New Game! - Advice / Criticism welcome!

akstudiodevelopmentakstudiodevelopment Member Posts: 93
edited November -1 in Announce Your Game!
Hey everyone,

The one thing I noticed throughout the forum is to make sure your game is polished! Now with my latest game, I have definitely taken my time making sure everything polished. Please have a look at the images posted and please let me know what you think.

The game is a sling shot based game with a pong twist. the objective is to stop the drawing pins from touching the ground and allow for the little guy to make it to the teleport pad. You need to save 3 little guys for each level. There are 48 levels in total, each with their own challenges; static, rotating and moving platforms make each level harder as you progress. In conjuction with the platforms, the ball that you sling shot, only has a certain amount of bounces that it can handle before it explodes. The ball will not re-spawn until it has exploded or disappeared off the screen.

I hope to have a video clip of game play up soon.

I am really keen to get it on to the app store soon, so any advice or comments / criticism are welcome!

http://akstudiodevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/10.png
http://akstudiodevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/8.png
http://akstudiodevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/11.png
http://akstudiodevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/6.png
http://akstudiodevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/7.png
http://akstudiodevelopment.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/1.png

Cheers,

Kris

Comments

  • AsymptoteellAsymptoteell Member Posts: 1,362
    Every piece of art looks great on its own (I love the character the most), but I'd just try to make all of the art seem more fitted together. Try experimenting with making all the greys and blacks the same color. Also, try adding outlines to the pushpins. That might make them fit the doodle theme more. As for the glowing bars and the photographic pencils, without seeing a movie, I don't know if they'll look out of place or not, but it looks to me like they fit in rather nicely with the doodle style, and I'm rather impressed that you pulled it off (at least in my eyes). It would probably be best to get some more opinions from people here, but I'd try experimenting with those things, and see what works out for you.
    Good luck finishing this one off,
    Asymptoteell
  • akstudiodevelopmentakstudiodevelopment Member Posts: 93
    Thank you very much! Great advice!

    I wasn't too sure about the pins, they kinda look out of place... I will go back to the drawing board and see what i can do.

    Kris
  • akstudiodevelopmentakstudiodevelopment Member Posts: 93
    Updated with a video of gameplay. Unfortunately there is now sound. This is more to show you how the game plays.

    Recent updates since the last post include color matching and polishing of the pins...

    Let me know what you think, good and bad...

  • old_kipperold_kipper Member Posts: 1,420
    I think your game looks cool, but you could lift it all a bit. The pencils are really nice, and I like the elastic band firing thing you have going on. I would try to make that work so the stationary items look went further. Possible have a eraser as the bullet (or if you want something round- a small coin.

    The final look is all about detail and I think can lift the project from just looking ok to something far more professional looking. I would replace all the fonts, symbols, and game text with hand drawn replacements. Just write and draw out everything you need and scan them (or photograph it if you don't have a scanner). You could try doing this on rough watercolour paper with a soft pencil as this would give you a really grainy look. Once you have the imges as digital files get it into an art program (photoshop is where I do this kind of stuff) and clean up, size, and possibly convert all to white bitmaps on an alpha background. This way when you put it into GS you can adjust the colour and transparency to whatever you want and everything would have a solid and consistent style, which I think would give a better and more individual look.

    For myself I try never to have more than 2 'looks'. In your case I would use the photographic (which I would include the paper as part of), and the hand drawn. I would go as so far as to trace out you jumping guy in hand line (or make an animated charachter from bits of stationary like erasers, push pins, elastic bands, pencil stubs, scissors, paper clips, etc) and I would try to get the push pins as an image that works without a border. To do this I would see if I could scan the push pin or photograph it so I had a a very large image I could clean up, get a really nice cut out on alpha and then resize down as a sprite. Work with all the elements as in your art program, and do grabs from GS to check for placement, etc.

    The elastic band that fires I would try to get to be in place as a photographic image suspended between the pencil parts and tied around the pencil ends, with the body of it hanging between firings. Then switch to a similarly coloured graphics (as you have but coloured to match the band), during firing.

    just my opinion...

    good luck and I do really like what you are doing. It's just I see it and can imagine it with the stuff in place.

    kipper
  • akstudiodevelopmentakstudiodevelopment Member Posts: 93
    I absolutely appreciate your feedback! I get what you mean. There is a bit of a disconnect with the graphics and style. I have decided to shelve this temporarily so I can work on my other project. It will be good to come back to it with fresh eyes!

    Thanks again @Asymptoteell & @old_kipper
  • DizkoDizko Member Posts: 498
    Your alien character has a strong resemblance to the Reddit alien.

    http://www.reddit.com/

    Not sure if it will be a problem or not, but I'd figured I give the heads up.
  • ShamukeeShamukee Member Posts: 16
    The only question is: would you pay for this game?

    Sorry, but I never, and I think, many others will not paying for this game.
    The graphics is poor, the concept is poor...

    I don't understand this community: I've read a lot of game announcements on FS forum, and of course read the comments and suggestions too, and I see rarely useful comments. Why didn't you say for this developer, that the game is worthless and try to develop an other game/concept? This developer worked with this game 1-4 months, and this time wasted is gone.

    I'm waiting for good games on Gamesalad.
  • jordanpropst25jordanpropst25 Member Posts: 58
    I would really like to know how you made the slingshot
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