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[tdierks]

When playing Full Game / Normal, I can't launch missiles. (Thus, my game comes to an end at the first meteorite storm). Launching missiles generally works correctly in Easy or Beginner, although I had them stop working mid-game on a Single Level Easy Medium Moon game. (It's also possible I misunderstand the rules: are there circumstances when crewed and powered missile defense stations cannot launch missiles? Do they get used up?)

Thanks.

[Ice Water Games]

Yay a new PleasingFungus game! Love where this is going.

Some of the mechanics could be a little less opaque. For instance, when the meteorites were falling and I didn't have a missile tower that had line-of-sight on them, it just felt frustrating and confusing for a while. In fact, I felt pretty sure that I did have line-of-sight, once I figured out that that is what was going wrong. I might suggest drawing out the line-of-sight for your missile towers and indicating graphically or aurally that your buildings are in the way and so you are unable to fire. This would make it a lot clearer to the player what's going wrong.

Also, when I finished the first tutorial, I thought I'd finished all of them, so I tried playing the full game. This game is impossible to figure out on the fly. That's fine, but you should make it clearer that the player has not finished all of the tutorials until they have, and then strongly recommend that they DO play through the tutorials. Make the default menu starting point be in the tutorial selector until they've finished all of them, perhaps?

[PleasingFungus]

When playing Full Game / Normal, I can't launch missiles. (Thus, my game comes to an end at the first meteorite storm). Launching missiles generally works correctly in Easy or Beginner, although I had them stop working mid-game on a Single Level Easy Medium Moon game. (It's also possible I misunderstand the rules: are there circumstances when crewed and powered missile defense stations cannot launch missiles? Do they get used up?)

Thanks.

Shouldn't be anything different between the difficulties. You do have a limited number of missiles per wave (4 per gun; they're displayed visibly and used up as you fire). The sprite's not very good, though; I may want to rework it to be more visible.

If that's not the problem, PM me and I can try to sort it out.

Some of the mechanics could be a little less opaque. For instance, when the meteorites were falling and I didn't have a missile tower that had line-of-sight on them, it just felt frustrating and confusing for a while. In fact, I felt pretty sure that I did have line-of-sight, once I figured out that that is what was going wrong. I might suggest drawing out the line-of-sight for your missile towers and indicating graphically or aurally that your buildings are in the way and so you are unable to fire. This would make it a lot clearer to the player what's going wrong.

Sure. It did that in the past, but it seems to have gotten lost somewhere in recent changes. (Drawing out a truncated line-of-sight.) I'll have it in the next version.

Audio is slightly harder, but it's a reasonable idea. It was on my to-do list at some point, but was never a high priority and vanished at some point. I'll stick it back on and see where it goes.

Also, when I finished the first tutorial, I thought I'd finished all of them, so I tried playing the full game. This game is impossible to figure out on the fly. That's fine, but you should make it clearer that the player has not finished all of the tutorials until they have, and then strongly recommend that they DO play through the tutorials. Make the default menu starting point be in the tutorial selector until they've finished all of them, perhaps?

That's a bug. Sorry. It's been a nightmare weeding out all the tutorial-specific bugs... it's supposed to route you directly into the next tutorial after you finish the first one. That must have broken at some point. I'll have it fixed in the next version.

Very sorry for the confusion! I'm pretty embarrassed that one slipped through.

EDIT: found the bug, it's about a day old. You chose the exact wrong time to start playing!

EDIT 2: New version is up.

[Ice Water Games]

The rotation in the space levels is hard to use. I wish pressing the rotation button just once would rotate 90 degrees, like with the rest of the pieces that you rotate. Losing just because you can't figure out how to rotate to the correct side before a meteor hits you is really frustrating.

[blundis]

Right now there are a few different 'densities' of mineral, represented by different colors - you can see them all in the first tutorial, actually. There are also different ways to mine minerals - drills, accumulators (in the Nebula), scoops (in the Sea)... the 'different densities' are actually a remnant of an earlier design in which there were five (!) different colors of minerals, all of which would vary in value based on a metagame "stock market" sort of element, but that went by the wayside when I redesigned the metagame into the much simpler "full game" campaign currently in the game.

Not really sure how 'different kinds of minerals' would fit into the game right now (what would they do differently from the current types?), but if you have any ideas, I'd be glad to hear them.

Ah, didn't realize there were different ways to mine. That's what i was looking for when i mentioned different minerals, more content. I'll have to play some more now!

[PleasingFungus]

The rotation in the space levels is hard to use. I wish pressing the rotation button just once would rotate 90 degrees, like with the rest of the pieces that you rotate. Losing just because you can't figure out how to rotate to the correct side before a meteor hits you is really frustrating.

It originally did that [instantly rotated 90 degrees], but there were issues with that approach, too - you can't rotate so that a piece you're dropping (or a meteor) is 'inside' the station, and it could be very hard to visualize why the station was refusing to rotate if all you had were 90 degree rotations. The point of the slow-rotation was to make it clear why the station couldn't rotate the way you wanted, in those cases, but you're not the only one it's confused... perhaps I could change it so that you tap to set a rotation direction, and the station continues in that direction until a 90-degree lock unless you reverse it? I'll have to experiment.


