Infestation

nonimad 2018-04-25 07:10

The mixing looks fun but as you said it's somewhat unfinished and lacks some information on whats going on. Also I need to refresh the page to play again after i've lost. Graying the too expensive cards could allow the player to better understand what he can do. Double clicking on them would probably be simpler too.

I still like the idea (and love everything with hexagons in it) so don't hesitate to poke if you finish / update it :)

joel-davis 2018-04-25 07:10

This was pretty neat. I actually enjoyed the typing part more than the RTS part but the whole idea was fun. The RTS was hard to folow since the units were slow and the camera was hard to control, and there was only one type, I think making them a lot faster and maybe simplifying it so that you just order them all around at once would make it clearer. This felt like three games with the cards + rts + typing which was really ambitious. I liked the music and the hexagon layout of the levels. Nice work, and I think the core idea -- drop into a typing game to get a boost -- is great. You needed a LOT more words tho..

aurelwuensch 2018-04-25 07:47

thanks for you feedback NoniMad and Joel. 1) need to refresh is a stupid bug (we set timescale to 0 once lost and forgot that that is a global state which does not reset on scene/level change.), I'll fix that today.

2) Graying out the too expensive card is a very good idea.

3) Clicking a card to select and then be in "card cast mode" to select a target (like in hearthstone) probably is way better than the current state.

4) yep 3 games in one definitely was over ambitious and next game jam we need to reduce the scope to get what we have a bit more finished.

5) we also like hexagons

6) yep more words would be good, we ran out of time and barely made the deadline.

Thanks for your positivity. It's so tempting to improve a lot of the unfinished things but the jam is over and aside from tiny timescale bug fix I think it would be unfair to make any change to the submission during the rating stage. (We might continue work at it or pick a few things from it and build something else though)

random-storykeeper 2018-04-25 08:17

Well...I am able to type up the words and switch between the two modes, but after the first card, I am unable to play any others, even after regaining a sufficient amount of energy to do so. The game simply shuffles my cards around, it seems, once I play a card, and no energy is lost nor is there any effect on the game. This seems to only happen on subsequent playthroughs, after I lose a round, go back to the menu and try a different map.

The gameplay was also just as equally confusing as I kept getting told that I had reached the bronze, then silver levels, but the infestation was spreading, and it ultimately would lead to me losing the game. None of the cards seemed to have any effect on anything, so I was forced to let the infestation happen inevitably. The typing game component was the better executed of the blend of genres, though there didn't seem to be many words available to type and the game's response to the keys was highly sensitive. Sometimes, after finishing a word, the game would still think that I was holding down the letter to that key and then flash through a whole bunch of different words because they were all supposedly inaccurate to what I was "typing". That being said, for the few words you did have in the game, they were all varied in length and typing difficulty, which I liked.

There seemed to be a lot of variety in the tracks that play, and I like how the music is randomized, even when you replay a stage. Or so it seems, anyway. Some of the tracks were borderline irritating (the one with the constant pounding bass, although it did capture the feeling of "doom" pretty well, would have worked better in a shorter stage rather than in an entire level) while others actually were very nice. Most of them worked for the type of game you're going for, so overall, good job on that.

As a whole, the game does feel unfinished and a lot of my frustration comes from not being sure if my misunderstandings were due to a bug or insufficient explanations. But hey, making a game in 72 hours is hard. You got the typing game aspect down pretty well, and I like the idea of combining that with strategy and card games. It was ambitious of you to try and combine three different types of games together, so nice job taking on that risk.

luckyfeathers 2018-05-13 05:27

Cool idea, but is obviously unfinished. For my rating I will judge the game as is and will be a bit harsh, but if you continue working on this it can be really cool. I suggest you read through the feedbacks and don't focus too much on the rating because it will inevitably be a bit low. There are some obvious things lacking which you didn't have time for, but let's focus on the design decisions and what you could have done in a different way in the same amount of time.

1) The typing game. It's annoying that I fail if I accidentally hit one wrong button. This is unnecessarily harsh in my opinion. Just remove letter if I hit the right one and don't do anything if I fail. Also, instead of removing a letter when I've typed it, just colorize it instead. It's annoying that the word keeps moving around as it gets smaller, and people generally feel satisfied when their inputs make stuff turn green.

2) The words list is too small. If I were to guess you have an array of strings that you pick randomly from. For my game this Ludum Dare I needed random male and female names, and what I did was find a list online of names and put them in a text file and make Unity pick a random one from the text file. The code when working with external files is a bit different if you've only worked in Unity, but I'm sure you can find some tutorial on it. If you did that you could add a whole dictionary of words in seconds!

3) Visual feedback is important! When I select a unit I need to know that the game registered my click and that I have a unit selected. Just change the color of the material slightly if you don't have time to add an outline or another indicator. It makes such a big difference!

Anyway, I think the game has potential if you keep working on it. Good luck on the game, and good luck next game jam! :)