Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Feedback comment stats → OldPeculier
Feedback comments for LD46
OldPeculier's games and stats for all events →
| Timestamp | Since previous | Game | OldPeculier's comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 3 23:33:30 | Protektor | ♥ 2 | Absolutely astoundingly good game. Definitely the best out of ~20 I've played so far. It's so good that the only criticisms I'd give it are not what would make it a an even better Ludum Dare game, but would make it an even better COMMERCIAL game. The one thing I'd work on is taking out a little more of the perceived randomness in the game. Although it's wicked good fun, a great proportion of the player's death feel like they were random or accidental, like they "weren't really my fault." This defies the principle of "Intentionality" in game design, where ultimately, the player should always end up feeling like they *deserved* their result, whether winning or losing. This game has a ton of intentionality, but there's just a little too much chaos that determines your success sometimes even more than you yourself do. Here are some of the factors contributing to that feeling of, "Hey, I just failed but it wasn't my fault!" - Enemies are gray against a gray background. - The walls loom up and block your sight. - Enemies can see and shoot you (or your friend) from off-screen. - Your sidekick—whose AI is actually pretty great—often does dumb things, like getting in front of you. - The auto-aim sometimes doesn't shoot who you think it should. Not one of these things is bad. In fact, most of them are really good: the enemy AI is great and they generally feel slow enough to feel pretty "fair"; your sidekick is great, knows to try to stay behind you; the auto-aim system is pretty great. The problem isn't any one of these things: it's the combination. There are enough "automatic" things going on in the game that add randomness and chaos and make it harder to translate player *intention* into the desired *action*. Again: this is occasional. If it were happening all the time the game would be bad. It's occasional and the game is really really good. But as the levels get harder and death becomes more common, the game becomes more hopeless because there are too many automatic or "blinding" factors that make you unable to convert intention into result. Is this making sense? I actually think the solution is extremely simple. I'd suggest just two changes. 1. Change the enemy hat color to stand out just a little more from the floor. It's hard enough to see the enemies given the limited sight radius and the looming walls. They shouldn't be camouflaged. The player should never lose a level and think, "Wait—I didn't even see him there!" This single change will help a ton. 2. Slightly decrease the radius at which enemies shoot. If you make it so that enemies only ever shoot when their target is within—I don't know—two or three body lengths (measuring relative to the dead bodies on the ground), this will prevent a lot of accidental losses while keeping the game hard. I'd play this game for hours if it were slightly less random (in that sense) and if there were more levels. Terrific! |