Dodgii
I've been working on a lil arcade game to brush up on my unity "skills" the last couple days, currently in open beta on the Play Store. Thought I'd open it up to see what feedback the wonderful people of MGSA could give.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mayo.dodgii
I appreciate any and all feedback, suggestions are welcome and encouraged :D
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mayo.dodgii
I appreciate any and all feedback, suggestions are welcome and encouraged :D
Thanked by 1ashashza
Comments
I liked the groovy tunes you've got in there, refreshing to have a new track play each time I start a new run.
Gameplay
- Initially it wasn't obvious to me that I had to collect the smaller yellow / green circles. I assumed I had to avoid everything. My first run I dodged a bunch of stuff for ages until I reached the score screen and saw a big fat 0 :P
- Collecting items feels pretty satisfying, the combination of sound, particle effects and screen shake work nicely.
- It could be a bit clearer when light teal / purple the obstacles can be destroyed. Perhaps changing their shape slightly or adjusting transparency? Pacman has subtle but cool changes to the ghosts to let you know they're edible.
- When I'm invincible / obstacle eating mode, I'd like to have better clarity about when that's ending. I realised later that the text shows the number of seconds left but my eyes aren't focused there. Perhaps flash obstacles back to red as the timer nears the end?
- The difficulty ramp feels pretty gradual. I only started noticing around 1000 pts that things speed up.
UX
- Start button on main menu could be bigger and bolder, it didn't grab my attention on first viewing.
- Game over screen says game over twice.
- I appreciated the buttons to turn sound and music on and off.
- Once in game, there's no way to get back to the menu and adjust sound settings, I had to end my run to go back.
Overall this is pretty fun and I feel like there are interesting places you could explore with this. For example, I think this game is ripe to be more responsive to the catchy soundtrack you've got there. I found myself trying to eat and dodge to the beat, so felt it might be cool to have gameplay affected by the music. I'd also loved to have some sort of combo system, where collecting / destroying items with an order / timing increases score and difficulty. Finally I felt like there was a lot of quick, moment-to-moment choices while playing which feels satisfying and I wondered how you could extend this to add bigger picture choices too...
Some responses to your notes:
I'm still trying to figure out how best to let the player know they should be collecting the yellow, green, blue and purple orbs and avoiding (unless buffed) the red ones. As well as making it clearer that once buffed by the blue or purple ones that the obstacles are destructible. I like your idea of shape changing, and flashing before going back to non destructible!
UX wise, you're right about the start button being too small, thanks for that. As for the Game Over screen saying Game Over twice I'm not sure what you mean? I wonder if there wasn't some text from a pickup that got stuck behind it at the end of one of your games, will see if I can replicate.
A pause button does make sense, I'll just need to make sure it doesn't interfere with the player position considering the game is "cursor" placement based.
I've also had that musical experience and would love to figure out a way to incorporate it somehow, just not sure where to begin. I'm in the process of putting together a combo system like you mentioned which should hopefully add some more flavour too :D
Thanks again for your feedback, it's really appreciated!