[Project] Hot Chicken

ashley_pops

Hi Everyone

So I've been focusing my efforts on creating some simple mobile games of late and this is the first of this efforts. Its a little game called Hot Chicken, which falls very much into the clicker genre. The goal is simple, tap the chicken as many times as possible before time runs out. Every successful hits will give you a bit of a time bonus. Multiple successful hits in a row will increase your time bonus multiplier. As your score increases the chicken will decrease in size and increase in speed. Below are some screenshots:






Also here's a windows build:

Windows Build

I would appreciate any advice on the following:

The combo meter - This feels a bit unbalanced to me at the moment. It becomes quite hard to build a combo, especially as things start speeding up. Currently when the user misses a tap I reset there combo multiplier to 1. Do you think that I should rather take their current level and just decrease it by 1 instead?

The overall game balance - In earlier builds I felt that the chicken was moving too fast and it became really hard to land a successful hit. What do you think of the current speed?

The UI - Not my strongest point. How do you feel about the current UI? How do you feel it could be improved?

Any other improvements - Really anything at all. I'm trying to keep the scope of this really small but if you feel that there are vital changes that I should make please do let me know. Also please let me know if you feel that there are any changes that I should make in future releases.

Bugs - I haven't noticed any myself but if you do see any I would appreciate it if you could let me know.

Thanks guys. I've never actually gotten to the point of releasing something before which is why I'm keeping the scope of this really tiny. Any advice and tips would be greatly appreciated.

Elyaradine

I haven't played this yet (I'm on my iPad right now), so I thought I'd just give feedback on UI right now. It seems functional, but stylistically it's quite inconsistent. Some things look like enlarged pixel art. Some look like vectors. Some have rounded corners while others are sharp. Some have outlines (of varying thickness) and others don't. I'd recommend picking a visual style (say, matching your chicken), and applying it across the board more consistently.

pieter

Got this error:

There should be 'game_Data'
folder next to the executable

ashley_pops

@Elyaradine - Thanks for the UI feedback. Its actually the area of the game that I've been most unhappy with. I agree that there's a very inconsistent visual language throughout the whole game. I'm going to try to carry over the flat colours and possibly the outlines from the chicken and see how that goes.

@pieter - Well that's embarrassing. I neglected to actually test the windows build on a different machine. I shall update the link.

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to look at this.

ashley_pops

Apologies for the delay. I've been struggling with a really bad internet connection. I've updated the link for the windows build in the original post. I've tested it out this time and it should be working now.

I'm busy with some UI updates at the moment, so I'll upload some new screens tomorrow. Thanks again.

JuicedRobot

Hi Ashley

Do you need some music for the game?
I compose, and would be happy to provide you with some cheap yet effective music.

Thanks,
Mark
www.soundcloud.com/juicedrobot

ashley_pops

Hi Mark, unfortunately not for this game. I did take some time today to listen to your stuff though and its really great. I particularly liked the work you did in Arcade Medley. For the next 2 to 3 months I'm focusing my efforts on making some really small games. Largely because I have some time constraints at the moment and I can push these out in a week or 2. I have some ideas for bigger projects though and when I start on those it would be great to do some work with you. I've followed your channel so I'll be keeping an eye on the work that you push out. Thanks a lot for your interest in getting involved with this, it is much appreciated.

ashley_pops

So I've officially released this on the Play Store, you can find it here - Hot Chicken

I think its a bit easier to get an idea of the overall game balance on device. I'd really appreciate anyone downloading it and giving some feedback.

I've also done some minor UI updates. I'm still not really happy with it, but I guess I could obsess over it forever and never release it so I decided to just take the plunge. Its fairly easy to iterate on this.

Here are some updated screens:





Like I said, any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I know that this is a fairly simple game, but my aim with this and for the next few projects is to take small concepts and see if I can make it fun in any way. I'm trying to improve my overall game design abilities, and I guess that means starting really small.

ashley_pops

Hi Guys. Apologies for the thread necro, I'm not sure what the actual rules surrounding that are. I've just released an update to this game so it kind of felt right posting in here.

So after releasing this game I took along hard look at it and I realised that there were many areas that needed improvement. Specifically I realised that while making the game it kind of unwittingly became a clicker game. The problem with this is that I ignored many sensibilities of the clicker genre and I guess I wanted to improve on that a bit.

And that's where this update comes in. I've added a few new features and tweaked some of the older ones. Here are the changes:

- Graphical and UI updates
- Rebalanced scoring system (Hoping to drive higher scores)
- Added a few powerups (Freeze time, freeze chicken position, points multiplier)
- Added randomly spawning smaller chicks (These will give you high points but only be visible for a short while)
- Optimization in the background

It can be downloaded here:
Hot Chicken - Play Store

Here are a few images of the update:











So from a UI side its still not perfect, but I think its better than what it was. This really isn't my strong point but I am trying to improve so any advice and tips would be appreciated. The biggest issue that I'm having is trying to figure out an effective way of balancing speed increases. Currently I feel that at some point the game gets so fast that it effectively ends itself. If I make it any slower though it becomes almost impossible to actually lose. I'm not really sure what to do about this. I was thinking in a future update I might take it in the direction of being more of an idle clicker, so no real game over, you just keep adding to your points. Maybe have some expensive unlocks. But I don't know, that would fundamentally change the game which I don't really want to do.

Anyway, I'm rambling on. Any advice is always appreciated. Let me know if you guys would prefer a windows build.

Thanks as always.

Pomb

@ashley_pops I like the color changes in the update, they a lot more playful than the original. I particularly like how the styling of your clouds now match more closely with your chicken, you could try use that same language in your UI and other elements to bring a more unified feel to the whole thing, Round buttons, circular layouts and and rounded fonts to strengthen the shape language of the game.
The scrolling of the background is going in the wrong direction as if he's flying backwards.
I would suggest using warm colors for your UI to help pop it off the cool temperature of the sky, see how your main screen feels more unified than your game over screen. Likewise for the blue bar, it is out of harmony with the rest of the screen.
The line weights of the smaller yellow chicks break consistency of the line weight on the main chicken, they could use with some fattening.
The grass doesn't obey the two tone thing happening in the other elements.
I thought the target and snow freeze pickups were a good way to change the pacing when things start going faster, but imo the chicks shouldn't reset the bar and should give you more points it will make their risk/reward much stronger.
Good Job on finishing something and getting it to the store.

ashley_pops

@Pomb Thanks so much for taking some time to play and for all the constructive advice. I'm going to try implementing some of the UI changes that you mentioned. I do agree that the game can feel a bit cold at times, which I've tried to avoid as I was aiming for a playful kind of look. Hopefully I can bring this all together into a more consistent overall experience.

I actually had the same thoughts about the chicks when adding them in. I wanted this to be a big risk/reward thing. I ended up with the resetting of the bar when you collect the chicks, but this is fairly easy to change, so I may change this back. I could perhaps also tweak the frequency of the powerups once the game gets faster. A you say this might be a good way of handling the game balancing issues that I'm having.

Also, I didn't even notice the backwards flying, oops :D

Once again, thanks for all the great advice. I'll do a 1.2 release at some point in the future. For now though I'm taking some time to work on another little project which I'm quite excited about. Still fairly simple but a little more complex than this. I'll post something once its at a good place.