[WIP] Broke Back Biker (working title)
Hiya,
So I have recently started a new project and would appreciate your feedback (*ducks*)...
A Windows 8 game coded in MonoGame and it uses the Farseer physics engine.
The prototype currently runs on an ASUS Transformer Book T100 tablet (Windows 8.1)
This is a physics based motorbike game (inspired by Kickstart 2 for the Commodore C64) that will have various stages within varying biome's.
The player needs to complete each stage under a pre-defined time and performing tricks will deduct time while taking damage will add penalty time to the overall time it takes to complete a stage. It's still very rough, but this video should give you an idea...
Broke Back Biker
So I have recently started a new project and would appreciate your feedback (*ducks*)...
A Windows 8 game coded in MonoGame and it uses the Farseer physics engine.
The prototype currently runs on an ASUS Transformer Book T100 tablet (Windows 8.1)
This is a physics based motorbike game (inspired by Kickstart 2 for the Commodore C64) that will have various stages within varying biome's.
The player needs to complete each stage under a pre-defined time and performing tricks will deduct time while taking damage will add penalty time to the overall time it takes to complete a stage. It's still very rough, but this video should give you an idea...
Broke Back Biker
Comments
One problem I do want to mention though is that the camera started making me sea sick. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it was because of the up down motion being extremely snappy and jarring. I'm not sure if this is a problem while playing though.
Other than that can't say a lot more without actually playing it.
What can you do with this to make it stand out? Shrink everything down, make it a 1-screen time completion puzzle like 10 Second Ninja? Make the bike break apart and you still have to cross the finish line somehow, instead of having discrete checkpoints? Other ideas?
Regarding there being lot of similar games like it. Agreed. As a new indie dev, I am not yet trying to do something radically different per se. Learning how to create a game is still my main objective. Many games out there imitate one another, the trick is to get a gimmick or 2 that sets ones own game apart. (Battlefield/COD/Minecraft clones and MOBA tower defense clones are aplenty)
@dislekcia I agree the scale needs to be smaller to help prediction. Currently it means one has to slam into objects and feel your way through the stage. Could be frustrating. As the designer I "know" which obstacles are coming so its not as obvious as when someone else plays it. LOL. I am not trying to knock Trials HD off its pedestal ;) But thanks for mentioning that game. I've never heard of it, but it looks fantastic. I also want to do a breakout, sokoban and gravitar clone to hone the skills before I develop a game that shakes it's fists and shows the world what is wrong with society :-) I'll look into 10 Second Ninja to see what you're referring to re 1 screen time completion.
Thanks a mill for the feedback and critique guys. If anyone has any ideas for that special gimmick to improve it further, I am all ears. :-)
Cheers!
Edit: Maybe a stage progression minimap in the form of a line could help with obstacle prediction. (Or a co-driver doing a "left 2" as in Colin Mcrea)
Another edit: (I sound like Jonathan Blo - "I wish") Receiving feedback like this is just awesome. I am guilty of lurking these forums too much and not providing such stunning feedback to other developers. Note to self. Have to do better.
try and learn from it, then decide why you're different from it - NOT BETTER, just different. Different design decisions lead to more different design decisions. If you try and change one thing about it (like @dislekcia said if you made it one screen), it'll lead to an entirely different game with different decisions and different results/learnings. Now I'm not saying you should take @dislekcia's idea and implement and it's the only way, but think about it and make it something different.
At the end of the day, knowing what's out there in the same space as you lets you see what already has been tried, what works and doesn't, and accelerates your learning - as long as you learn from it instead of just copying without thought OR deciding to just ignore everything else so you wouldn't "be influenced by it". So many people think that they should lock themselves away from the world so that they won't get "influenced", but I don't think that's the right way to go about it.
Knowing is half the battle! :) Learning from others is a good shortcut! :)
I want to add obstacles that are interactive and consist of many moving parts for instance, and add items that will hinder or improve the players progress. I even thought of a power-ups like a "heart-attack" moto-x move, that displays a full-screen black-and-white image that obscures the players view for a second or 2. While it provides an advantage (deducts seconds), it also has a disadvantage of obscuring ones view. Not sure if this would be a fun feature or not.
Thanks for the input :)