Sinda | *Zulu: Escape, Survive

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Hey guys

Just finished up a little puzzle game that I wrote for my kids over the weekend.

Linky (Uses unity webplayer)

The goal is to survive an infinite, random, level by evading an increasing wave of enemies and getting the best score before inevitable succumbing :P



Just ignore the crappy sounds, and let me know what you think :) :)

hermantulleken

I quite enjoyed playing this; it is a really cool mechanic. I especially liked the strategic element, which was not obvious and a nice surprise. The powerups are also cool.

I feel I die too soon; you may want to tweak the spawning of power-ups. The game ends often for me with a bunch of red worms on my tail, and me just running away hoping for a powerup (which rarely comes). You may want to consider spawning red worms in the direction that the player is moving, so that even when pursued, there is the occasional baddy to kill, which will make the end game more fun.

You may also want to consider marking "protected" red worms (worms that have other worms as neighbors). This would be useful when you have a bunch of worms on your tail, and manouvre to separate one that you could kill. I often miss those; an indicator would help to maintain a quick rhythm.

I am not so sure about the gems; the risk in going for gems is too high for their reward. Maybe tweak them, or maybe even remove them.

More power-ups will be cool: super-speed (jump two or three even), double turn, confusion, poison, and so on.

More enemy worm types will also be cool. For example, worms that move using different algorithms will make the tactical aspect more interesting.

And then, I am not sure if it is possible, but maybe see if there are structures that can be used to separate a bunch of worms. For example, when you have 4 worms chasing you, if there is some configuration of tiles that can allow you to separate them in two groups of 2, and then use the normal ways to separate one of those groups and to kill them off that way. And then put some of those structures in the game. You may also want to check the strategic aspects of other bigger structures that are unlikely to occur by chance (for example, I am sure certain configurations can be used to trap worms).

Another idea could be to use special squares that will trap worms, or slow them down, or kill them, or confuse them. It is a lot of fun to fool the worms into traps already, making explicit traps will give the player more chance to do it.

If you work more and this (I hope you will) then also provide a better explanation. I couldn't understand your help screen at all, and also the way some powerups worked was not immediately clear.

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hermantulleken said:

I quite enjoyed playing this; it is a really cool mechanic. I especially liked the strategic element, which was not obvious and a nice surprise. The powerups are also cool.

@hermantulleken: thanks so much for your amazing feedback and suggestions!

I am soo tempted to implement all of them :) :)