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[todd-gopherwood]

Just wanted to get some feedback on a couple small prototype we've put together.

The Shifty, Twisty Forest
http://gopherwoodstudios.com/shifty/


The Shifty, Twisty Forest is a puzzle-platformer. Your goal is to navigate a turtle through the forest. Click on the pieces of the level to shift or flip them. The goal is to get the turtle to the key and then to the door.

Buzz
http://gopherwoodstudios.com/buzz/


Buzz is a physicsy flying game. You're a helicopter pollinating flowers. Yes, it's a little weird right now.

Anyway, we're mainly looking for general feedback on what you think. Is either game interesting/fun/engaging? Which one has more promise?

Thanks!
Todd

[NostalgicGrotto]

I got stuck in Shifty Twisty Forest.


I do like the game though.

[todd-gopherwood]

Haha, yeah, that does happen. Sorry about that. There's about a week of work in both games. Just enough to get some idea of what a larger game might look like, but not much time dedicated to working out bugs or other technical challenges.

The shifting/flipping aspects of Forest would be smooth in a finished game. But the way our collision currently works, it's a lot easier to snap things. Unfortunately, that means sometimes the terrain snaps on top of the character, thus your predicament. You should be able to refresh and start on the same level though.

Anyway, thanks for playing! Glad you like it.

[OutoMaisteri]

Ok, just tried out Shifty, Twisty Forest so I'll give feedback on it first.

First impressions: Great! The core gameplay is super simple and easily understood even with no instructions. I really enjoyed all puzzles the prototype has to offer. Considering you've only worked on the project for so little time, I'm quite amazed.

That being said, there's plenty of room for improvement, but mostly in terms of polish. As the game is still clearly more of a prototype than a finished game, these issues are more "down the line" than immediate. I'm also quite sure you are aware of all of these, but I'll list them just to be on the safe side.

• Though the core gameplay is simple, direct communication towards the player would be welcome. Explaining the functionality of each new piece at the beginning of a level would've been nice (even short piece of text would do the trick)
• The flippable pieces left me scratching my head for quite a while, because I didn't understand where the turtle would appear after flipping. Mostly a matter of animating the transition in the future
• Level 8 & 12: the "diagonal" pieces don't signal their function well. Are they supposed to turn? 90 degrees or 180? Or do they flip? They don't all seem to follow the same exact logic. Again, mostly a matter of visual enforcement
• Tiny nitpick: the level selection/menu button feel sluggish because of the small delay. Would be nice if the fade out would begin immediately after pressing a button

I think that actually covers what I had to say pretty well. It's a great, solid prototype overall. I'd very much like to see it developed further.

[OutoMaisteri]

Buzz's turn next.

First impressions: No bad, but didn't like it as much as Twisty.

Let's break this down a bit. Unlike in Twisty, in Buzz I found the lack of instructions positive. Gave it a more "explorative" feel straight away. However, the gameplay/controls really brought the game down. In a nutshell the controls felt really sluggish. It felt almost impossible to make the helicopter do what you wanted. Let's make a list again.

• From time to time the framerate would dip suddenly for a short time. This also happened in Twisty, so I'd suspect this is a HTML5 issue.
• Though most likely intentional, the helicopters turns really slowly. Makes over-steering too easy and correcting it too difficult
• The physics could use a bit more weight in my opinion. Everything feels really "floaty"
• The amount of pollen you can drop should maybe be limited. The ability to spam it endlessly feels a bit cheap
• Combined with the control issues, the short shooting interval makes dodging enemy fire really difficult
• Again, combined with the control issues, the "diamond pollen" timers are way too short. I couldn't get past the third one

Issues like these are often a matter of taste, so you should really get more feedback before making any too rash decisions. Also, I feel I've seen this type of game so many times that it could really use something new to make it more interesting. Maybe something tied to the flower theme of the game, because that's one of the things I really liked about it.

If you're not going to continue working on both, I'd suggest picking Twisty over Buzz.

[todd-gopherwood]

Wow! Thanks for all the feedback!

I agree with you about pretty much everything.

Shifty, Twisty Forest:
- I agree flips are confusing right now. I have been confused by them myself. And yeah, we're hoping that the smooth transitions will alleviate the confusion.
- As for some sort of tutorial, we haven't discussed it too much, but I'd like to do some sort of narration. If you couldn't tell by the crude art, we've been playing around with the idea of it being a story book. So, a narrator would fit into that well.

Buzz:
- Yeah, the controls/physics need work. We gave ourselves limited time on the prototypes so we would focus on getting a core game loop running and I made some last minute changes to the controls that made them especially frustrating. I do want them to have a learning curve, but I don't want the main challenge in the game to be flying. In general, whenever I work on a game with more complicated controls, I find myself going 'control deaf' after a while, by which I mean that I'm so used to the controls I can no longer tell if they're any good or not. So outside feedback is welcome.
- Yeah, the pollen spamming was a problem I knew about, but didn't tackle. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do some sort of limited supply (maybe collect more from flowers?) or just limit the rate at which you could drop it. Playing as if you have a limited supply is more fun, but I have always been annoyed with limited supplies in other games. Maybe a recharging supply???
- Haha, yeah, I knew I should have lengthened the diamond pollen timer, I was just feeling mean. I can barely make it myself, so I'm sure it's brutal for anyone else.

Thanks for your opinion about which one we should push forward with.

As for my own feelings, I like Twisty, Shifty Forest for its immediacy and simple gameplay loop. A puzzle takes about 30 seconds and when you're done you have that "I am clever" feeling (assuming we're making decent levels). I think we have the game direction figured out for the most part and it's just a matter of taking it and fleshing it out and polishing it. My fear is that it currently lacks a marketable hook. It's hard to capture what is fun about the game in a few sentences or screenshots.

Buzz is more my style of game, but not well expressed. I don't think we have found the heart of the game yet. I like the giant garden feel, but that's about as far ahead as I can see. So, from a 'which one to develop' perspective, Buzz is a bad bet because we'll spend a good bit of time wandering trying to find what is really fun about it. I think it too lacks a good hook.

Anyway, enough rambling.
Thanks again for all the feedback!

[todd-gopherwood]

Oh, whoops, just noticed I'm breaking forums rules by not introducing myself.

I'm Todd of Gopherwood Studios (http://gopherwoodstudios.com/). We're a two-man studio in North Carolina, USA. We've been in existence for ~4 years and specialize in HTML5 games. Something we kind of stumbled into after making our first game, Entanglement (http://entanglement.gopherwoodstudios.com/). We spend most of our time doing contract games, most of which are of the kids educational game sort. At this point, we are intimately familiar with the PBS Kids TV lineup. If you have kids and have played any of our games, hopefully you found them tolerable! Ultimately, we'd like to do more independent work, it's all a matter of when we have time and resources.

[diegzumillo]

That's pretty neat. The mechanics became very clear very quickly and I find them interesting and engaging. With the introduction of more mechanisms to create deeper puzzles this could be a very engaging puzzle game. The only thing I didn't like on this small demo were the diagonal reflection zones, because they are so unintuitive I find myself unable to predict what will happen and I just guess my way out.

For larger levels, if there will ever be such a thing, you should consider checkpoints. Puzzle games and repetition don't go well together, once a puzzle is solved there is no satisfaction in "solving" again. It might be interesting to consider a time warp functionality, just in case there's this really long walk between two rooms and I have nothing to do but stare at him (didn't happen in the demo though).

Keep it up 

[todd-gopherwood]

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, a fast-forward button is something we've considered. For the prototype, we focused on keeping the levels tightly packed, so there wasn't a lot of downtime, but as the levels get more complex I can see the need for it increasing.

Yeah, I have to admit on the level with the large diagonal flip area, I just keep flipping until it works.

[OutoMaisteri]

Glad to be of assistance Hope I'll get to see more of these projects in the future.