Hey Adam!
Nice little game you got there. If I may, could I drop by a few comments of my own? A small critique if you will? Its been a while since I really took the time to analyze a game and I feel like yours could be fun to.
Ok so in general, I played the game for about 30-45 minutes. I didn't count exactly how many games I played and my best score so far is 4058. Also, I kinda like the general concept. Perhaps I'm biased due to my personal experience (my 2007 gamma entry) but still, I like the idea behind your game. So let's see.
The Good stuff Canabalt got me playing for quite a while, concidering that an average game lasts about a minute or 2. Here are some things I really liked about the experience I had when playing the game.
Interesting visual an theme There's no denial that you are a great artist Adam. The game is well crafted, the visuals are interesting and the general theme is well executed. The choice of black and white helps to give a darker mood to the game. All the elements of the game are well represented. In general, the asthetics are quite nice.
Great sounds Great visuals matched with great sounds. The music and sound effects are nicely done and add to the atmosphere. Although it would have been fun to have more sound effects here and there, such as having a more dominat sound when birds fly away, or sometimes hearing what's going on in the background, in general, the audio of the game is well done.
Nice special effects The various sound effects, like the particles of glasses and the camera shaking give the experience a nice touch. Although present throughout the experience, they don't feel too intruding, a trap that many special effects tend fall into. They do not affect the player's perception of the game area and only enhance elements that are already there.
Simple mechanics, easy to learn One button is all that is needed to play this game. The very simple input means that any player can understand how the game works. It takes only a few tries to understand how to perform different kinds of jumps (small, medium or high, depending how long you hold down the jump button). The game has the "pick up and play" quality that can easily attract players of all kinds.
Fast paced I like that the game is msotly focused on escaping. The mechanics, which makes the player's avatar run faster with time, gives a nice twist to the experience.
The Not That Good Stuff While playing, they were things that rubbed me the wrong way. They are things that irritated me or distracted me from the fun elements.
Lack of choices The first thing that hits me is the lack of choices. Since the player doesn't control his avatar completly, for instance he can only input a vague height for the jumps, the player ends up with a few potential choices. The levels do not offer alternate paths to take or other interesting choices to make. The game ends up being a simple, linear experience where the player decides to jump or not. This makes the game redundant, in my opinion. The randomness of the level creation and the challenges thrown at the player helps to spice things up but in the end, the game lacks experimentation and choices. Once you understand how to jump, it's just a question of mastering the skills and not experimenting or learning new ways to use them.
Unequal difficulty curve The difficulty curve found in Canabalt feels wonky. The game experience is unequal and, from game to game, the experience can jump from very easy to unforgiving. For example, in some runs, I went through a succession of 7 or 8 buildings without ever encoutering any obstacles of any types. In another game, the third jump I had to make had me landing right in front of a falling rocket with little space in front of the landing spot to react. In some games, there are many tricky jumps to make, such as going through windows, and in other games they are almost absent from the experience (aside from the first jump). My observation seems to point toward the use of procedural level creation, which can be quite tricky to pull out correctly in order to follow an interesting difficulty curve. Its not impossible but it in Canabalt's case, the levels feel random rather than designed. In general, the unequal difficulty curve makes the experience feel random which makes the player soon understand that luck has a lot to do in his success rather than his personal skills.
Redundant pacing Although I like the fast-pacing, after a while, the general pacing felt redundant. The game kept going faster and faster. This intense pacing leads up to the player's saturation and may lead him to disconnect from the game since he cannot keep up anymore. It would be interesting if, at some moment, the game slowed things down to allow the player to take a breather and insert an awe moment: a special event that changes what the player has on his mind and re-enforce the theme and the motivation of the player. A simple example would be that, once the player reaches 1500 meters, the player jumps on a building with no obstacles whatsoever and, in the background, a great explosion occurs or some spacehsip arrives. The player can still control his character but no challenges ar ethrown at him, except perhaps some crates and stuff. Then, when the event ends, the game starts off again picking up pace. This change of pace, in my opinion, would help to give the player an interesting and diversified experience while giving him breathers between rushes. Right now, it felt to me that the constant fast pace of the game tend to make the general experience too equal and eventualy makes it less interesting.
