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[userXDev]

Hey guys,

I just finished building my first game Asterism last week. Its an addictive little 2D puzzle game. Kind of like a bubble shooter mixed with arkanoid/pinball. I've put it up on Google Play, free to play:



https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.asterism.game

It's also now on Kongregate: http://www.kongregate.com/games/HeroesByDesign/asterism

Asterism - Gameplay Video:




Its made with Unity3D and coded in C#. Did everything myself except for the music, spent about a year working on it. Would be great to get some constructive feedback and thoughts.
Hope you's like it!  

-Paul

[Ziggurat]

The angle display is a nice addition. I would liked to have been able to fire another shot while my previous was still in play though.

[Nathan Cash]

When I saw the following I was too scared to download.

"Permissions:
[cut]
MODIFY OR DELETE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR USB STORAGE MODIFY OR DELETE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR SD CARD"

[userXDev]

Glad you liked the angle viewer ziggurat! all the levels have a one hit solution so I felt it really needed it, especially for the ultimate difficulty mode(1 shot per level), or it would have been near impossible.I had toyed with the idea of allowing more than one shot to be active and tried it, but in the end I felt one worked a little better. I might look at it again in a later update or with power ups 

Nathan I understand your concern about the permission. I've tried to keep the required permissions to an absolute minimum with just those two requested. The modify/write external storage permission is to allow the game to write and read saved game data, and i really needed to have it. It creates a save game file on the storage. Android doesn't allow it to write to the phone/device itself for obvious security reasons. Its quiet a commonly used permission (in twitter,gmail,games,etc) but I understand your caution as I'm an unknown developer and not a well known name 
As far as I know the permission does not give permission to erase any files that are not wrote by the app. Maybe someone can confirm this? Or if someone knows of an alternative way of creating accessing save game data I'd be happy to hear 

[solkar]

The tutorial should state clearly which is the first star that you have to hit. Left to right order might be not self evident for many people. Maybe just a square over the first star would do the trick.

Maybe I found a bug. While playing I got a low battery alert, since then the fire button didn't work. The menu buttons worked, though. I loaded the app several times and then it resumed the expected behavior.

My intuition tells me that best will be to complete each level in one shoot. You should tell the player somehow. Just a bigger score it's a bit plain. I love fireworks and whistles... oh, sorry maybe there are whistles but I can't hear them my girlfriend is sleeping and I don't want to disturb her.

About the UI, I'd remove the menu button from the screen game.  Is it really needed? I can use my phone menu button to get access.
The angle indicator. It's too precise. If you want to aid the player I would make the firing line longer (I don't know if that's a proper name), but with the exact angle it's too easy to just try out all the possible angles and solve the level by brute force.

[userXDev]

Thanks for the in-depth feedback Solkar!

Will have another think about the tutorial and making it a little clearer. I do like the idea of the square box to highlight the next star in the pattern. I've been toying with the idea of adding the tutorial to the start of a new game too which prob makes more sense.

The fire button not working after the low-battery alert, i've never seen that happen before, so im really glad you mentioned. Will check that out and get it sorted.

The menu button on screen in-game was only added in the last update. I actually didnt want to have it on-screen at all, but alas since Android 3.0 & up removed the software menu button I had to add it so that users of 3.0 and above could get to the options menu in-game.

Thanks again!

[solkar]

You're welcome! My phone is stuck to 2.3.5. I'm not aware of the novelties in such modern versions   

Can I add more to my previous (sort of) analysis? I guess so... The background is quite dull. Maybe you could add some flashing lights at least when you hit a star. I guess that's easy to add and would begin to make your game a little fancier.

[userXDev]

Yeah I wasn't aware either until a couple of weeks ago, learned the hard way :-)
Of course, I'm happy to get as much feedback as possible. I might give that a go (the flashing lights/flare) and see how it looks, could be interesting.

[Nathan Cash]

Nathan I understand your concern about the permission. I've tried to keep the required permissions to an absolute minimum with just those two requested. The modify/write external storage permission is to allow the game to write and read saved game data, and i really needed to have it. It creates a save game file on the storage. Android doesn't allow it to write to the phone/device itself for obvious security reasons. Its quiet a commonly used permission (in twitter,gmail,games,etc) but I understand your caution as I'm an unknown developer and not a well known name 
As far as I know the permission does not give permission to erase any files that are not wrote by the app. Maybe someone can confirm this? Or if someone knows of an alternative way of creating accessing save game data I'd be happy to hear 

I assume it is fine since many others have downloaded this. I am just cautious about those things. Most people won't even read it so I assume it won't be a problem to sales.

[userXDev]

Cool, well if you give it a go let me know what you think. Would be nice to hear what you like/dislike 

[userXDev]

Hey all,

I've uploaded Asterism to Kongregate if anyone would like to give it a try in their web browser:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/HeroesByDesign/asterism

Hope you enjoy! :-)
Paul M

[CowBoyDan]

Not bad

[userXDev]

Hey guys! A couple of weeks ago I got the crazy idea to completely remake Asterism. It had been 4-5 years since I originally made it and since then I hadn't worked on it at all. There were alot of things bugging me about it. Back then my development skills weren't the best. I just finished the new version a couple of days ago. I addressed the feedback that people were kind enough to have given and made some pretty big changes, like the control system, levels, graphics and I removed the tutorial completely since the controls are much more intuitive now. Would be great to know what you think and what else you think I could change about it? Here's some new screenshots, and here's the link again. Cheers!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.asterism.game