Post by CameraTricks in v 0.4.7 (tutorials) comments

Viewing post in v 0.4.7 (tutorials) comments

I appreciate all the thought you're putting into the game and I hope you achieve your vision.

In the interests of helping you make it a success, I'll offer the following feedback which I hope will be useful and constructive:

1. Reiterating my original comment first: Keep It Simple. Too many menu options and branching trees for skills or crafting sucks you out of the game instead of into it. If the total experience is 1-2 hours long, that's enough time to learn to play and enjoy checkers but not chess.

2. Tweak the procedural generation to maximize the length and width of corridors and to make turn radii larger. If the player is going north and you want to turn them south, let them walk around a more gradual bend. I've found that the current prevalence of tight turns makes me nauseous (and I have pretty good VR legs).

3. The areas with the gondola/ski-lift moving platforms are nice in that they open up the space a lot. They would be a lot more comfortable if they were a bit larger though. Maybe make them 2x2 instead of 1x2. Again, the tight turning is a bit nauseating. Also, the game's moving platforms are too fast which causes nausea and disorientation.

4. I recall seeing a moving train with cars on it and a turret on the other side. The goal being to use that cover. I would lean toward making the direction of the boxcars the same as the direction you need to move. Beyond that, I like the idea of jumping onto a moving conveyor or train and then avoiding bullets and shooting enemies much like Pistol Whip. Just make sure that the enemies appear ahead of you in the direction you're moving. Looking too much to the side while on a moving platform alto triggers nausea.

5. In such tight confines, too many exploding robots can be frustrating.

I love what you're doing with Tea For God. Your work with procedural generation and non-Euclidean spaces is cutting edge. Kudos for your creativity and hard work. I wish you great success turning this into a commercial product. I hope that my feedback helps tweak that final product so that it provides an improved user experience, gets solid reviews, and catches fire. Cheers!

void room4 years ago

There might be a bit of misunderstanding here :) The 1-2 hours long experience is going to be simplified, without menus etc. Most likely the way you'd like the game to be. But that's only a part of the game. It should give you an insight into what the main mode looks like. And the main mode is going to be a much longer and complex roguelite. See, I'd like Tea For God to be about making decisions (not story-wise etc, but making gameplay decisions), not just walking and shooting.
I haven't touch the procedural generation for some time now. The way I treat corridors is that they should take player as quickly as possible from one point to another. There is room for longer corridors and I added that idea to the list. Although they should be rarer. Keep on mind that for what we call "corridors" I have plans to make them look not only as usual corridors. And that may help a bit.
The size of the platforms for now is forced to be small. Initially I had larger platforms and there was a lot of running around. But again - there is place for both narrow and wider platforms in the final game. I don't want to limit the game to one option that suits one group of people. Speed of the moving platforms is adjustable in the options (check Comfort section). With slower platforms the combat gets much less dynamic.
I'd prefer to avoid sections that force you to stay in one place. Again, you should be able to run away, change direction etc. That said, I actually want to have a section in which you board a train. But even then I don't want the player to be fixed in one place looking in one direction. As you said, looking too much to the side, may end up not so well. But - you may have enemies chasing you. You may have enemy airship coming to you from a side and robots jumping onto your train etc.
True. There are ways to avoid getting damage from the explosion - you can push them off the ledge, you can pick them up and throw away or you can just use shields - but even then, exploding robots might be frustrating if you run too often into them. And there are going to be more kinds of robots.

Thanks again for your suggestions :) The game is still pretty far away from what I want it to be, and for a few months it may appear that it is going in an opposite direction to your feedback. But please try it out every few weeks as at some point I should be able to focus on that shorter mode that you should enjoy much more than the main roguelite mode.

itch.io

Viewing post in v 0.4.7 (tutorials) comments