F: Babel

Tuism · 12:29am 13 Feb 2015

20 March update:

Huge update, play it here:
http://twoplusgames.itch.io/babel
(the old version is still up)

And read the update notes here.

---------------------------

So... Here I am with more blocks! :)

Click here to play on itch.io!
(if the interface doesn't show up first time, reload the page. I honestly have no idea why :/)

You are a space mayor. At least, you will be soon, by building a Space Tower into Space! Space people are arriving at your Tower and you have to settle them by building them units. The units are specialised and can only be specialised, because people from the planet Residentia can only live in a Residential Unit, the Commercians only in Commercial Units, etc.

Design goals:
1. Let people build things, an idea that came from F:
2. Make a non-real-time methodical puzzle game that can let people think and take turns at their own pace.
3. Be visually interesting in concept.
4. Learn the 4.6 UI system. So far so good!

GOAL: REACH FOR THE SKY!

You have a queue of units to build, you can build from wherever you built last.
Every unit placed costs 100 credits.
Make money by placing units to satisfy their needs.

I already feel that the current mechanic I have here is a bit weak, and have thought quite a bit about it. I'll not go into details of that right now as I don't want to preempt anyone else's input. I thought that sharing what I perceiv wasn't a success in my own eyes will be more valuable to everyone than if I just hid it away till more iterations later.

Particularly:
1. Do you find this fun? If so, what do you find fun about it?
2. Does the economy work?
3. Is there enough nuance in a system like this to make it interesting? Too much? Not enough?
4. I tried very hard to make the instructions self-evident (short of replacing the text with icons which would have taken me ages), was the game intuitive for you?
5. Anything you didn't understand?
6. Would you prefer if you could build anywhere on the structure, and not just limited to one spot?
7. Would you prefer if you could only build the last item on the build queue, and look further to see more of the build queue?

Thanks guys! :)

Bernard · 7:00am 13 Feb 2015

I love it, that when you look at certain games you just know, this is an interesting game. Then you read, "residents are snobs who like neighbors green but hate industrial yellow or power red..." and just in that moment I go from this looks like an interesting to I NEED TO TRY THIS OUT. I love pure interactive mechanics within the game especially when its you know just colored blocks. It feels as if from just colored blocks there exists an entire unseen world that exists in the game and the only way I can connect with it is through my imagination, which just really works for me.

REAL FEEDBACK:
1-very interesting gameplay at first I thought I could build anywhere so I was all well this is going to be easy... mwahahaha. Then everythign poured out into a series of "oh god no's" when I accidently placed something where I didnt want it and satisfying "yuus" when I make a sort of combo and get my cash back into the thousands.
It really feels like you are trying to figure out this puzzle but every move gives you awesome feedback.

2-How the money works seems a little vague if you just read the basic instructions provided, when it comes to how residents work. What really happens when I have a factory next to a residential, do some of the people leave or do they just go on strike and not buy stuff anymore?

3-Love the atmosphere, I think it was a great move adding the mountains and sun (rising and setting)

4-Maybe you can make a real time version where people actively flow into the tower and spend in real time (of course this is probably only worth coding if you think its important). I say this because I feel as though if there is pressure I need to think faster and that it almost feels like i can make mistakes and the whole tower can figuratively "fall over" if i either wait to long or move too fast without thinking properly about what I am doing. It may give a sense of a race to build this tower. Currently it feels like you can just plan and everything will just work out. Not entirely but somewhat.

5-I like the camera controls and the simplicity of just clicking.

I found a bug where your total cash doesn't change.
(I think it might have happened when I switched to this tab and then back to the games tab in the browser)

About the Instagram post:
1-music sounds familiar c418?
2-now because of that bug you had there no one is going to beat your highscore in like ages...

Kobusvdwalt9 · 7:23am 13 Feb 2015

I think this is one of your best yet. Well done. I will also post some actual feedback later.

Zaphire · 8:59am 13 Feb 2015

Particularly:
1. Do you find this fun? If so, what do you find fun about it?
I think its fun because it challenges you to get money to go higher and not just randomly place blocks
2. Does the economy work?
Yes, I think its also quite balanced and makes it difficult to get money
3. Is there enough nuance in a system like this to make it interesting? Too much? Not enough?
I think it needs a special block reward when you place like 3 of the same color or something
4. I tried very hard to make the instructions self-evident (short of replacing the text with icons which would have taken me ages), was the game intuitive for you?
It took me a minute or 2 to understand what was going on
5. Anything you didn't understand?

6. Would you prefer if you could build anywhere on the structure, and not just limited to one spot?

7. Would you prefer if you could only build the last item on the build queue, and look further to see more of the build queue?
At first I didn't even know you could change :D I thought it was the top item everytime. Im not sure which was more enjoyable altho personally I felt like only being able to use the top block was more enjoyable.

Are you using Unity Pro or Free for this?

