imma be real here, I genuinely have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing in this game (in the sort of ‘oh I guess the game is already over’ sort of way)
Viewing post in Stroke Cube (RETIRING) jam comments
Thanks for adding in the instruction.
Anywho, now that I know what I’m meant to be doing, it’s a pretty decent game, and the concept is simple but somewhat engaging.
I do have a couple of nitpicks with the implementation, however, but I have some suggestions for how to address them.
- Firstly, it looks like the cube sometimes spawns where the buttons to start the game are, causing an instant game over without the player having an opportunity to actually start playing the game.
- There are a couple of ways of fixing this.
- option 1: Ensure that the initial position of the cube does not overlap with where the buttons that start the game are (so there’s no risk of an instant game over), probably best paired with a prompt to ‘avoid the cube’ (so the player has some advance warning)
- option 2: Maybe have the cube start in a fixed location (inactive) but make the player then move their mouse to a location that’s a bit below the cube to activate it and start the game properly (again, so the player has an opportunity to start dodging instantly)
- There are a couple of ways of fixing this.
- Could use some more feedback for when stuff happens
- Maybe a questionably-satisfying noise for when the cube hits the wall (and the player scores a point), and/or a not that good sound effect for when the player gets hit by the cube and loses?
- Might help get a player into a flow state (and then rudely throw them out of the flow state when they inevitably fail)
- There’s no real difficulty curve mid-game, which causes gameplay to eventually get a bit stale
- There’s the obvious solution for increasing difficulty, being ‘make it slowly get faster’, but chances are that it might err into ‘unfun’ territory after a while.
- Alternatively, you could try to add more cubes to the mix mid-game, but make sure they’re ever-so-slightly not travelling in sync with the initial cube, so the player slowly has more and more stuff to deal with mid-game.
- This probably would need to be paired with something to ensure the new boxes don’t spawn in and destroy the player without the player having a chance to react to them appearing of course.
- Maybe they could be set up such that ‘hitting any cube -> game over’, or such that ‘hitting a cube -> that cube disappears; game over when cube count falls below 2/after hitting 3 cubes’, depending on how merciful you’re feeling/what’s easiest to implement.
Anywho, nitpicks aside (and the lack of shoehorned-in modifier aside), it’s overall a pretty decent game.
To adding noise when to score rises that is a yes i love that idea!what i will add
- Noise to score
- Instant game over fix
- Entitled position
What i won't add
- throw player out (why???)
about the adding more cubes.... (that is already coming in a future update)
i totally agree with you on the sounds time to open Sereto Studio
okay so the ‘throw the player out’ suggestion was intended in the sense of ‘when the player fails, make the player realize that they failed in a way that rudely interrupts them (like how an alarm clock rudely wakes you up from a really nice dream)’, not in the sense of ‘crash the game when the player fails’.
But I am definitely interested in seeing what happens next 👀