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[col000r]

NEW ORBIT - an episodic space action adventure (or whatever) based on realistic gravity simulation

In development for iPad/iPhone/PC/MAC

Play the beta here: http://beta.blackish.at

If you like the game, consider joining the beta list: http://next.blackish.at
(the beta list is an experiment, my way of trying to give open development a more personal touch. The plan is to send out behind the scenes material, stats and stuff that I won't share with anyone outside the list on a (kind of) monthly basis as the game progresses)

[Ice Water Games]

Hi there!

Welcome to TIG.

Loved the game overall. Great fun. Good player feedback, the vectors were all very helpful, the screen was clean and the controls simple. The system is really enjoyable to play around with.

I really don't like the character avatars. The game graphics, the ship and asteroids and everything, are great. The avatars seemed maybe overworked. Like they could benefit from being cleaner, more graphic. Actually, if you wanted to take it that way, I don't know that further realism would hurt either. There's just something about their current state that bothers me. They don't quite look like real people, but they've got a lot of gloss on them. The main character is maybe a little too pink. If those are supposed to be bloodstains on his face (I think so) they don't quite read that way.

Also, as a Young Male Gamer, I felt that I was being catered to unwillingly with the whole naked-big-tit-digital-lady-sidekick. Cortana was dangerously close to going too far, but with just straight up unnecessary nudity the pandering comes across really obviously, and it genuinely makes me feel bad. Whether you intended her to cater to an audience or not, you ought to be aware that she does. Moreover, her presence and the dynamic of the two characters, one male (and living, free-will-having, central, relatable, clothed, respectable) and one female (unliving, free-will-lacking, side-character, unrelatable, needlessly nude and objectified, unreasonable, overly upset) is sexist. I am not accusing you of being sexist, just bringing to light the sexist (in a really stereotypical way) dynamic that is lingering around in your game. There really is no good reason for a help-module program to have huge naked digital tits.


Sorry to make your first post so critique-heavy, and sorry for being real blunt!

[col000r]

hey, thanks a lot for the feedback!

I haven't really thought about the character portraits being sexist, but you make a good point! The idea was the this is how he imagines her - she's nothing but the semi-sexy, standard computer-generated voice used in all the ships of this faction, but he's a young guy lost in space with nothing but her statistics about how unprobable his survival is, so he's come to imagine her as a somewhat sexual, but cold and unreachable woman. I was thinking about starting more abstract and only slowly letting her form turn into something recognizably female, so that the player will only eventually get that this is in his character's imagination...  But I can see how I kinda fell into a boy cliché there... and now that I'm thinking about it, I think I've been somewhat influenced by Battlestar Galactica (Gaius and Number Six)...

For a good long while I didn't have character portraits and voiceovers in the game at all. And somehow I liked it that way too, but I was trying to tell a story and somehow felt that my characters needed faces and voices to grow onto the players.

The rest of the game won't be based on sexism however. I have a pretty strong and independent female character in the game (unless I can't find a proper female voice and have to make it a man )

thanks again! this is exactly the kind of input I was hoping for!

[Ozeotropo]

Sweet! I really liked it.

I love the smoothness of the movement and the fine tuned physics. The ship landing in 3D was pretty cool too.

Also, the plot seems inmersive and the dialogs are nicely done.

Keep going!

[mikewest]

I played on a touch pad and surprisingly had little trouble controlling the ship.  I'm going to hold off on commenting on controls until I see what else you plan to have the player do.  My only thought in that realm was that I couldn't tell how far away I was from an objective.  That could be as easy of a fix as adding a little sensor somewhere to indicate distance from target, so you can start decelerating earlier.

I have to agree with hplus on the character portrait design.  To me, they definitely helped make the game feel like it had living characters, but something felt a little off about the graphics.  The female character design wasn't a huge problem to me, but I think the slow morphing from computer to female would definitely better communicate your intent with the narrative.

I very much enjoyed listening to voice-overs - that also helped the characters come alive.

So overall, it looks beautiful and feels like you've packed a lot of personality into the game so far.

[col000r]

thanks a lot!

I have several things in place to keep you from running into things, but they're only unlocked over time. Might sound a bit stupid to have this disabled at the beginning, but I'm trying to keep the interface fairly simple at first + having some damaged components helps the feel of having survived a bad crash... In the beginning of 002 you get the Horizon Interface back online - you might not have noticed since there are only very few objects within sensor-range at this point, but it shows a faint glow at the edges of the screen if there's a massive object in that direction. the closer you are, the more it will expand to the real size of the object and the glow will get wider. - you can see it in both screenshots actually. (blue for inanimate objects, red for hostiles)

The second thing will be a kind of region-map that you can get to via pinch-gesture/scrollwheel and that will show a zoomed out view of everything within sensor-range. This will be unlocked a short while later.