Tuism · 9:02am 13 Feb 2015

Thanks for your kind words so far! I look forward to some actual playtesting! :D
@Zaphire thanks for your feedback! And it's Unity Free - I just found out this week you can get shadows with Free, joy :D

For now, bonus material: When prototypes go wrong, it's so right :) SPACE SNAKE!
http://instagram.com/p/y-B3gwN1ZM

(here's hoping the instagram embed is fixed easily/soon!)

Kobusvdwalt9 · 7:26pm 13 Feb 2015

1. Do you find this fun? If so, what do you find fun about it?

Yes, but its hard to say why. I can say that the core interaction is fun. Its fun to build stuff. In any game. Another reason I was having fun was probably because from a design perspective I was super intrigued.

2. Does the economy work?

I would like a simplified version without the neighbouring rules. If it was just that chaining them up gives more points it would make a lot more sense.

3. Is there enough nuance in a system like this to make it interesting? Too much? Not enough?

Its definitely interesting. Although I was expecting simpler mechanics. More in line with Tetris.

4. I tried very hard to make the instructions self-evident (short of replacing the text with icons which would have taken me ages), was the game intuitive for you?

No. No one reads text, ever. I also hated that guy in the bottom right corner.

5. Anything you didn't understand?

At first I didn't understand anything because as we learned from Bear Chuck no one reads text. Not even the shortest pieces of text will be read. I think you need to simplify the mechanics to the point where its like Tetris and you kinda figure it out after a game or two of playing.

6. Would you prefer if you could build anywhere on the structure, and not just limited to one spot?

I think the game would be much better this way. It will allow for more depth and it will also make things a bit easier.

7. Would you prefer if you could only build the last item on the build queue, and look further to see more of the build queue?

Well here is a UI problem because until I read this I did not know you can use the other blocks. I think if you allow players to build anywhere on the structure you should force them to use the block that's on top in the queue. Otherwise allowing players to build with any of the 3 in queue works well.

Hope that helps.

Tuism · 9:23am 16 Feb 2015

Thanks for all your feedback! Let me give some of my own feedback too:

1. The way the money works is very abstract on a thematic level right now - happy people make you money, sad people don't. It's like simulation intentions with abstract puzzle execution... I'm not super happy with that yet.

2. I did think of a real time thing in the beginning, but I wanted to make something that was simple to play and was more about deliberation than a rush against the clock. Fewer options, bigger consequences per option, gives the player less reason to rush or to think forever. (Like Threes, it only ever has 4 options, often two) I might re-visit that if the mechanics lend itself to that.

3. Oh that music, yes C418, I think it was Giant Circles or something, I was just listening to that :) It wasn't a music choice :P

4. I absolutely agree that the mechanics should be simplified to something more like match-three. The more I messed around with this the more I thought it was too messy to think about the colours as individual things. They needed a unifying interaction. I totally agree. This isn't sim city :p

5. Yeah, noone reads. Which is why I tried to make the instructions as interactive as possible, but ultimately yeah, need a mechanic that doesn't need that level of understanding, at least for a non-serious sim game.

6. Yeah communicating that you could choose one of the three was a hard one. Still gotta work more on that.

Thanks very much for your input!! Round 2 updates will come... Sometime soonish :)

Tuism · 2:25pm 20 Mar 2015

Massive massive update to this. The way the game works changed... Three times. I settled on this eventually, which is both vastly simplified AND still really complex. I'm keen to see how it feels!

I know this is way after the deadline for F:, but I'm working on this for myself, anyway. So the original version is still available to play (see first post), and the new one is available here:

http://twoplusgames.itch.io/babel

Please give it a play before continuing! It's web and unity so it should be hassle-free.
http://twoplusgames.itch.io/babel

Focus questions for after you play it:

1. Anything you didn't understand?
2. Do the mechanics seem too complicated? Not complicate enough?
3. How tall did you get?
4. Did you read what the alien said?
5. What's not fun about it?

Then, read the following ONLY after you play it please!

There are a host of things I still want to add, and the balancing / pacing is still very far off from right, but as a proof of concept I find that I've been having fun figuring the system out, which is a good thing.

The theme - it's supposed to make you feel dirty, in a very subtle way, because you're building a segregated society. That feeling would come stronger with some more fleshing out of the juice/themeing/imagery, I think.

One of the biggest things I want to add is a reversal that changes the happiness so that blocks are happier when next to blocks of different colour, FOR DIVERSITY!

The money mechanic - I have a problem making it fit in my head thematically. Calling it "harvesting" is vague and creepy enough, but I've yet to find a way to make it really feel like it's grounded. Do you think it's necessary to thematically ground the mechanic, or not?

Thanks for reading you awesome people! :D

FanieG · 4:25pm 20 Mar 2015

Hi,

So this is how far I got on the first play through:

1. Anything you didn't understand?
2. Do the mechanics seem too complicated? Not complicate enough?
3. How tall did you get?
4. Did you read what the alien said?
5. What's not fun about it?

