Check out mine and I'll check out yours!
Hey guys, I am an Indie Dev from Centurion, I've just recently released my first feature game with some updates and improvements on the way. Please check it out and consider joining the FB Group and please give the game a try.
Any feedback would be great and please post some your own work as I would love to get involved and check it out!
Thanks a mil - SandmanZA
Any feedback would be great and please post some your own work as I would love to get involved and check it out!
Thanks a mil - SandmanZA
Comments
I've given it a play and it seems like a pretty solid version of snake, I'm not completely sure why it's called Bibio (is that a reference that I'm not getting?). You've clearly put a lot of effort into reproducing an old cellphone screen aesthetic for the game as well.
The controls were pretty responsive, in fact it seemed possible at the lower speeds to change the direction that the snake was going before it would process a move, so you could sorta "wiggle" in place a bit. I did not try wiggling back into myself, reasoning that I'd probably die that way. The game felt very slow at first and there were a huge number of things to eat by the time I'd even picked up 2 of them, they seemed to be spawning randomly throughout the level space. Being that small and that slow in such a large level and seeing so many things I could be picking up made the feeling of slowness even more powerful, especially when something would spawn when I'd just laboriously come from - that felt like everything I'd tried to achieve wasn't doing much. That said, having played snake before I knew this was just a ramp up and that if I kept doggedly eating stuff it would speed up.
I got 1300-something before I ran into a wall, right when I was wondering how it would be possible to die in the game. It still didn't feel that fast (the controls had moved away from allowing the wiggle thing too often to feeling quite responsive) the thing that got me was the un-teasered speedup cycle - it just feels like you're getting the hang of your current speed vs controls and then suddenly you get faster and throw that off. I think that this would probably make more sense intuitively if it happened when you ate something, or maybe if it had some sort of onscreen visible indication of the countdown to the speedup happening. I was also just thinking about the pickups that had spawned in dangerous places (up against the walls or obstacles), because with the random timed spawning there's no reason for me to risk going to pick them up, I can just hang out and eat the safe ones. If food were a limited spawn resource, ie: A new one only appeared after you'd just eaten one, then players would be forced to engage the dangerous locations more.
So you said you've got plans for updates and improvements? I'm curious as to what those might be and why you'd be doing that. The game seems pretty solid to me, I'm not sure what your expectations are in terms of reward/return from the game, but you've got the knowledge and experience from making it, I kinda feel like putting in more effort on it won't really be a great return of effort. Maybe start on something new?
This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for.
Bibio is a reference to the Nokia "3310". I am glad you find the controls responsive as my initial control scheme was pretty much the opposite, and yes, you can turn into yourself and die which is a bug in the new code. The old control scheme did not have this bug but the game became impossible when snake sped up... for example: you would move 2 or 3 units before it responded and turned which was more problematic than the current way.
I hear what you are saying about the speed-up cycle, currently its tied to how many points you have, so at 100 points the first speed up happens, then at 200 again but its not set to intervals of 100... For starters I think I will display the speed in the upper section of the screen to give players a better 'feel' for when the speed will increase, so like "Speed: 1" then just make it go up every-time the score condition is met so that the players can gauge fairly easily at what score the speed-up happens without giving it away completely.
I will re-check my tutorial level to make sure that the rules are explained clearly enough as well... Regarding the food, it actually also spawns at different intervals and yes it is completely random, I balanced the food spawn speed and increased otherwise later in the game when the snake is moving quite fast the food gets quite scarce which then forces players into going for food in risky places with a much faster snake than if they grabbed it when it was slow, so I guess I was going for a very subtle strategic element. The idea of spawning new food when player eats one good but I think it would take some freedom of choice away from the player.
Okay so plans and improvements can be found on our Facebook page. But I'll briefly go over some here:
A level lock system, so only the first level in every difficulty will be playable, so to unlock easy level 2 you would have to score say 300 points on easy level 1, then for easy 3 you have to score 300 points on east 2 etc. I think this would give the player some incentive to play by catering to the curious nature of man.
Then I am also implementing the high score and leader-boards API on Kongregate and working on some new multiplayer modes, lastly adding in some basic sound effects, like when food is picked up or the player crashes.
The reason why I am doing updates and being active in support is because I see too many developers churning out games that are 'good enough' and some that are not even finished then abandoning their projects once they've made some money on it. A perfect example would be 'Masterspace' on Steam. As a new dev I want to show players that it will be worth their while supporting my brand in the long run as I will not so easily discard my projects and ignore my player-base. Bottom line I guess is that its damaging the game industry and making it difficult for genuine indie devs to gain the support and trust of their target audiences, I guess I'm trying to be the change that I want in the industry.
I do have other projects in development which I've announced on the FB page, please check it out! xD
This post is already kind of long so I wont go into detail about that here.
"dislekcia" Thanks for the feedback! Everyone else... thanks for reading! Thoughts?
Play Bibio on Kongregate
Do you have any analytics to show that there's a player-number reason to add more levels or offer unlocks? If you don't have analytics, then it might be hard to draw any conclusions from making changes to your unlock structure... You should always have some sort of specific goal in mind for updates. Okay. I guess I can kinda see what you're trying to accomplish here, but you do realise that things like supporting a brand and maintaining a game require a large player base though, right? I mean, what do you plan to get out of your branding of Snake, it's not (technically) your game to begin with, really. The creator of Snake for the 3310 didn't even make anything from it, it was just a rehash of the BASIC game/programming exercise Nibbles added to the phone's OS so people had another game to play.
I'm curious as to what you consider your "brand" at the moment and what you feel such a thing can add to your development right now. I feel like there are very different lessons to be learned from Masterspace than "You should never abandon projects". It's quite a bit more nuanced than that ;)
I mean, I don't consider myself or my company a brand. We just make things.
The dev of masterspace bit off more than he can chew, that's for sure, but he still made ~300 sales at $15 US each and the game is now unfinished and ignored despite promising his player-base a great game, which is currently is not, it's a great idea, nothing more.
As for maintaining a game and supporting a brand, yes I know it needs a large player base, but that player base has to come from somewhere and is built up over time. I am new to this so everyday is a learning experience but I see too many guys in this country give it half a go and give up when their content, be it games, blogs or youtube channels do not go viral overnight, it takes time and hard work.
At the end of the day I am doing this because I love games and too many people love playing games and want to make games then give up when they realize how much time and work goes into making them, to be brutally honest, I am doing this because in South-Africa it almost impossible to find work and I'd rather try to do the impossible before I beg or turn to crime.
Anyway, I'd still love to check out some other projects which is kinda why I started this thread... xD
An audience grows for a game. You need a great game for that to happen... Every success story here from Desktop Dungeons to Viscera Cleanup Detail to Broforce emerged from zero player base for any sort of "brand" associated with the devs. It could be that future development will need personalities at the helm to gain traction, but I'm not convinced that's the case just yet. Streaming is a completely different kettle of fish, obvs. So I wanted to say "yup, everybody here probably feels you on doing this for the love" - but I wanted to interject about the job outlook stuff. Please let that be a joke? I mean, if you have the skills to make games in Unity, you can get a job coding in another setting. I mean if you're desperate and need work, there are lots of options given the skillset you seem to have. I very often have conversations about the viability of game development in SA as a career, it's a complex topic. Don't look at those of us that have succeeded and assume that equal success is guaranteed (or that our own continued success is likely either)!