Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

 
Advanced search

1411276 Posts in 69323 Topics- by 58380 Members - Latest Member: bob1029

March 28, 2024, 10:48:44 AM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsDeveloperPlaytestingReckless Gravity WIP: 3D Puzzle Platformer
Pages: [1]
Print
Author Topic: Reckless Gravity WIP: 3D Puzzle Platformer  (Read 1457 times)
Chaotic Heart
Level 0
**


View Profile
« on: March 22, 2015, 02:55:25 AM »

Greetings everyone,

I have been out of the indie developer scene for quite awhile, but just recently decided to give it another try (dreams die hard, after all). I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback upon my latest game. It is still heavy alpha with a LOT left to do on it, but it is to a point where people can play it and actually get a feel for what I am going for.

Reckless Gravity is a 3D Puzzle Platformer heavily inspired by games like Portal. It does have a heavier emphasis on action than true mind-bending puzzles, however. The object is for the player to race to the end of each stage in an attempt to get a high score. The end result will have leaderboards, of course, though these are not currently implemented.

For now, there are only 3 stages to play. There are very few sound effects, and most graphics are just placeholders. It also needs some serious optimization (the stage select screen, in particular, lags a bit). There is also no Death/Fail logic in place, yet; mostly because I haven't decided what that will be yet (does it force a complete restart of the whole level or do I put in a form of check-points?)

With that said, I invite everyone to give it a shot and please let me know what you think. All criticism and advice is greatly welcome.

Link to Game: http://gamejolt.com/games/platformer/reckless-gravity-wip/55389/

SCREENSHOTS:




« Last Edit: March 22, 2015, 07:22:00 PM by Chaotic Heart » Logged
OutoMaisteri
Level 0
**


Call me Oddy ;)


View Profile WWW
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2015, 01:17:26 PM »

Oh boy, I think this might be a long one. Better get to it then.

First impressions:
I really like the core gameplay. I could see all kinds of fun and mind bending directions you could go with it by adding more elements and mixing things up. Kudos for also providing functional tutorialization. Overall I had a positive experience. However, there are also a lot of things I want to comment on. Most of it is going to be criticism, but I truly hope you'll take it as constructive, as I really think the game has potential. I'm going to list things roughly as I experienced them.

Jumping
Jumping felt a bit weird. Instead of feeling like the character actually jumps, it felt more like the character just steadily hovers upwards. I noticed you're using Unity to develop the game, and being a Unity developer myself, I'd guess you're applying force to make the character jump. If that is the case, I wish you luck, because I know how difficult it can be to make a "dynamic" jump with that. In any case, you might want to try and tweak the jumping a bit.

Moving objects around
You state the objective of the game as racing to the end of each level. To me that means the game should be (or at least feel) fast paced. The way the object physics behave currently is the exact opposite of fast paced. When moving objects around, they feel way too heavy and cumbersome, which in turn makes them respond slowly to player input. This really kills the pace of the game. Another factor is that you lift the objects up from a "single point". When you try to make fast movements, the object swings like being hung from a piece of string. In a nutshell, if you want the game to be fun to race through, the objects have to accommodate this. Check out a game called Viscera Cleanup Detail, I think it could be a good example to draw from.

Power meter
At first I thought this was a health meter. Maybe you should mention its purpose in the tutorial parts as well. Took me a fair bit of time to figure it out. The bigger issue though is the power consumption. Here's my experience through out the demo: Encounter a puzzle, think of a solution, move an object, wait for the meter to recharge, move an object, wait for the meter to recharge, repeat, repeat, repeat...

Like I said before, if you want your players to be able to race through the game, your mechanics have to accommodate it. I'm not saying you should remove the power meter, just to rework the power consumption. For example, when moving an object, you should only only lose the initial 8 power, not have the entire meter run out if the action takes longer than a few seconds. Or maybe start the continuous consumption after a set time has passed and not immediately.

Crosshair
A few short points. The "idle animation" was distracting. Because of its infrequency I at first thought it had some gameplay relevance. Instead of that, you should perhaps animate it when aiming at movable objects or just when manipulating them.

Gravity reversal
Just a peculiar observation: when in normal gravity, you can activate the reversal even in mid-air. When in reversed gravity, you can only activate the reversal when touching the ceiling. Now that I actually think about it, some of the puzzles might've broke if it wasn't like that, so... I dunno. Maybe it's fine. Just felt a bit weird in action.

"Gravityless" cubes
A positive note for a change: I really liked these. They fit the overall gravity theme excellently and provided fun gameplay.

Though this applies in general, these cubes really made me want a way to pull stuff towards me. Especially in level 3, dragging these things across walls or manually backing up to retrieve them felt really clunky.