I was thinking about showing the distance of objects within a certain range with a number on the screen next to the glow of the horizon gui, but recently I'm leaning towards leaving that out. I don't want to make it too easy, I want the player to feel like he has to be cautious wherever he goes - he's lost in a dangerous region after all - on the other hand I don't want to make it frustrating either... I'll think about this some more...

Oh and there's one more little touch: if you get close to your set target (the one the arrow is pointing at), the arrow starts going closer to the ship - but that should probably take your current velocity into account, and not just the distance...

[bigGIANTcircles]

Pretty cool game!  I thought the music was a little sparse, and what was in there was kind of repetitive, but the game itself I could see myself playing for a while.  I really enjoyed the voicework and the characters.  I didn't personally think that it was sexist.  Look at Halo, Cortana is basically a naked gal. 

Looking forward to seeing more of this!

[Ice Water Games]

I think having her start off without a graphic, or with one that is hardly objective, would certainly help communicate the intent much, much better. It would also communicate a slow descent into madness/depravity/loneliness rather than a sudden-jerk kind of situation (Also, having her start out modest/average and undressing her slowly/slowly making her sexier would be kind of hilarious). I think that she currently has a hologram-feel that communicates her as being a visual displayed by a computer, rather than imagined. Even though she's a computer, if his imagination is what is building her, the current pixel/scanline kind of display she has going sends the player the wrong message.

I like the intended depth, and I think a realistic female character could help. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the structure of the characters (sometimes central characters are male, sometimes side characters are female, whatever), but in the context of modern videogames it immediately comes across as another in a long line of heavily male-oriented games.

I agree with your intent to leave the Horizon gui off until the second level. It's lack didn't impede my play, really, but it will definitely give the feeling of a ship slowly being rebuilt. I think in the first level it could overcomplicate things unnecessarily.

Coming back to this, the portraits still bother me, and I still cant really put a finger on why that is. Sorry for being a useless art critic.


P.S.- only being so critical because I really enjoyed the core of the game.


@bigGIANTcircles: Cortana is a sex-object.

[drChengele]

Just tried the demo and it was a very fun ride, you somehow managed to make Newtonian flight controls fun, tight and intuitive. The presentation is excellent. This can be a really cool game. Now when you say adventure/action, does that mean there will be weapons, or will it be exclusively a gravity simulation?

Graphics-wise, both in-game ships and character portraits definitely need sprucing up. The "nudity" of the female computer portrait is a non-issue to me. I've seen much worse in games.

[hammedhaaret]

Hi!
first off, I really enjoyed the gameplay. the vectors where easy to read and torturial was clear and still a fun challenge.  allways been attracted to simple 'sim' spacegames, so i guess you got me from the get-go there.

I'lll start where i left off in the feedback (:
"....vis issues with lvl of dtail.. tigsou"

meaning, the style seems a bit confused.
the player and other ships are very stylized and a bit abstract (like a 3d 'asteroids')
whereas the asteroids and debris is very high detail and quite realistic.
the 3d landings and gravity make them fit very well together, but i feel it lacks a bit consistency visually.

the portraits also seems to unintentionally sit somewhere in-between realistic and a comicbook kinda style. should help to choose one clear style and maybe find some inspiration for a definite 'look' you want to go for.
good artists borrow, great artists steal, as some great artist once said

story-wise, as Hplus said, having the hologram nude from start seems pushed, but as a story-twist, introduced gradually, it would work great.
A computers clumsy attempt to compensate for him going mad from loneliness, would be hilarious.

hope the critique wasn't unfair.
hard, but just, allways seems to be what helps me the most  

-bastian

[Iamthejuggler]

That was good fun. Really like the core gameplay, although that screenshot in the opening post scares me. The amount of trouble i had entering a "stable" orbit, i'm not sure i could cope with much more complexity in that area! Looking forward to seeing more.

I do agree that the stylistic choices are a bit too random at the moment though, in particular the ship looked like it was from an early asteroids. I didn't even notice that the hologram was nude though ... computers don't need clothes. (they need breasts though, otherwise it'd be weird!)

[Dropout]

I enjoyed this. It was certainly immersive.

My comments would be it took my a long time to achieve stable orbit, mostly because I wasnt aware of what the best way to approach this was, and just kind of bluffed it.

I get the impression that entering orbit is an important skill toi have though, so i didnt feel particularly empowered. a bit of guidance would have helped

I eventually balked when i needed to pause the game and couldn't

Luca.

[SirEel]

Absolutely brilliant gameplay, but I agree with the other posters about the ship avatar, as it is, it comes across really sexist, but your idea of having the image develop as the characters mental image does sounds really good. I'll also repeat what I wrote in the feedback box: I'd quite like some background stuff. Nothing overwhelming (as it is the view is nicely clean) but distant nebulae or other space scenery would make things feel a lot more spacey. I realise such things wouldn't lend them selves to the 'lost' feeling, but maybe elsewhere in the game..?