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[magnum_opus]

This is interesting. It seems most of you didn't let the gold bits lead you away, or they were passed off as unimportant. Either way, most people didn't reach the fourth stanza, I assume?

This means that most of you followed the blue fish around simply because it was the first thing you met, not because it provided any positive stimuli. There is seriously no (practical) reward at all for following it, whereas with the gold it plays pretty music and glows as it disappears. There only the reward you suppose that it has, or whatever reward you personally give it.

Blue Fish plays hide and seek with me and is the only other living soul in my bleak world. I'm not going to stop playing with my friend and forsake companionship for a couple notes from a piano and a bit of a glow.

[Fuzz]

This is interesting. It seems most of you didn't let the gold bits lead you away, or they were passed off as unimportant. Either way, most people didn't reach the fourth stanza, I assume?

This means that most of you followed the blue fish around simply because it was the first thing you met, not because it provided any positive stimuli. There is seriously no (practical) reward at all for following it, whereas with the gold it plays pretty music and glows as it disappears. There only the reward you suppose that it has, or whatever reward you personally give it.

Blue Fish plays hide and seek with me and is the only other living soul in my bleak world. I'm not going to stop playing with my friend and forsake companionship for a couple notes from a piano and a bit of a glow.

This is how I felt. I don't like collecting things without a purpose, whereas following an interesting character without a purpose makes me happy.

[Loren Schmidt]

I just replayed the version you have up, and all in all it's looking pretty good. I noticed a only a few little things that bothered me. Hopefully you will find this list useful:

• Moving through small gaps between blocks is awkward looking because the fish clips with the walls quite a bit.
• For a lot of the game, the red fish was at the very top of the screen, and because of the perspective effect this caused it to be frequently covered by walls.
• The fish look awkward when not swimming- sort of stiff. It might help if they wiggled or moved their fins gently when idle.
• The golden dots look nice, but don't seem to fit in with the other elements, which are all silhouettes. Perhaps using yellow silhouettes would fit better.
• The fish still crinkle and fold sometimes when they turn.

But over all, this is a nice looking, interesting game. It'll be neat to see how it develops.

Edit:

This means that most of you followed the blue fish around simply because it was the first thing you met, not because it provided any positive stimuli. There is seriously no (practical) reward at all for following it, whereas with the gold it plays pretty music and glows as it disappears. There only the reward you suppose that it has, or whatever reward you personally give it.

I don't think so... the dots throw themselves at us, while the fish is a unique character. If we leave a dot behind, millions more will spawn, and so we feel no sense of loss. Losing the fish, however, feels like a much more irreversible loss. I always found myself following the fish instead, and ignoring many of the dots.

[Captain_404]

This is interesting. It seems most of you didn't let the gold bits lead you away, or they were passed off as unimportant. Either way, most people didn't reach the fourth stanza, I assume?

This means that most of you followed the blue fish around simply because it was the first thing you met, not because it provided any positive stimuli. There is seriously no (practical) reward at all for following it, whereas with the gold it plays pretty music and glows as it disappears. There only the reward you suppose that it has, or whatever reward you personally give it.

Blue Fish plays hide and seek with me and is the only other living soul in my bleak world. I'm not going to stop playing with my friend and forsake companionship for a couple notes from a piano and a bit of a glow.

This is how I felt. I don't like collecting things without a purpose, whereas following an interesting character without a purpose makes me happy.

Exactly. But the game doesn't create that connection for you, it is an element brought in by the user alone.

The connections you made were intended too, but I also intended to draw the player away from that connection without them noticing. Looks like I'm going to need to sit down and think about this for a good while. Maybe I haven't yet reached the final intent of the game...


Sparky - I figured someone complaining about going through walls would happen eventually Thanks though, I need someone to give me a swift kick to the rear to make me develop some real physics for this.

It sounds like the camera glitched on you, the red fish should have been in the center. I still have no idea what's causing this glitch, but thanks for the info.

You're right about the gold dots... problem is that if they become too simple they become boring.

I did take a look at the crinkling early on, and due to the way flash renders things I may not be able to fix it. I did work up on fix where it wouldn't happen, but it ended up causing game crashing glitches. Bad stuff!


Thanks for the great feedback so far everyone, I'll update again once I get a better idea for how to deal with my game mechanics.

(by the way, should this be moved to the devthreads section now that there's an official section for those, or is it alright in feedback?)

[Fuzz]

(by the way, should this be moved to the devthreads section now that there's an official section for those, or is it alright in feedback?)

Probably not. You're asking for feedback with each update, so it seems fine to keep it here.

[magnum_opus]

Exactly. But the game doesn't create that connection for you, it is an element brought in by the user alone.

yes and no.
Yes:
Aside from the poem the game doesn't actually do anything overt to form an attachment to Blue Fish, particularly not to the level that I would sit there and play hide and seek for  hours (note: the first time I played this I spent 10 minutes playing hide and seek assumed that was the game and quit)

On the other hand no:
Blue Fish IS the only other thing in the game, especially before the gold bits start appearing, and the world is very simple and stark if not necessarily bleak. The poem strongly implies that we're friends, which (mostly) removes the more sinister interpretation that Blue Fish is trying to escape from me.

And because the gold bits don't show up for a while, if I don't form an attachment to Blue Fish, I have no motive to play the game making that connection necessary regardless of how much it was intended or what portion came from the game and what portion from me.

The connections you made were intended too, but I also intended to draw the player away from that connection without them noticing.

Might I suggest having the gold bits actually run away from you. By the time they appear the chase action has been well established. Then the dots show up and hurl themselves at you so you don't even need to go out of your way to collect a few here and there completely avoiding being drawn off. If they shot toward you, wavered then ran off, like maybe they were fighting curiosity vs fear (like say tiny animals), I might in turn be more curious about them.