1. Didn't know at first that I could rotate around the tower, so the first few builds I was playing from one perspective. Also, the mustard and yellow blocks confused me, this was because I thought it was a greyed out yellow first time I got one, and didn't realize my mistake until about placing the 3rd mustard block next to a yellow (and then getting a negative result pop up).
2. Spot on IMO. The design had me puzzled as I could sense that it was getting harder, but not sure how?
3. See picture above.
4. Only the first quote and then the last taunting one (see picture above).
5. I'm the wrong person to answer this question, because I am a huge fan of everything Two Plus :)

Do you think it's necessary to thematically ground the mechanic, or not?

Can you rephrase this question? Not sure what you mean by the question.

Tuism · 4:47pm 20 Mar 2015

Thanks for playing! :D

FanieG said:

Do you think it's necessary to thematically ground the mechanic, or not?
Can you rephrase this question? Not sure what you mean by the question.

OK so spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't played yet - the mechanic of making money in this game is to line three blocks of the same colour together, upon which they yield 150c each and turn grey. When they're grey they no longer count for colour matches, and their satisfaction/happiness become locked.

The question is - does this mechanic make sense? What does it mean when that happens? The rest of the game was themed around keeping inhabitants happy by placing them next to neighbours they want to live next to, so I had wished that the money making makes sense in that context too, but it doesn't really right now.

1. Didn't know at first that I could rotate around the tower, so the first few builds I was playing from one perspective.

That was mentioned under the game, but of course I can't count on people reading things >_<

Also, the mustard and yellow blocks confused me, this was because I thought it was a greyed out yellow first time I got one, and didn't realize my mistake until about placing the 3rd mustard block next to a yellow (and then getting a negative result pop up).

Yes that's a good point, I'll change the colours there up a bit, the brown/yellow blocks are a bit too similar. In fact, sorry @thefuntastic, I haven't solved this for colour blind people yet :/

The design had me puzzled as I could sense that it was getting harder, but not sure how?

The puzzle got harder because at a stage, you needed more neighbours with the same colour to make a block happy. One of the tutorial steps stated that, and there was a glowing frame around the satisfaction number needed to make a happy.

This is basically a tutorial problem :/ Short of making a better tutorial which is VERY HARD and TAKES VERY LONG I have no idea how to solve this. This game has a bunch of little unexpected mechanics that it needs to teach to the player, right now it uses a very unsophisticated method of delivering a new message per level... I guess I need to try and do it according to player action?

I have no idea how to make the game playable without needing the player to read anything, which is the holy grail :/

FanieG · 4:49pm 20 Mar 2015

Okay, so reached Level 13 on the second try:

The Alien's speech bubble should either be slightly transparent, or move up and right, as it is sometimes in the way of the play area. Also, note the green part of my tower, why did they never turn solid grey?

Tuism · 4:52pm 20 Mar 2015

There might be a bug with resolving some of the line stuff, I also hit something like that, but damn I didn't hit it *that* bad!

Thanks for giving it another shot! Did you figure out how it gets harder?

Also, yes I'll tweak the alien's chatterbox. You can turn the box off though, by clicking on him (yeah, I know it's not apparent, sorry about that I'll add something there)

Also, the mousewheel is supposed to zoom the view in and out, but somehow on the web build it doesn't work :/

FanieG · 5:20pm 20 Mar 2015

@Tuism, the zoom with mouse wheel worked fine. I just zoomed out to show off my creation :) The first go I did not know that you could click and drag to rotate the camera. Maybe have the alien say something about it (unless he did and I missed it) or have a little on screen prompt in the first few rounds.

[EDIT]

That was mentioned under the game, but of course I can't count on people reading things >_<

Yeah, you right, I didn't read anything, not even here

FanieG · 9:02am 21 Mar 2015

The question is - does this mechanic make sense? What does it mean when that happens? The rest of the game was themed around keeping inhabitants happy by placing them next to neighbours they want to live next to, so I had wished that the money making makes sense in that context too, but it doesn't really right now.

That totally made sense then, except when I hit that bug with the green blocks not turning solid. But I knew they were supposed to so that's why I felt it did make sense. I was expecting them to turn grey, as it did when I lined other colours up. Think the reason why I hid the bug was because I was trying to build back down.

The following is only a wish list that I would have liked to see:
* It would be cool if the coloured blocks had a bit of transparency to them, so that you could see inside the apartments. You could have little animated inhabitants doing "apartmenty" stuff like watching TV, cooking, making nasty etc. if they were happy, and doing "unapartmenty" stuff like banging against walls, roofs and floors with brooms, putting their stereo to load or cleaning their guns if they were unhappy. I know that this suggestion is purely cosmetic and part of juice etc. but as I said that would just be a "wish list" feature.

F: Babel

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