[Project] SpaceBoy Dreams - Prototype

JediN1nja

Hi Awesome People

I'm new here! I've always been a gamer, and always loved games, but last year I decided to venture into making some of my own games. I've started writing down game ideas and this year I decided to start making some demo's. Now please bare in mind that I am completely new to this and the current game you will be playing was just for me to familiarize myself with the game making software, hence the using and copying from other sources.

I would love for you guys to try it out and give some feedback/ideas to help push this to an original piece!

Goal:
- Travel as far as you can. Game will speed up gradually.
- Collect 9 yellow blocks to go into turbo mode and gain some extra distance.
- Avoid green and blue bars

Problems:
- There are still some issues, but the basic idea is there.
- Still not sure what Turbo mode will let the user do, besides giving a boost.

Controls:
- Very simple, instructions are in the game.

Phone Controls: (If you must but remember It's NOT meant for Mobile)
- Touch LEFT for UP
- Touch RIGHT for DOWN

Game URL:
https://goo.gl/QFcBG2

Thank you for playing and an even greater thank you to those with feedback :)

Kobusvdwalt9

@JediN1nja Great so far.

Some thoughts :

For the time being why dont you host the game on clay.io ? Ive used it and can personally recommend it. It also has a plugin for construct 2.

Why left for up and right for down ? Up is Up and Down is Down... You can sit with your left thumb in the left top corner and with your right thumb in the right bottom corner or vice versa (think xbox sticks). That would make a lot more sense to me.

I think the gaps need to have more variance. Super hexagon stitches together predefined gameplay pieces randomly. So in a sense its like spelunky. I would try that sort of approach with this.

The game is fun. I am not sure if there is games with a similar mechanic (not a big mobile gamer) but at the moment it reminds me of Flappy Bird. I would suggest that you not make the graphics casual at all. Go in a completly different direction as FB art wise.

Play Super Hexagon. Study it. Find out what makes it so compelling. And then I think you have a killer game here.

Kobus

pantsula

This is very close to flappy bird and it's millions of clones. How about finding another way to die.

When your turbo runs out there is no way of knowing where you are coming back into the normal playing field. How about giving the player a second or so before starting obstacles

Lastly the momentum and speed up/down feels a bit off. It's impossible to guess momentum if the cat up/down speed seems the same

JediN1nja

Kobusvdwalt9 said:

@JediN1nja Great so far.

Some thoughts :

For the time being why dont you host the game on clay.io ? Ive used it and can personally recommend it. It also has a plugin for construct 2.

Why left for up and right for down ? Up is Up and Down is Down... You can sit with your left thumb in the left top corner and with your right thumb in the right bottom corner or vice versa (think xbox sticks). That would make a lot more sense to me.

I think the gaps need to have more variance. Super hexagon stitches together predefined gameplay pieces randomly. So in a sense its like spelunky. I would try that sort of approach with this.

The game is fun. I am not sure if there is games with a similar mechanic (not a big mobile gamer) but at the moment it reminds me of Flappy Bird. I would suggest that you not make the graphics casual at all. Go in a completly different direction as FB art wise.

Play Super Hexagon. Study it. Find out what makes it so compelling. And then I think you have a killer game here.

Kobus

Any reason I should host it on clay.io for now? I'll give it a look and see. The mobile phone controls was a last minute addition in case someone decided to view the link on mobile, and for me to see how it runs on mobile. It's really more meant to be played on PC.

I like the idea of going in another direction, I'll try come up with another style. I've played Super Hexagon, but will try study it a bit more, if it wasn't so damn hard haha

pantsula said:

This is very close to flappy bird and it's millions of clones. How about finding another way to die.

When your turbo runs out there is no way of knowing where you are coming back into the normal playing field. How about giving the player a second or so before starting obstacles

Lastly the momentum and speed up/down feels a bit off. It's impossible to guess momentum if the cat up/down speed seems the same

I know it's close to Flappy Bird, it was purposefully so. Wanted an easy type game to try out Construct 2. Really like the idea of coming back from the turbo mode into something unexpected. Kind of like hyper drive or something and ending up somewhere random.

Or if i had to go back to your idea of dying differently...I can make it so that you have to try stay in turbo mode. Collecting gold blocks keeps u there and green and blue bars slow u down. So effectively by going out of screen or going to slow or not keeping your power bar up with gold blocks will kill you. Aha!

Seems like this is turning into a space game haha

pantsula

Those are some great ideas, keep evolving.

I like trying to stay in turbo mode as a big goal because coming out to something unexpected and most probably dying.

So the goal is to stay alive as long as possible ?

JediN1nja

pantsula said:

Those are some great ideas, keep evolving.

I like trying to stay in turbo mode as a big goal because coming out to something unexpected and most probably dying.

So the goal is to stay alive as long as possible ?

Yes and it can either be tracked with time, like super hexagon, or distance. And at particular intervals new things start to happen :)

JediN1nja

Good Day Everybody!

Decided to give you guys an update on my game so you can see where it's heading. Here's a little teaser...


*This essentially replaces the cat.

EvanGreenwood

Pruuurty!

I like the little dude. Kind of reminds me of those mockups for Super Time Force where the characters are all hanging out in their space ship.

The early part is a little easy, though it ramps up. The concept of distance travelled is a little less elegant than being scored on the number of pipes you pass in Flappy Bird (as in SpaceBoy Dreams your score is a separate number that doesn't mean anything to the player).

Have you thought of adding other objects in the game that get affected by gravity shifts as well?

JediN1nja

*sorry pressed save comment too many times...

JediN1nja

BlackShipsFilltheSky said:

Pruuurty!

I like the little dude. Kind of reminds me of those mockups for Super Time Force where the characters are all hanging out in their space ship.

