This was interesting. I kind of understood the objective, but while playing, I really couldn't tell if I was actually doing anything I was suppose. The character model was very nice! The controls felt uncomfortable to me, but that's just personal preference. Some areas were very dark so it was hard to see. I made it to the second level, but wasn't quite sure what I did to achieve that. It was definitely a good start to a game though.
Thanks for the feedback! Did you check the controls menu at the beginning? There is a short prompt a the start of the game suggesting to do so, inside is a short explanation of the objective of the game. I realized it many not be the best way to explain the objective, but I thought it would be much better than an UI element at the first level. It simply says to use the enviroment to kill the guards and release the prisoners, which are the "evil souls" stated in the game description. Colored wires indicate what switches interact with what items on the level.
The first level is more of a tutorial, that allows you to interact with the various different elements in the game, showing that the wires can connect to different things and what not. Once you get to the end, the cell with the "prisoner" says how many Guards are level to kill, you probably killed them before you got there, which is a design flaw of the level.
After that, the levels are true puzzles. I had a couple of play testers that seemed to breeze through them, I was actually a little worried they where too simple, I'm glad to see they still provide adequate challenge for some! Another feature I sadly didnt have time to get around too was a death screen when you kill the prisoner on accident, so that may be confusing.
I'll be sure to try your game out tomorrow after work, looking forward to checking it out! Do you know if we're able to make edits to our submissions after the deadline? I have some spare time tomorrow and could fix the design issues and make some clarification to the objective. It can be hard to understand objectively how intuitive your level/game design is when you're the one who built everything, so an outside perspective is great.
I did review the controls page first, and knew what the objective was, but I didn't see any guards. Also what I played wasn't a challenge, just didn't really see what I did to progress the next level, it was more of when I interacted with something in the game, it wasn't obvious what that interaction did. Like clicking on the electrical box, it created sparks, but that's all I could really tell what was happening. Maybe it's because it was too dark for me to see other gameobjects in the world. I know when I played through I didn't see anything that looked like an enemy either. So maybe that was the issue.
huh, I'll have to try the game out on a few more machines, the golems/guards are the only other entities in the game so they may not have been showing up or something.
As for darkness, I have noticed that the game seems darker on some systems/monitors, but I tried to make sure that anything that was important was illuminated or had emissive textures. The only actionable changes I think I'll be making are to the initial level design and maybe the terminology specify that the bird creatures are the the things you're supposed to kill.
Sounds good. I did try increasing the brightness on my monitor all the way and still didn't see the golems. I am using windows. I don't know if that is the issue.
Comments
This was interesting. I kind of understood the objective, but while playing, I really couldn't tell if I was actually doing anything I was suppose. The character model was very nice! The controls felt uncomfortable to me, but that's just personal preference. Some areas were very dark so it was hard to see. I made it to the second level, but wasn't quite sure what I did to achieve that. It was definitely a good start to a game though.
Thanks for the feedback! Did you check the controls menu at the beginning? There is a short prompt a the start of the game suggesting to do so, inside is a short explanation of the objective of the game. I realized it many not be the best way to explain the objective, but I thought it would be much better than an UI element at the first level. It simply says to use the enviroment to kill the guards and release the prisoners, which are the "evil souls" stated in the game description. Colored wires indicate what switches interact with what items on the level.
The first level is more of a tutorial, that allows you to interact with the various different elements in the game, showing that the wires can connect to different things and what not. Once you get to the end, the cell with the "prisoner" says how many Guards are level to kill, you probably killed them before you got there, which is a design flaw of the level.
After that, the levels are true puzzles. I had a couple of play testers that seemed to breeze through them, I was actually a little worried they where too simple, I'm glad to see they still provide adequate challenge for some! Another feature I sadly didnt have time to get around too was a death screen when you kill the prisoner on accident, so that may be confusing.
I'll be sure to try your game out tomorrow after work, looking forward to checking it out! Do you know if we're able to make edits to our submissions after the deadline? I have some spare time tomorrow and could fix the design issues and make some clarification to the objective. It can be hard to understand objectively how intuitive your level/game design is when you're the one who built everything, so an outside perspective is great.
I did review the controls page first, and knew what the objective was, but I didn't see any guards. Also what I played wasn't a challenge, just didn't really see what I did to progress the next level, it was more of when I interacted with something in the game, it wasn't obvious what that interaction did. Like clicking on the electrical box, it created sparks, but that's all I could really tell what was happening. Maybe it's because it was too dark for me to see other gameobjects in the world. I know when I played through I didn't see anything that looked like an enemy either. So maybe that was the issue.
huh, I'll have to try the game out on a few more machines, the golems/guards are the only other entities in the game so they may not have been showing up or something.
As for darkness, I have noticed that the game seems darker on some systems/monitors, but I tried to make sure that anything that was important was illuminated or had emissive textures. The only actionable changes I think I'll be making are to the initial level design and maybe the terminology specify that the bird creatures are the the things you're supposed to kill.
Sounds good. I did try increasing the brightness on my monitor all the way and still didn't see the golems. I am using windows. I don't know if that is the issue.