Hazards
Very much a continuation of the power meter topic. Having hazards is totally fine, especially if you intend to have some kind of death/fail states later on, but the way they drain your power (especially the "lava") wasn't fun at all. I was already spending most of my time waiting for my power to recharge in between every manipulation; emptying the meter every time I failed felt like hitting a brick wall. Of course this might not be such of an issue if you change the power consumption in other ways like I suggested, but you should still think about this very hard.

Keycubes
Just kind of a reiteration of the object manipulation topic: placing these suckers on the pedestals was way too difficult and slow. Adjusting the physics should eliminate this problem. Also, a very minor bug: When placed on the pedestal, looking at the cube from a certain angle would make it completely see-through from a few places.

Another related bug: On level 2 when I got to the exit, the door wasn't open even though the keycube was on the pedestal. I spent a lot of time trying to place it properly, which I suspect somehow broke the door. The problem was fixed after re-placing the cube though.

Summary
If you want the game to be fun to speed run, you gotta make some serious changes to your physics and power meter. Despite really picking it apart, I really think this is a promising demo. And remember, take everything I say with a grain of salt. Get the game tested with other people too and see what they have to say.

I hope you'll find all this feedback helpful. Make a great game!
Logged
Chaotic Heart
Level 0
**


View Profile
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2015, 03:00:43 PM »

Firstly, thank you. This is EXACTLY the type of feedback I was hoping to garner. It greatly helps me avoid some developmental dead-ends. I may have to rethink a few of the directions I was heading to fix some of the issues you pointed out, however.

Most of the energy/power issues you encountered I suspected might crop up. They exist because the game was intended to work with an upgrade system in place (i.e. eventually you could lower the cost of using your powers, up your total energy, and even improve energy regeneration time, etc). The problem with upgrade systems is you have to make it so the player starts out weak enough to WANT to upgrade them... but not so weak as to feel frustrated. Obviously, I need to either rethink the dependency on upgrades or work harder to achieve a good balance.

And the game definitely has been suffering due to my design direction being torn between a slower-paced puzzler and an action platformer. Was hoping to manage to marry the two, but I might have to just stick with one.

Going to implement a few changes based upon your excellent feedback and post the update and see if it enhances the game experience. I wouldn't mind getting a few more feedbacks as detailed as yours just to get a consensus (HINT HINT to everyone else), but yours alone has given me a good deal to work with. Glad to hear you at least enjoyed the core gameplay experience. Time to see if I can improve it and make it even more enjoyable. Thank you again for the critique, and hopefully I can convince you to give another one once I implement a few changes.
Logged
OutoMaisteri
Level 0
**


Call me Oddy ;)


View Profile WWW
« Reply #3 on: March 24, 2015, 11:47:21 PM »

Glad to hear my feedback is helpful. And I'll be sure to keep my eyes peeled for an update Wink
Logged
Theguyinthemines
Level 0
*


View Profile
« Reply #4 on: March 30, 2015, 06:08:15 PM »

Great game! This has potential, I love the mechanics, but this game desperately needs some death conditions because I went into the lava and went to minus health(No hate). Great game anyway
Logged
Chaotic Heart
Level 0
**


View Profile
« Reply #5 on: April 18, 2015, 08:24:32 PM »

Just got around to updating a few things. Would, as always, greatly appreciate some feedback.

* Added most of the upgrade logic.
* Tweaked the energy usage/drain that was causing the slower "wait for this to fill back up" gameplay.
* Changed the gravity powers to be more responsive and "stiff", so it no longer feels as if things being held by gravity are actually dangling from a string.
* Added the ability to pull objects to you as well as push them; in addition, you can now pull/push objects simultaneously while you have them held by gravity.
* Added two new levels to play around in.

Still missing a lot of graphics, sounds, and still no death/respawn logic in place.

Thanks, ahead of time, to anyone who takes the time to provide some much-appreciated critiquing.
Logged
Quicksand-S
Level 10
*****


View Profile WWW
« Reply #6 on: April 21, 2015, 01:32:42 AM »

I initially skipped testing this game because I skimmed your post and somehow missed the "inspired by games like Portal" part. When I got to the screenshots, I just saw a puzzle game that had something to do with boxes and strange textures, and I just wasn't in the mood for weird puzzle games. My first recommendation, I guess, would be to add/change a few screenshots so that at least a couple show the environments a bit more, and at different angles (I originally thought the game had a fixed viewpoint because the shots are all using the same angle).

-Is there a download link somewhere that I'm missing? This isn't the sort of game I'd normally want to play in a browser.

-When I started playing, the mouse control was so incredibly slow that it was just unbearable.

