World Ratings and Suggestions

#1

I played through the whole game, and I find a few things in the game I like and dislike. Here are my ratings and suggestions for the worlds. I’m rating each world by length, content, and design. I’m using the 3 star rating system.

World 1

Length: ***
Perfect length for the first world. It’s long enough for the player to get used to the mechanics in the game.

Content: ***
Plenty of content in the world. There are a couple side-quests and some simple bosses.

Design: **
Outside world had fantastic design, but inside the houses at the village it felt kind of bland.

Suggestions: The houses at the village should show a little more color inside, like the house at the very beginning of the game. All I saw was pink walls and some minor furniture.

World 2

Length: *
Way too short of a world. I beat it within 5 minutes.

Content: *
There are no bosses, and the village should of had more to it. No new enemies, just some jumping bugs and ants from the first world.

Design: ***
This world had the best design out of all the worlds. Had plenty of color and feeling to it. I especially love the trees.

Suggestions: The only thing good about this world is the design. It’s way too short and it feels like it should have a little more content. Add some bosses, and put some side-quests in the village. I didn’t like that I couldn’t go inside the houses.

World 3

Length: ***
Very long, took me the longest to beat.

Content: **
A few new enemies and obstacles, but no bosses and side-quests.

Design: ***
The design was very nice. It really felt like a cave.

Suggestions: The only thing this world is lacking is some side-quests and bosses. Everything else is nice however.

World 4

Length: **
Felt kind of short, should of been a little longer.

Content: ***
More obstacles, and a few bosses. Very nice.

Design: **
The design was okay, but it lacked some color.

Suggestions: Make it a little longer, and add a little more color to the design.

That’s what I think about each world. What do you think about the worlds and what suggestions do you have?

EDIT: Made some changes in my World 1 review about the houses. I made it more clear that I’m talking about those large houses at the village, not the ones at the very beginning of the game.

#2

Thank you for the feedback and suggestions!

We agree that the forest world is a little lacking in interesting challenges right now, and one of our focuses is fixing that up. We’re planning on adding a boss, and a number of new enemies, to make it more challenging and make the gameplay live up to the great artwork we have for that area.

David

#3

When we released the game, there were number of things that I was unsatisfied with, but which weren’t “deal-breakers”. Studios can get into a dangerous cycle of continually reworking the game over and over - we were starting to get into that rut, ourselves. That stuff kills- that stuff has actually destroyed dozens of projects.

Even for an indie, spare-time project like ours, the ability of the team to keep working on something doesn’t last forever. We won’t run out of money, but there are a lot of other things that could stop us, so it’s important for us to get something reasonably “finished” out on the the net before that happens.

Plus, it generates buzz, gets people making mods/custom levels, gets us some money (so we could commission things that our own team doesn’t have the skills to produce), gets an OSS community going so that any obviously-desired patches (like the key-remapping support) get done, and so that our engine is out there for other people to use to build their games.

#4

Actually, these would be relevant:


I’ve seen a lot of personal art projects; novels, manga, musical compositions, or yes, videogames, any of which are long-form projects that take many weeks, get destroyed by an author’s insistence that it be “perfect”. Such to the point that I’ve seen a lot of authors destroy wonderful works-in-progress and start over, because they see some flaw in the work which they’re afraid to ship with. Specifically, I think every one of them foresees some newly fashionable criticsm being laid upon them, and their work getting mocked at large. In practice, these criticisms end up being irrelevant.

People want to make some master work - some ass-kicking magnus opus that just blows everyone’s mind. They think that to do that, it has to be above -any- criticism, because they think what they love is similarly “sacred”. They don’t criticize it, and neither do the other adorers of it that they self-select as their circle of friends. But nothing’s above criticism, because all works are finite, and had to make exclusionary decisions.

If you make any decision, you necessarily exclude the decision you didn’t make. And someone will always dislike that. For a dumb example: If I color a sky “sunset red”, there will be people who wished it was blue. If I make it both, there will be people who wished it was monochromatic. If I make it monochromatic, and change over time, there will be people complaining about how it changes color. It’s impossible to make one solution that appeals to all possible audiences. You can spend years churning on this with a creative project, carefully trying to remove every point of criticism, and every step you take to fix a criticism will usually open up new ones.

Ultimately, there’s a point of grossly diminishing returns. There’s a point where you can work on one project for 10 years, and it’ll be completely different from what you’d have accomplished in 2 years. But there’s no guarantee it will be better. And you’re running a dangerous risk of never getting it done at all.

#5

I completely agree with everything that was stated above. All you can do is add, and fix bugs. You can’t change the core content of a game without screwing the entire game up to the point where it isn’t even the same game anymore. Simply put, you cannot let criticism get the better of you whether your making a game or asking a girl out it should never get the better of you. You rule your own destiny and in this case, you make you own game.

#6

Jetryl ftw. :smiley: