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Andy Gainey

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Timestamp	Since previous	Game	Andy Gainey's comment
Apr 29 21:03:00		Sub-Reality	Thematically, it felt more like a classic two-worlds concept than one where the second world is beneath the surface of the first. <br/> <br/>I found the controls to be a little too granular to achieve precise movement. The pancake flipper level in particular was tricky. Near the top, I kept trying to jump off the edge and switch dimensions just as the block was near it's peak, but I kept falling off because of tricky controls. I eventually realized I could switch dimensions while just standing right on the edge, no jumping. A different visual transition between dimensions (such as a fade, maybe slower), or expanding the size of the upper-right room might have helped make that clear. <br/> <br/>The way that certain objects existed in both dimensions while others did not was intriguing, as well as behavior that differed between dimensions (the dude carrying the log). It wasn't always clear how these elements worked at first, but it didn't take much experimentation to find out. With more levels, one could probably begin to design some standard visual indicators that suggested predictable behavior to the player. <br/> <br/>The audio mix was a little loud on the sound effects, but otherwise I'd say the effects and music worked well with the game. The music and color scheme set a consistent mood.
Apr 30 03:13:00	6h 10m	Vaults Inc	Can't run the game. For some reason the page always shows the "unity web player install now!" button, despite the fact that when I click it and go to the download page, it claims I already have 4.3.5f1 installed. Tried it on Firefox 28 and 29, Chrome 34, and IE11, and after re-running the web player installer.
Apr 30 04:02:00	49m 00s	Beneath The Darkness	Given the side view, it would have been much more intuitive if the hitbox didn't extend vertically to the very top of the avatar sprite, but was more a hitbox for her feet. Predicting where I could move was a bit tricky given what I saw on the screen versus when the character would stop, and walking through the first door surprised me because it happened well before I felt like I had actually reached the door. <br/> <br/>There was also a brief moment of confusion at the beginning due to not realizing which keys did what, though that was quickly remedied with experimentation. I also didn't realize for a while that the second number on the ammo display was total bullets, so I was extra careful to conserve my ammo (which was admittedly just my own brain fart, and it did actually help with the boss fight). <br/> <br/>Purely horizontal bullets felt like a painful limitation, as well as not being able to fire while running backwards. <br/> <br/>Most enemies were too easy to exploit, especially since bullets wouldn't spawn unless the enemy was on screen. <br/> <br/>The way the boss broke out of his vertical movement, got faster, and acquired bombs added some intensity to the fight, but the fight was mostly just tedious.
Apr 30 04:19:00	17m 00s	IO - Reflection/Puzzler	Around level 11 or so I made a silly mistake and shot a bullet into a brick. It said to hit restart, so I hit R, remembering what I had seen on the entry page, and not realizing that there was a restart level button. That restarted the game from the beginning. :( Just when the levels were starting to require a bit of creativity, but I was too lazy and annoyed to go back through the other levels again. <br/> <br/>Many of the levels were pretty easily solved with fewer pieces than were provided, so I was a little confused by the extra pieces. <br/> <br/>Not sure I really buy the connection with the theme; seems like quite a stretch.
Apr 30 05:01:00	42m 00s	They Rise	The upgrades were a welcome surprise; for some reason I completely wasn't expecting them. Having to pick them without any pause in action was a bit tricky though. But once I knew what they all were, I found myself thinking ahead about what my next upgrade would be, which was a pleasant experience. <br/> <br/>The complete lack of enemy knockback, combined with the fact that they turn around instantly in mid-air to follow you, became particularly frustrating, as it basically gave me no options once one of the enemies got too close. <br/> <br/>I also didn't realize at first that I could fire downward; I guess the water didn't look watery enough. And I kept trying to move down for a while, because the intro screen mentioned S as a movement key, but gave up once I guessed that I must be stuck on the surface. <br/> <br/>A few simple sound effects from something like sfxr and family could have gone a long way to adding much needed juiciness. Or a simple flashy visual for bullet/enemy and avatar/enemy collisions. Also for leveling up. <br/> <br/>The stats could have been made larger too; given the pace of the action after a few levels, it was difficult to efficiently glance at them.
Apr 30 16:58:00	11h 57m	Underwater mayhem	Congratulations on first graphical project in C++! I know that can be daunting. <br/> <br/>If you wanted to explore the graphics library more, I think a high value effect could be implemented for the monster spawn event, perhaps a scale from 0% to 100%. I got a little confused at first when I grabbed a monster and it seemed to merely teleport from one location to another (it was actually a new monster). <br/> <br/>The game could probably also benefit greatly from some improved physics and AI. Maybe add some inertia to the player and barrels, make the barrels obey buoyancy below water and gravity above water, and have the monsters follow some sort of jellyfish logic, a la Mario. For example, every two seconds, they pick a random upward/sideways direction and dart there, and otherwise they just gain downward momentum due to gravity. <br/> <br/>Some form of difficulty progression could help too, as the player gets a higher score. More barrels, faster moving monsters. There are probably all sorts of creative options, such as monsters that try to get nearer to barrels or something. <br/> <br/>Being able to view your score after losing would have been nice, as well as having a way to restart from within the application, rather than letting it auto-exit and then have restart the application manually.
Apr 30 22:58:00	6h 00m	Wriggle Worm	Simple, clean interface, but with good subtleties whenever contact was made between worms. <br/> <br/>The wriggling of the other worms worked well to make their trajectory hard to instantly predict, and the fact that they would sometimes have pretty steep angles made it challenging to decide where to go. <br/> <br/>The contact sound effect kept happening after losing, while the scene faded out. That kind of annoyed me, but then again, losing wasn't meant to be enjoyable. :-) Nonetheless, it took a bit away from the otherwise decent sense of polish I felt the game had. <br/> <br/>The opening wave of worms was also a little sudden and dense, because they were all spawned simultaneously. I would have liked to see a progression of difficulty, starting easy at first, and then gradually getting harder (more worms, steeper angles, faster movement, larger wriggling amplitudes, et cetera). <br/> <br/>I couldn't notice enough of an effect from the increased speed, so I just quit trying to use it.
May 1 15:45:00	16h 47m	You're Pulleying My Leg	It took a while for me to realize that the gray things were mirrors and the yellow background was a beam of light. Part of me wishes that this were more obvious from the beginning (maybe by having the beam already hitting a mirror at the start). But part of me appreciates the feeling of that ah-hah moment when I figured it out myself. (I was tempted to leave the game before figuring it out, though, so that's always a risk.) <br/> <br/>The compactness of the multiple stages of the puzzle is very impressive. <br/> <br/>I thoroughly appreciate that restarting only restarts you back to the point where you most recently destroyed light sensitive blocks. I would have quit the game out of frustration otherwise, no doubt about it. <br/> <br/>I was briefly disappointed when, upon reaching the orb, I realized that I wasn't done yet, but wasn't sure what to do. After shining light onto the orb and accomplishing nothing, I figured the only thing left was to get the orb out of the ground, so at least I had yet another couple of ah-hah moments there (the first being a false ah-hah).
May 1 19:08:00	3h 23m	Dive Dive Dive!	There wasn't enough feedback in the game. I couldn't tell what was happening most of the time. While underwater I had pretty much no information, such as nearby depth charges or sonar pings. I also wasn't expecting depth charges to have such a huge range. Kind of ruined it for me when I realized that getting inside the circle of a destroyer seemed to mean certain death.
May 1 19:24:00	16m 00s	CAVE TO DOWN	I couldn't really figure anything out regarding combat. Who was attacking me and when, or how to strategically attack back. I ended up just pressing z repeatedly since that seemed to attack in all directions (despite what the animation suggested), sticking a few presses of space in there every now and then to dig. That seemed to work most of the time, but sometimes I'd end up taking damage from someone and I couldn't tell who or why, or what to do about it.
May 1 19:41:00	17m 00s	Her Touch	In terms of game mechanics, I found the core concept intriguing. I bet there are a lot of interesting ways one could expand those mechanics. <br/> <br/>As for the narrative theme, I had a hard time reading all the text while paying attention to all the little sphere coming at me. I think this was a bit more difficult because entire thoughts would be spread out across a few different pieces of text, some of which I could read comfortably, others I could not, with moments of game play distraction in between also. <br/> <br/>I also didn't feel a strong connection between the mechanics and the narrative, since the meaningful decisions didn't usually actually seem very meaningful. Mostly I just avoided the bullets as best I could, chose to kill some of the lesser mobs because hey, why not, and always sacrificed the prior lover for the next. Didn't see any reason to do otherwise, which made the decisions feel rather flat.
May 2 16:41:00	21h 00m	Enderscope's Game	I take it the confined controls are meant to simulate an endoscope, but I just found those limitations frustrating more than engaging. <br/> <br/>Was the cancer actively spreading while the game was running? It might've been interesting if there was some warning about where the cancer was going to spread to next, like a blinking area that was under threat; could give the player the sense that they can strategically get ahead of the cancer. <br/> <br/>Maybe also include some mechanics about how the cancer spreads, and how they player's actions impact that spread. Maybe different tissues impact the spread in various ways. Or different laser frequencies affect the cancer behavior. <br/> <br/>It was an interesting tech demo that could be taken somewhere, but it was lacking in mechanics, and I doubt that a scoring system would be sufficient to add the intrigue that a good game needs.
May 2 17:03:00	22m 00s	In Hiding	The experience that this game generates is rather unpleasant. But then, that's kind of the whole point, so in that regard it is very well done. Any suggestions I might have would probably detract from that mood. <br/> <br/>For example, I would have liked more feedback about the effect that my actions had, especially feeding and hugging. Also more feedback on the effect of the noise we were making. But I bet more feedback and clearer mechanics would have reduced the significance of the mood. <br/> <br/>It's cool that you aren't actually given the details of the story; the player has to imagine what's going on. But a sense of progression could have helped. For example, a carefully crafted interest curve could do wonders. <br/> <br/>http://marvinhawkins.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/a-word-on-interest-curves/
May 2 17:22:00	19m 00s	The Loudest Ballerina	Great attention to details that added to the experience. <br/> <br/>I would have appreciated some options, however. Mostly I was just following the lights. Having some choices to make could have made me feel more engaged and involved. For example, the jump seemed to make the crowd extra happy, but could be made as a high-risk/high-reward option. Or more strongly play the monster against the crowd; that is, placating the monster often works against pleasing the crowd, and vice versa. <br/> <br/>Also having some heads up about where the next light would be could help. It felt pointlessly frustrating when the next light was clear across the room and would be gone before I got to it.
May 6 22:56:00	101h 34m	Beyond The Surface The Chaos Rises	The music and artwork set the mood very well. I especially liked the background art. Too bad there weren't any sound effects though. And I didn't really notice anything thematic that I'd identify as "beneath the surface". <br/> <br/>As for the game play, seemed rather easy, and I never felt like the decisions were that tough or interesting to make. I essentially just always used the unit with the highest "best of N rolls" stat for the type of roll that was weakest for my opponent. For example, if an opponent required +6 Stealth or +5 Combat to defeat, I'd use whatever unit had the highest number of combat rolls. Seemed to be a reliable strategy. <br/> <br/>There were also very few opponents that did anything other than gain/lose random unit. It would have been interesting if, for an example opponent, choosing a stealth roll would have one risk/reward pair, while choosing a combat roll would have a different risk/reward pair. Especially if some of the risk/rewards were small, while others were large. <br/> <br/>Overall, it seemed like too much randomness, and not enough relevant decision making. And the special skills mostly felt inferior to the standard rolls, because "best of N rolls" is statistically very favorable. <br/> <br/>The UI was at first confusing, just because I didn't know if I was playing or looking at a tutorial, and I didn't know what clicking on a card actually did. Through experimentation I realized that the first gameplay screen was basically choosing which area of the city to fight in, and the second screen had the opponent on the left and my available units on the right. But none of that was obvious at first. <br/> <br/>There was also some issues with the available unit list. Selecting any unit other that the bottom one failed to show the unit's portrait or special abilities. All actions were still available, but I didn't always remember what the special abilities did. Also, once I had a lot of available units, the stack began to overflow off the screen, and I couldn't even read the full text for the unit on the bottom. <br/> <br/>Finally, a possible bug: In the Matrix, I ran across a Net Queen, used a hacker matrix roll, and it said "Success! You get:" But it didn't list what I got, and I got nothing, while I was expecting to "get encountered unit". I had six units at the time.
May 6 23:13:00	17m 00s	Middle Management Hell	I couldn't figure out what was happening or why. I presume it's best to send people to the circle of hell indicated, but maybe not? Is that a tradeoff between keeping demons satisfied and just punishment? I also kept getting fired, even when I thought all indications suggested I was doing okay. <br/> <br/>It wasn't obvious that the cards at the midnight hour were upgrades or whatever. The first time on that screen, you can click anywhere and get back to the game, so I didn't even realize that the cards were any more than artwork. The second time the screen showed up, I tried clicking everywhere and must have eventually clicked a card without fully realizing it. The third time I started to figure it out, but still didn't know what each card did. Then I discovered at least that the boat adds an extra boat. Still don't know what the other two do.
May 6 23:34:00	21m 00s	Syndrome	Curious concept, but something rubbed me the wrong way about the script. It seems like a very difficult script to write without totally oversimplifying or stereotyping everything, even for a native speaker, and probably even for a professional psychiatrist. <br/> <br/>I think it would also be useful to have a clearer sense of progress. In many cases, it felt like each question and answer was completely independent from the rest, regardless of order. I don't know what mechanics were actually occurring in the game code, but I didn't feel a strong connection between questions or from the order of questions. <br/> <br/>The in-between conversations with the nurse were a nice touch, though. <br/> <br/>The UI for guessing the disorder was a bit confusing. At first I thought the three columns of specific disorders somehow mapped to the three categories at the top, but it was actually just three separate sub-menus. To help with that, perhaps add something visual to indicate that the disorders currently visible on the screen all belonged only to the category that had most recently been selected.
May 19 20:08:00	308h 34m	Cavernsweeper	This was pretty awesome. I think it has a lot of potential. <br/> <br/>One idea that came to mind to reduce the difficulty and give some more control to the player is two have two different bottom grids. It was frustrating when I had cleared out the entire grid without finding the direction I needed, only to be left with a fully reset grid and a random chance of failing. Being able to choose when to clear out and reset one grid, while keeping the safer partially known grid in reserve, would help. Or perhaps a way to pick up or otherwise save control tiles across a reset. <br/> <br/>Combined with that, have some more safe spots in the upper level, so the trick is to reach a safe spot before having to reset the grid, or else be stuck taking a gamble. <br/> <br/>A visual nitpick was that I really wished there was something visible that immediately indicated how many adjacent controls tiles there were for any given tile, regardless of direction. Sort of like how minesweeper used colors (but yeah, colorblind issues would pop up). Granted, not having this only meant I had to do simplistic adding of single digit numbers in my head, but I'm lazy! :-)
May 19 20:24:00	16m 00s	Ambassador to the Deep	Very difficult action. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not my cup of tea. For what it's worth, I think the tentacle eye stalk killing me with a laser was when I said, "Nope, I'm done." It was a cool effect, but pushed me over my limit of what I felt like handling. <br/> <br/>When the game started, I thought I was just on the main menu, trying to figure out how the game started. I did like that the main menu was "live", during that time when I thought it was just a menu. :-) <br/> <br/>The music restarting jarringly when the level restarted was noticeable.
May 19 20:54:00	30m 00s	Fight The Infection	I thought the horde provided an interesting game mode. As soon as that happened, I found a small cluster of remaining healthy cells (or even just one lone cell), sat on top of it, and fired rapidly in all directions. It does probably make a lot of the best times incredibly similar though, since most people will make it to that point, and then lose within a narrow range of time. <br/> <br/>At first I didn't realize that my unit could also run into the infections to kill them, so I was carefully avoiding them and worried every time I went to the edge to grab DNA. The end-game horde was also less interesting within that mindset, as I could no longer pick up DNA or run to the remaining healthy cells. My end-game play style thus changed when I figured that out. But early game hardly mattered because my unit was so crazy slow. <br/> <br/>I had some annoyances with the evolve feature. As soon as you choose an evolution, the game resumes instantly. So I found myself trying to press the mouse button on the play field as soon as possible because in the later stages, every single moment of firing is important. I'm spraying bullets everywhere, and the fewer bullets I'm firing, the lower my average rate of killing off the infection. But I also then had a bad habit of getting the timing wrong a few times, or clicking outside of the window and bringing some other window to the foreground. Having just a fraction of a second delay after choosing an evolution would have made that feel less frustrating. <br/> <br/>The evolution menu also didn't update the numbers in the buttons correctly when I had 8+ bits of DNA and did multiple evolutions at once. <br/> <br/>A notable visual indicator for where my cursor was could be useful. I was having a hard time tracking by my unit and my target simultaneously, and peripheral vision was almost no help, since my unit, the DNA, and the mouse cursor were all too small for my peripheral vision to care. Visually knowing when I had enough DNA to evolve was also a little tricky.
May 19 21:03:00	9m 00s	Escaping Scofield Mine	Good framework, but was lacking any real gameplay. I never had to make a decision that seemed to matter, or solve a puzzle that felt rewarding.