Quick poll of those who've played enough to beat one level outside the tutorial:

(1) Which control method are you using for controlling the targeting cursor?

(2) How many of you would miss the minimap if it was removed from the game?

[Ice Water Games]

Quick poll of those who've played enough to beat one level outside the tutorial:

(1) Which control method are you using for controlling the targeting cursor?

(2) How many of you would miss the minimap if it was removed from the game?

1) Mouse.

2) Not I.


And I did eventually get more used to the way it rotates. I was originally expecting one button press to rotate 90 degrees, though, so it might be more intuitive to do it the way you are now describing.

[LiquidAsh]

Neat ideas, but I think the walls of text really need to be replaced with more interactive tutorials.

[PleasingFungus]

Neat ideas, but I think the walls of text really need to be replaced with more interactive tutorials.

More interactive than the tutorials that you play through in the current version?

EDIT: I realize that the walls of text are a problem, so I'm trying something new for the next version.

[PleasingFungus]

Updated with new tutorials and some other tweaks/fixes. (Rockets are a new color, and why didn't anyone tell me that music looping was broken?)

Let me know how they work for you.

[TomHunt]

Neat ideas, but I think the walls of text really need to be replaced with more interactive tutorials.

More interactive than the tutorials that you play through in the current version?

EDIT: I realize that the walls of text are a problem, so I'm trying something new for the next version.

Having those come up as you play through the tutorial levels would be better, IMHO.

Also, I couldn't understand the voiceover. It was like one of my buddies trying to talk to me in a club - the music is way loud, and it's just his normal, everyday voice trying to compete with that. The voiceover needs like some kind of filter over it to make it real big and prominent over top the music. Or you could just turn the music down. But the big beefy voice would probably be cooler.

My $0.02.

The concept is pretty neat and I like the graphical style.

[EddieBytes]

Really really liked the graphics style.
Game is obviously inspired by tetris and that's not a bad thing. Who would have guessed tetris could be turned into this?

One problem I had was the description texts in the tutorial were too long. I skipped many of them and just went on to play, trying to figure out myself what I was supposed to do with the new blocks. If I were you, I'd lose the "lots of blabla" parts and try to explain things as I go, while the level is actually playing. Shouldn't be too hard. Highlight the new block when the player first sees it and attach a short descriptive text to it. Blocks are moving slow enough that the player has time to read the text, so you're golden.

[PleasingFungus]

I've actually taken out most of the 'lots of bla bla bla' parts in the latest update (last night) - if you're curious, you can check out the tutorials and see what you think.

Both of your suggestions re: piece voiceovers are really good (increase volume, add floating text); I'll try to get them in for the next release.

Also... (requoting because it's lost on an old page)

Quick poll of those who've played enough to beat one level outside the tutorial:

(1) Which control method are you using for controlling the targeting cursor?

(2) How many of you would miss the minimap if it was removed from the game?

[PleasingFungus]

Last-day-of beta update!

I've removed the unlock system, because it wasn't really adding anything to the game. Also made some other tweaks.

Have a look!

[ErikE]

This game is super, super confusing. It is SO not clear what the icons mean on the pieces. What is a lightning bolt? Does the number of men mean how many it has left or how many it needs? The "tutorial" gives you no practice or understanding in how anti-meteor missile launchers work. It's never clear what pieces will transport minerals and which won't. It doesn't make sense that certain pieces can't be used more than once. (Like the space station mineral collector, why won't it work again when you rotate the station?

It was a huge surprise that you could "stick" pieces to the side of other pieces. I mean, that's great and all, I can see its use, but I was trying to slide a piece underneath another one, and so this behavior screwed everything up. This departure from how Tetris works needed to be part of instructions or a tutorial.

What happens if pieces block other pieces? Can you power from any side? There are so many questions you can only find out from painful experiments that you aren't even sure are proving anything because you STILL don't know what the damn icons mean.

All in all, a clever idea, but not very well executed. I am giving up in frustration.

[PleasingFungus]

Yeah, a general consensus of "it's too confusing" / "only makes sense to the dev" was the reaction to this game at the time I was working on it, years and years ago. Sorry you didn't like it, but thank you for the feedback anyway!

[indominator]

the game feels a little hard to understand, i dont get most objectives at each level and i cant seem to be able to cope with the way the screen is shown, sometimes its hard to know whats on the floor of the level. I feel it needs a tutorial and the level should only have one screen, showing both the sky and floor instead of two screens(which feels weird).. I love the game idea, but sometimes i feel that its too easy and needed to be more puzzly or more tetris(having to remove floors or combine stuff), it probs needs a limited number of pieces IMO.

ps; i was expecting to have all the tetris pieces, and i sadly it had some few, man imma play some tetris now XD