The early part is a little easy, though it ramps up. The concept of distance travelled is a little less elegant than being scored on the number of pipes you pass in Flappy Bird (as in SpaceBoy Dreams your score is a separate number that doesn't mean anything to the player).

Have you thought of adding other objects in the game that get affected by gravity shifts as well?

Thanks :D Never heard of Super Time Force before, but now I see what you mean! I get what you are saying, I think that's what made Flappy bird so addictive, the fact that you feel you've mastered the the controls, you figure yeah it's easy just one tap, I've got this. Then you pass one pipe and crash the next. Next round (which is also only one tap away) you get 3/4/5 pipes, I'm doing well! I guess it's because they feel like small (easily achievable) goals that are so close to each other and you can even see the next one which kind of makes you want to keep going I guess.

I'm not too sure about the gravity shifts anymore. Since It's now in space, then again the ship is traveling at hyper drive speeds so anything is possible, maybe some instability in the way gravity normally works? So yeah why not gravity shifts in space. I could make the object you have to avoid have gravity fields of their own, trying to drag you off route and you have to counter or avoid crashing into them.

Other than that I don't really have a solution right now for keeping a score that the player will care about :/
Any ideas welcome! Hopefully is sparks some direction.

Thanks for all the feedback so far guys, it's really helping!

JediN1nja

I did some changes to the game and this is where I'm thinking of going with it:

The game is now about a space delivery company that delivers packages across the universe. I have no clever name for it yet. After all the changes and ideas it's now inspired by this video:

So here is how the game will work:
You will start off by going into hyperdrive mode. During hyperdrive mode you won't actually be steering the ship but rather attending to the controls of your ship as you battle to get the co-ordinates right before time runs out or you might just end up in some blackhole or something after your hyperdrive.

Getting the right co-ordinates will be a sequence of 2 or 3 short puzzles you need to solve during hyperdrive. If you only manage to solve some of the puzzles you might still stand a chance. You could end up too close to your destination and crash into the planet, or far away in a field of asteroids.

Should you manage to solve all the puzzles, it will result in a safe drive through hyper space which brings me to the next part of the mission. This part you can get a feel for in the demo below. Now you will actually control the ship but you will have to be careful to try and avoid rocks and etc to safely get to you destination. Be careful not to damage your package!! There might be consequences.

As some additional features I thought of receiving payments for your delivery that you can use to beef up your little ship. For example a shield that helps protect your package and so forth.

//Play SpaceBoy//

I made some notes in a notebook last night, it's more meant for me but maybe this helps explain anything someone might not have understood above.



Would love some extra input! Thank you!!!

SUGBOERIE

Like to see the progression of the game from early concept to what it is now.

Early concept Once you mentioned that you were changing gravity it quickly reminded me of Gravity Guy. Personally I didn't like the real gravity feel to it with the acceleration because it made it hard to control. In Gravity guy there's a constant velocity up and down. That makes it easier to play. Then again it adds to the difficulty-frustration feel to it. I just didn't dig it.

Space Boy Concept
I like the pixel art. The ideas are also cool but I think there are too many of them for "simple" mobile game. The switch between puzzle and then control the ship. Seems like an unnecessary feature.

I like the ideas of the rocks of gravity that will change the control of the ship. That's cool. I suggest keeping the initial mechanic of "switiching gravity" and going through the rocks with a gravitational field. Just have a thrust in the up and down direction that's not constant so the tapping is still there.

BlackShipsFilltheSky said:

The concept of distance travelled is a little less elegant than being scored on the number of pipes you pass in Flappy Bird (as in SpaceBoy Dreams your score is a separate number that doesn't mean anything to the player).

Then to keep the the distance score have the background slowly change like you're heading to the planet you're delivering the package to the further you go.

With all that said. Good work, especially the art and the ideas you've got.

JediN1nja

SUGBOERIE said:

Like to see the progression of the game from early concept to what it is now.

Thanks! So do I. All the feedback is really helping me to come up with ideas.

SUGBOERIE said:

Space Boy Concept
I like the pixel art. The ideas are also cool but I think there are too many of them for "simple" mobile game. The switch between puzzle and then control the ship. Seems like an unnecessary feature.

I might have gotten misinterpreted somewhere, but it's not going to be a mobile game. It's strictly running in the browser for desktop. Only because that's what i'm good at and know the best.

As for the puzzle, I don't think I explained this very well. The puzzle is really only a quick little task. It's not a difficult puzzle or something that might require a lot of brain power. It's more about time and getting it done quickly (hyper drive is fast and "calculations" need to be done quickly). What exactly the puzzle is meant to be I'm not sure yet.

SUGBOERIE said:

I like the ideas of the rocks of gravity that will change the control of the ship. That's cool. I suggest keeping the initial mechanic of "switiching gravity" and going through the rocks with a gravitational field. Just have a thrust in the up and down direction that's not constant so the tapping is still there.

BlackShipsFilltheSky said:

The concept of distance travelled is a little less elegant than being scored on the number of pipes you pass in Flappy Bird (as in SpaceBoy Dreams your score is a separate number that doesn't mean anything to the player).

Then to keep the the distance score have the background slowly change like you're heading to the planet you're delivering the package to the further you go.

With all that said. Good work, especially the art and the ideas you've got.

I'm assuming you mean, no gravity switching with acceleration but more like the thrusters in the later demo. I like that as well! I don't know if the background change would be an enough of a motivator for me to keep going, but coming back to the puzzles...a friend of mine suggested, and I was thinking the same, that the puzzle calculations will not necessarily have a negative impact but rather give you added bonuses that you can benefit from at package delivery side. I.e something like an extra shield to help protect the package as you move through a field of rocks and so on.

Thanks so much guys for the constant feedback, it's helping me push this game out and really helping me explore my ideas more. Keep it coming!