-In addition to the slow aiming, there's a weird bug that I noticed when I was switching between browser windows while playing (so I could write here). Alt-tabbing caused the cursor to be disconnected from the camera when I returned to the game. That meant I could move the crosshair at my normal mouse speed, but the view still rotated much more slowly, causing the crosshair to be off-screen half the time and cause a lot of issues. You may just need to always ensure that the mouse is locked to the center while the player is in-game, and should probably be drawing the crosshair relative to the window rather than the mouse position.

-I pressed escape to get back to the main menu and see if I could change a setting, but the pause menu doesn't have an option to go back to the main menu or even the level select.

-The field-of-view is really limited, and it's always weird to see a 4:3 ratio in a modern game.

-The first environment is pretty bland. The dangerous, lava-like ground looks better in motion than screenshots, but the important things in scenes (like blocks) don't really stand out.

-One thing about the "lava" (in quotations because it's partially transparent so it doesn't look like lava) is that it probably should not have its sides textured, only the top. Since you can see through it and see those sides, it just looks a bit weird now.

-The textures on the "lava" also should not be stretched to fill the width/length of the blocks.

-I originally though the crosshair was changing whenever I placed it over a block I could grab. Somehow, the timing always seemed to match up and I was happy to see that helpful feature in the game. Then I realized that it just animates on a timer. It seems important to show player what they can pick up, and

-At one point, the game just failed to let me grab the flatter, longer block near the start of level 1. It worked most of the time.

-This may be a bug too, or I just did something stupid: When I jumped onto that first platform, I didn't realize that it was movable too (I thought the texture just meant I was supposed to bring my same-textured block there). I put my block down, and when I realized I'd been wrong, I went to grab my block and the game had me grab the one I was standing on instead, throwing me into the "lava".

-Using Shift as a toggle seems unintuitive. In every game I've seen use Shift, it's always been a key you hold down.

-I'm a big fan of using the mouse wheel for manipulating objects to push/pull them while they're being carried. To me, that would feel much more comfortable than the current setup, but maybe you plan on using the mouse wheel for something else?

-Middle mouse button didn't do anything for me, but looking back, maybe I was just trying it while my cursor was offscreen (because of the aiming issue).

-The lava (I'm sick of writing quotation marks) just after the "switch gravity" sign looks like it's two pits in one, so there's flickering caused by overlapping textures Z-fighting. The one before that also had issues.

-By having the normal block-grabbing use energy and take away from score, doing things the expected way is a negative. I got about 100 points more on my second time through the tutorial by jumping through lava, not grabbing orbs and not using any movable blocks except the key.

-The other issue with tying block-grabbing to energy is just that it's annoying. I should always be able to use my primary ability. If I spend ages messing with blocks, I'll lose time. I don't need to lose energy too.

-Selecting "Stage Select" after finishing a level doesn't bring me to the stage select.

-In level 2, I drop down the hole toward the key block and land on what looks like a floor of dangerous ground, but it isn't dangerous. Why is it textured like that, then?

-There are some pretty annoying physics issues. That first block in the lava in the tutorial often just jumps away when I land on it. On the second-last level, I went to place a bigger block so I could jump on it and it just got stuck between two walls and vibrated like crazy until it eventually went flying.

-Gravity powers work well, but running while holding a block does feel like it's "on a string" sometimes. Blocks do lag behind a bit.

-You mentioned that you've "Added most of the upgrade logic" but I grabbed orbs in the tutorial and still had none to spend in the store. Did my second, "ignoring everything in the level" playthrough overwrite the number of orbs I had?

-I felt like the jumping and movement felt pretty decent, although the FOV and inability to see the edges of certain platforms made lining up some jumps trickier than they needed to be.

-The sounds that are there are all right.


I tried all of the levels but in every one, I got frustrated because I couldn't see anything. The only one I actually played to completion is the tutorial. There's too much black in the levels. Black walls with black walls behind them, and nearly-black blocks...I just always felt like I was missing something when I looked around.

The second-last level looked really cool. It was my favorite, visually, but I got to the top of that "stairway" in the spinning laser room, jumped across the platforms and then had no idea whatsoever where to go. Maybe I was supposed to switch gravity, but I wasn't going to risk falling without having somewhere to aim for. The same sort of thing happened in level 2, where I got the key block and then didn't see any way back and didn't feel like straining my eyes to look for a black opening somewhere in the blackness.

Some of the level design is pretty good. I really like that spinning-laser-tower room, for example. I just wish I could see everything properly. Maybe just make important things/places stand out more. In order to play this comfortably, I'd need that and the mouse aiming to be improved.
« Last Edit: April 21, 2015, 01:51:53 AM by Quicksand-S » Logged

My Old Game: We Want YOU - Join the Fight for Freedom

Twitter - Mostly comments on games, old and new.
Pages: [1]
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic