input bindings for XBox controllers are different than on Windows. Check out this link for the different Mac settings.

Exactly. Don't draw to a RenderTarget and scale the whole thing. Draw at your target resolution and scale each asset as you draw individually.

If you're concerned, ask a lawyer. Getting your legal advice from a forum is risky at best. For that matter, giving legal advice in a forum is risky at best.

You don't necessarily have to pre-scale - MonoGame supports scaling at run-time. If your concern is asset size, this will allow you to keep your small assets while still getting the same effect.

When you render, use your target resolution, and scale the assets at render-time.

Really like the background art. Don't know how I feel about those waves - they look really dense in comparison to your background. Would probably have to see them in motion though.

It looks like the flotation device & buoy are baked into the art? Have you considered making them separate environment objects that you can subtly animate to give the game a little extra character?

Still no love. On the 'Fastest' graphics setting, I see the car & 3 cubes (they're black - completely unlit) and I don't see the environment at all. On the 'Fantastic' graphics setting, I don't even see that. I just see some small green cubes in the top right hand corner of the screen.

When I can see the car, I can get it moving. But obviously since I can't see the environment it's a little wonky.

I liked this! A good take on the endless runner, provided something a little new I hadn't seen before.

It does seem to have a little trouble with multitouch - there were instances where I had to slide and then quickly tap, and the game didn't register my tap. This happened several times and always led to brutal deaths.

Also you could probably stand to make the size meter a little thinner. It takes up an awful lot of the screen on my phone. On more than one occasion, I tried to jump with my left hand, but ended up tapping the meter and thus not jumping.

Tutorial was good. I liked how subtle it was while still conveying all the necessary info.

Good job guys.

[Update 4: Pre-Alpha Demo]

Update 4: Pre-Alpha Demo
I wanted to put together a small web build, mostly for friends to evaluate. If you want to try, here's the link. I'm not putting it up in Playtesting yet - it's a little early to get a huge number of eyes on it. Feel free to leave any comments/feedback. Pointing out bugs isn't as useful at this stage, as it has plenty.

My goal with this demo was to just make a small slice of representative gameplay. To that end, there are:

• 5 levels
• 5 available units
• A handful of different enemies
• Stub UI - this definitely isn't anywhere near complete

None of the numbers/unit stats are final, and the levels definitely still need tweaking. The "story" will get edited, but the jokes in there are pretty close to what the game's humor will be like. The UI flow will be similar, but I've scheduled in a lot of time for heavy polish.

Features not even remotely represented:

• Unit unlocking - you don't actually start with 5 units
• Level ratings - you'll get stars based on how well you do
• Multiple win conditions - not every mission requires you just kill everything

So far I've only put it in front of one other person. She tells me there are some crash bugs (I have yet to see them myself). She also tells me it's pretty easy. It is only the first 5 levels though, so being pretty easy is kinda the point. Oh, and please forgive the font. I'll be changing that ASAP.



Anyway, lots of forward progress! I'll probably have an alpha build before the month's end which I'll push out to more people.

I couldn't get this to work. On my MacBook Pro, the controls didn't work (assuming you used Unity, and the button mappings are different on Mac than on Windows).

On my Surface Pro 3, I only saw a blue screen. Using Microsoft Internet Explorer, so that could've been the issue.

Good luck!

Gameplay is good, though a minor control nitpick: the forward velocity noticeably decreases when turning, which is jarring. It's probably the only reason I can make some of those sharper turns, but I'm still not a fan. The game feels less smooth with it.

Difficulty, I think is perfect. Not a terribly steep curve, I could play for a little bit before things got too hectic, but it wasn't boring.

I think a game like this almost has to have tilt controls on mobile, or at least the option. I don't know if "benefit" is the right word, but I'd definitely expect them.

Some gameplay ideas:

• Powerups would be good. Just something to break up the constant similarity of everything.
• Score multipliers. Games like Tiny Wings & Jetpack Joyride implement these to great effect.
• Different ships could move at different speeds but multiply the score in different ways. Faster ships would give you a bigger coin multiplier, slower ones would make the game easier but reduce the number of coins you get. Some ships might pull coins in (ala gravity) but also pull some of the obstacles in slightly.