Lack of clear or multiple goals and rewards The premise of the game, escaping for your life, is interesting and can motivate the player for a while. However, the initial goal doesn't keep the player motivated too long. The game lacks the ability to give different goals to the player as well as giving rewards while playing. Goals can be of various nature. For instance, changing the scenery or adding new types of challenges as the game progresses would help give the player specific goals to reach. For example, let's say that we use the crane concept and knock it up another notch. Let's imagine that the game, upon reaching 2000 meters, shifts from buildings to buildings in constructions, including cranes and structures. Well, the player has a new goal than just running away from something behind him. He can now want play to reach the crane part. Or get passed the crane part. Another example of an extra goal could be to feature an attacking robot upfront for a short while and the player must out-run it. The idea here is to give the player mid-terms and long-terms goals so that his motivation is fed throughout the experience. Its also good to note that right now, the game doesn't off a clear long term goal. The player cannot know when the game will end. In fact, the game feels like its an endless race where you will end up dead anyway. If that's the case, it doesn't help the player to keep on playing the game since, in the end, if he just kills himself at the first jump, it'll be the same result as if he killed himself 3000 meters further. You can't even say "I may have fell down at 4 000 meters but at least I got passed the giant robot that tried to catch me" or something. And when I say reward, it doens't have to be coins or somethign cliché-ed like this. Simply out-running an event or reaching a new region is a reward in itself. Rewards and goals are tied together and they don't have to be the same old boring "coins and lives" rewards.
Lack of anticipation In general, when making an action game, anticipation is crucial to allow the player to react to incoming challenges. The game tells what is going to happen and then makes it happen. The less time between the anticipation and the execution, the harder the game. In Canabalt, there is little anticipation. The game seems to focus a lot on uninteresting information, such as the building below the avatar's feet, and cuts a lot of anticipation which can make the game frustrating by moments.
For instance, if we look at a basic Canabalt screen... The top screen shows the original game, the bottom screen is an edit. The red sections of the screens are the potential anticipation zones. These zones are where the player's eyes will be able to look for potential incoming threats. The original screen puts a lot of emphasis on the bottom part and little on the top of the screen. Granted, this helps to indicate to the player that the building is high. However, that information can be given in many ways: a camera pan before the game starts or a long drop for the first jump are two ways the game can tell the player "hey, you are way up high, dropping off will destory you".
Now if we look at the second screen, I lowered the game area to allow the player more anticipation room on top. Why? Because that's where the incoming threats come from. From what I've played, there are no threats coming from below and one nasty coming from the top. The only challenge that comes close from coming out of the bottom screen are the building that crumbles but even they come form the right part of the screen so the player anticipates the collapse because he saw the building before landing on it. So technicaly the threat comes form the right, not below. Lowering the running area also puts less emphasis on dead space (area without red). Dead spaces being space in the screen that is unused by the player during play. In this case, the area below the avatar.
Anticipation also means that the game tells the player what's going to happen before it happens, as mentioned earlier. For example, making a spaceship zoom in the back right before a rocket drops on a building would be an interesting way to tell the player to watch out. Putting a certain type of obstacles in a specific pattern before placing "jump-through" windows would also help the player plan his jump in order to go through the tricky glass. Overall, I feel like a bit more anticipation in the game would help it alot
Role of the crates and such This is more of a nit-pick than anything else but, I can't figure out if the obstacles that slow you down are good or bad. They are portrayed as pretty bad when the game starts, telling the player to avoid them or he'll loose, but then they seem to be crucial in order to slow things down so they stay at a managable speed. This gives mixed feelings toward those obstacles. Its not a bad thing in itself though but I suggest that making their role a bit clearer at the start could help the general experience. For instance, maybe only putting one obstacle instead of two before the first window could help. This would teach the player that they slow you down without killing you (right now, if you hit the two obstacles and go through the window, you fall off the building due to a lack of speed which tells you that hitting crates will most likely kill you eventualy).
Bugs While playing, I encoutered a few bugs or things that don't seem to fit in the intended game.
The ESC bug When playing, if I press the ESC key, I end up in full screen, the game paused and I have to alt-tab to come back to the game. And when I come back, the music is gone. I use IExplorer 7 so it could be an IExplorer-only thing.
The Pause and Console When pausing the game, the screen features a pause menu that indicates controls. I have tried numerous time to use the Arrows and WASD buttons to move my character but it never worked. If the feature has been removed, the pause menu should be updated. If not, then there seems to be a major bug where you can't move your character
I can also access the console by pressing one, which seems like something superfluous for a released game. Unless this hasn't been publicaly released. Otherwise, I think the console option should be removed.
Well, there you go. Nice game Adam and Danny! You did a great job! Quite entertaining!
Can't wait to see your next project
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