[–] [S] 3 points 8 months ago (6 children)

The simplicity of the obstacles has been mentioned a few times now. We'll definitely take that on board and try to exploit the movement mechanics.

Also, I'm definitely biased, but I think the movement is quite fun! I hope you agree, if you test out the demo.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    Just from the video:
    I couldn't really see the obstacle lasers

    Most rooms looked the same

    All of them looked rather trivial in difficulty

    With the mechanics you do have, you could design some pretty complex obstacles. The showcase video looks mostly like empty rooms. I see promise in the movement, it just needs to be faster.

    One important aspect I cant tell from the video is controls. They will most definitely make it if they are silky smooth and intuitive like Mirror's Edge or absolutely ruin the experience if they are clunky.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Also - if you do increase the scope, you could totally, like, intend the game to be ~10 minutes segments. Maybe release the first segment once you think it's polished enough, see whether you want to add additional areas or environments with more levels and options.

    Basically, don't get burned out with scope creep. If you have something that works, release it. Even if you want to add more later. :)

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Really, any speed settings would help make the game more accessible and approachable.

    Some people may enjoy the parkour elements but not have the motor skills to handle high-speed reactions.

    Other folks may be great at the fast paced movement, but get frustrated by the number of enemies or the speed of projectiles.

    If you are able to offer sliders (or even just low/medium/high) options for things like movement speed, enemy frequency, damage taken, and grid reaction time? If you can do that without having to remake your code or game engine? It'll mean a much wider potential audience for your game.

    Speedrunners and streamers can have fun setting everything to the fastest and hardest difficulties. Casual players can have fun with it without getting frustrated.

    And sweet, you've got a Linux build. I do most of my gaming on Linux now. I'll try to check out the demo.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Hmm, you put me in an awkward position. We were planning on simply having this environment ramp up in intensity toward the final room. (The game should really only take about 10 minutes to complete. Something of a proof of concept for us.)

    But you throwing out the idea of other environments does tempt me to suggest increasing the scope!

    By speed settings, are you referring to player speed, laser grid speed, or some overall speed scale? You raise an interesting point.

    Also, if you'd like to try it out, we have builds of the current state of the game to test out: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jsOXz3Isfp6CTGfL7PfKGCqF4xxdMJjV?usp=sharing

    Any feedback is welcome, however incisive, scathing or negative. Positive is nice too, but we can't be too presumptuous :P

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 8 months ago*

    Technically it's all random - only the first 2 are set in stone. Though the way the defence generation works, lasers etc only start to phase in after about 10-15 rooms, so that might be what you're picking up on. I could bump those numbers up so defences start spawning earlier, perhaps. It gets genuinely chaotic after a couple dozen rooms!

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    The first ten to fifteen levels look like they'd be tedious to replay after every death. Maybe have them only occur the first run per play session and the timer/restart point begins after that?

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    So far, that has the feel of a good tutorial level - like it's the first challenge faced by the test subject when they first get their abilities, before they realize what's going on and they have to escape.

    If that's the starting environment, I could imagine occasional pauses where you describe the next challenge and how to overcome it.

    Then, once getting through this area, things start to get faster and more chaotic.

    Are you planning on having different speed settings, so the game can be approachable to different kinds of players?

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (12 children)

    Has potential to be cool. The art is on point. But from what I'm seeing in this video I have to be honest the obstacles do not look challenging or interesting. I'd also say it needs to be even faster.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago

    We need some combination of:

    • Different incentives for contributors; companies stop caring about regular code contributions.
    • Strict submission criteria that's very cheap to enforce.

    These are human problems, but annoying difficult ones.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I do not think the bubble popping will fix this.

    1. people are incentivized to make plausible looking submissions regularly for jobs. The bubble popping will not remove the need for jobs or metrics.
    2. the AI tools required to make OK submissions are already developed, with open source alternatives and many potential places they can be hosted. I think hosting will get cheaper if the bubble pops, as all those data centers come online and look to sell compute.
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