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[Chaz]

I've just released a new game tonight called 'Slash/BOOM' - the comments are a little thin on the ground as such and I thought it'd be great to get some feedback from the dev community (for that different viewpoint).

If you guys could take a look at the game here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/556444
and maybe let me know what you think is good, bad, or needs improving etc. I'd love to hear it as we can bare all suggestions in mind for possible sequels (should the opportunity arise).

Thanks alot!

[Daid]

Did a quick play. Few things I noticed, the main menu confused me for 10 seconds. Where is the "start" button? Figured "select stage" is the start.
Also, once I figured that small parts fly off a lot easier then large parts I could just finish a bunch of levels by putting a cross on the object and blow everything away. The difficulty curve seems a bit random. And I got a bit bored after a 10 levels.
And sometimes it seems parts are not always cut, or stuff seems to stick together while it shouldn't.
Finally, I just think "another box2d game", but that might just be me seeing that 2D engine everywhere.

I like the simple art style, and the music fits the game.

(Might sound a bit negative, but just trying to note down the things I noticed)

[Blodyavenger]

I enjoyed the game but difficulty curve was very random like Daid said. I stuck on one map for like 5 minutes then I finished next one in first cut.

[RichMakeGame!]

I actually thought the music didn't quite fit.. well, rather the theme in general.

given it's a game about cutting stuff then blowing it up, I was expecting something a bit more 'edgy'.. some kind of bomber man character guy who's trying to.. I dunno destroy evil villains lairs? or play as an evil villain.. robbing banks? dunno, but I wasn't expecting a quiet, chilled out lounge type feel.

I gave up on level 23, so I did play on quite a bit through. I did find the difficulty curve a little hit and miss too- I didn't feel like I was getting much better at predicting the outcome of my actions as the levels moved forwards.. my approach to most of them was: cut into as many small pieces as possible, then click somewhere in the middle. This works most of the time, except when you start adding in the border pieces, and it gets a bit trickier.

what I like about it:
- variety in your approaches to level solving are potentially very high- although at the mo the random success factor diminishes this a bit

what I would do next:
-I think there's more to be explored with the whole balancing and toppling of pieces, which isn't fully possible with the mechanic of blowing pieces up and to the side. I think your 'buildings' should be precariously perched on towers, and you need to get the pieces falling off the towers and downwards (as well as to the side)

-for something called 'slash boom' the theme is incredibly tranquil. sure you could spice it up a bit

- why not start with the shapes of the 'buildings'? they don't have to be abstract, make them into things- dragons, robots, pirate ships.. whatever. If there's an element of 'oo, wonder what I'll destroy next' then there's more of a hook to see the next level, much more than abstract shapes

to sum up: it was pretty fun, but I think the real good stuff is yet to come in a sequel

[Chaz]

Thanks alot for your feedback guys. The general consensus seems to be a unpredictable difficulty curve, so should the possibility of a sequel arise that is something I will definately make sure to keep a close eye on. Thankfully I wouldn't deem it a game-breaker at the moment, rather a mis-organized order of the levels.

In regards to the abstract shapes Rich, the problem with this is that the shapes had to be convex, so I had to throw a lot if ideas and finished designs away when the programmer told me this; otherwise it would've caused major problems for the engine. I definately would've liked to have gone down that route of distuingishable images, but I somehow became more attracted to the freedom of freeform structure building. Thanks for playing through the game too!

Our metrics so far suggest that the average play time is around 12 minutes which I think is quite a feat considering it's a web game!

Just going to throw this out there: would a level editor have been truly worth adding in to the game?

[RichMakeGame!]

hmm, i'm sure you *could do recognisable shapes, if even just in a blocky icon style- there are already some pretty complex shapes in those levels it seems to me!

I think it'd be a fun thing to mess around with a level editor, but I'm not convinced it'd be worth the extra effort for you guys, unless it was pretty easy to add. As a dev, I want to play with level design tools, but as a player I think the time would be better spent on a bit of level progression polish, and adding a hint overlay system instead of making the hint button link away from the game

[SaturnineGames]

I just played through the game. Like everyone else said, the difficulty felt random.

Level 23 stumped me for a while until I stumbled on the trick by accident. Even after finding the trick it took a while of experimenting.

Other than that level, I thought later levels with the black barriers were actually much easier than the earlier levels. The barriers acted as a hint of which way you had to launch the pieces, which made the slice pattern easy to figure out.

One thing I'd like to see in the interface is more visibility of how much of the structure got launched off the screen. I didn't realize it was there at first. Rather than a tiny indicator in the lower left, I think you should do a large display over the play area indicating how well you did. That would be a much better emphasis on how well you're doing.

[Amon26]

I'm bookmarking this game.  I love chopping and blowing up stuff more often than I'd like to admit and this satisfies both those while making me look like a clever and smart problem solver.  You'd have a lot of competition, but I'd say you should spruce up the physics a little and add some more personal flavoring to this, you could do well on the iphone app market with it.

[bauer]

I've played quite a few "slice" games and this felt like a fresh wind with the bombing as well! It was fun to play, the main complaint I have is that it seems to miss a bit of "character". The music doesn't really fit with the graphics/gameplay, and the graphics is a bit too abstract to create a feel for the game by itself. With that said, the graphics quality overall is quite good! So my verdict is that it's surely fun to play, just misses the last pieces to make it addicting. Good work!

[Cesque]

Pretty nice - a minimalist physics game. Can't really complain about anything, aside from a slightly repetitive gameplay. The music may have not fit VERY well, but it wasn't particularly annoying either.

I beat the "infamous" stage 23 on my first try. And it was oh so satisfying to get 100% on one of the stages

[Chaz]

Thanks guys! Your suggestions are priceless. I take on board the feedback for the pieces shooting off the screen and also the music.

On a side note, the average playtime for the Flash version is now around 13 minutes per player. I'm extremely pleased with this and think if it can hold someone's attention for that long than as far as getting players hooked goes it must be doing something right! The thing to do now is find out the best way to 'capitalize' (from a gameplay point of view) on this and make the game better for possible future additions.

@Amon26 I was just thinking about talking to my iPhone dev partner to see if he wanted to put this onto iPhone. I'd really like to see it on there and also think it has the potential to do quite well.

[Fredrik_]

I agree with @Cesque the gameplay was a bit repetative so I just played for about 10 levels or so.

[DecapitatedOrk]

I gotta admit, the first 5 levels I was completely enthralled by the game, however it quickly started to wear out (I was also a fan of the tutorial, minus the specifics of the explosions it did a good job explaining the mechanics of the game.) Besides what's already been said about the music and gameplay, my biggest gripe with it is that it's not specified how the explosions work. In which direction and how much force is applied to the explosion is confusing. Still, I think the game could be more interesting by adding in "parts" that weigh more/less.

[tesselode]

I think this game is rather unintuitive. It's not clear what the correlation is between the way you slice the object and how it will explode. Sometimes pieces go flying off the screen, and sometimes they don't do anything, and I have no idea why.

[Chaz]

Thanks for your feedback guys. The reasons you may feel the explosions feel different on each level is probably because one 'power' setting for all structures would be ridiculously easy to complete, so I went through every level and fine tuned the power on each one to make sure it posed a constant challenge.

[RichMakeGame!]

hmm, imo that's not the best solution.. you can never master a system when the base values are always changing and you don't know what they are. I think that's one reason the difficulty curve is weird- you think you've learned what will happen in x situation, only for it to turn out different

[tesselode]

Yeah, doing that will just make it feel random.

[TheLastBanana]

I think the reason it keeps people attracted for 13 minutes is that it's just simple and easy enough that it doesn't feel like you're wasting much time on it. Personally, it only took me about eight minutes to beat the game and get the achievements. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though - casual audiences really like that.
I would have liked a message in-game when I got achievements without having to check the list, although since there were only the 3, I suppose it wasn't that necessary.
The difficulty curve was certainly a bit odd, but I found that overall the simple technique of cutting horizontally and then vertically down the centre, then bombing the centre, was an easy way to win a good half of the levels. I wouldn't really blame this on the level design so much as the gameplay elements themselves - I don't know if there was any way for you to avoid that.
Otherwise, it was a nice little game, and as Flash games go it was fairly enjoyable. Thanks!

[Mhaine]

This is what I have thought of the game:
-Nice physics engine.
-Moderately good gameplay concept.
-Pretty good color scheme.
-Too easy.
-Not enough actual variation in gameplay, there are almost no new challenges added as you progress.
-The game is made as if it was a physics puzzle game but it is not.

I think it's a nice game, though it actually had/has the potential to be a good one.

[Draknek]

My thoughts:

* Should have a "start" button as well as stage-select.
* I thought that the instructions implied I should click twice to make one cut rather than clicking&dragging to do one cut, and doing that twice.
* It's not initially obvious that the pieces are resting on a platform.
* I'm not sure why it spends 3 seconds checking if I succeed when it can tell if I've failed immediately.
* Music should mute when the game loses focus.
* The different shapes don't seem to particularly impact the technique you use: they all feel pretty much the same to me.