Slick Forums

Hello Community, I Have a game. It's called Gearbie, and I have a zip for it here:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B66dX6UDEAP8d1diSV9ucWxHVDA
Left and Right Keys move, and the Up key jumps. So far it seems to work on my Windows and Ubuntu partitions. Please let me know if it gives you problems.

Here are some screenshots:




I've been working on this for a few years now, and I was hoping to put this on tha android market by december. The plan right now is to have a free version with the first 14-16 levels, and a paid version with at least 40 levels (that may be dreaming, I only have the 14 right now). However many levels I get, and whether or not I have a paid version, I certianly hope to put Gearbie on the market.

The point is, I would like this game to be the best it can be, so any criticisms are appreciated. Is the learning curve to high? Too low? Is there some point where it's unclear how to do some basic task? Any glitches I should know about? Do the levels seem out of order? Those are things I might have overlooked/miscalculated. If you don't play through the whole game, that's fine, tell me what level you stopped at. Knowing where someone looses interest is important.

Many thanks to everyone at the forums who made this game possible.

(known issues:
menu buttons are iffy, you may have to click a certian corner or something
sound effects iffy, advice on improvement appreciated
one of the levels only has four stars: world 2 level 6)

_________________
"Artificial intelligence will never be a match for human stupidity" - "Jamos Kennedynos"

Here are my thoughts and opinions:

• Why do I have to click my character to finish the level? Why can't I just press down, for instance? Also, why can't I press "r" to restart?
• In the second world, you don't tell the player that the magma balls can kill you until the very last level. Since they don't kill you right away, I never really noticed that they were dangerous until then.
• Some of the levels in the second world also seem to be tutorial levels, repeating what was done in the first world. Is this necessary?
• I'm not sure what my motivation for collecting all of the stars is supposed to be.
• How come there isn't any music?
• I noticed that there's one sound effect for selecting a level. There needs to be more sound effects. For example, when the player gets hit or sounds that enemies make when they walk around.
• The UI for level selection needs to provide more information.
• Moving around is fun, but does not work well with the levels. Right now, the way levels are set up make movement frustrating

I played through the whole thing, but to be honest if I wasn't doing it to provide feedback I would have stopped around the first 2 or 3 levels. There's no motivation for me as a player to keep playing.

Thanks for the feedback. It hurts, but it's some of the best criticism I could ask for.

• You are perfectly right about restarting and finishing the level. Pressing R used to work, but I think it vanished somewhere while I developed it. I'll make sure it comes back.
• Right again, I completely screwed up introducing the magma balls. Levels got rearranged a lot during development, and that was something I didn't track properly.
• This is good to know. Originally, I didn't have a set of levels as dedicated tutorials, so some of the other levels were re-worked. I'll keep an eye out for where I introduce things unnecicarily.
• The only purpose for collecting the stars right now is a warm fuzzy feeling, but I'll consider requiring a certian number of total stars to make it past each zone.
• Music has been a source of frustration for the longest time. I know I need it, but I don't know how to get it.
  Sound effects are something else that have been giving me trouble, but I think I can manage to make that work.
• Thanks for the advice, I'll try labeling the zones, numbering the levels, and labeling the level select menu.
• This sounds like it might be the most important piece of information of all. I'm not sure exactly what to do to make it less frustrating, but I think i'll try making the levels bigger and more open.

_________________
"Artificial intelligence will never be a match for human stupidity" - "Jamos Kennedynos"

No problem! I am glad you find my feedback constructive and useful :)
I suggest looking around on Freesound Project for sound effects. Music also exists on that site, but less often. Freesound is a great resource because there's a lot of content and license/usage terms are clearly outlined. As to music, I'm not sure what resources are particularly good as I usually just make my own or get friends to do some for me.
There's a resource that I found on Google that details more about this subject: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/77 ... y-gam.html
This will probably take a bit of play testing to figure out what parts of a level design makes a level fun and what doesn't. Then, after you've figured out what works and what doesn't, you can make some really fun levels!