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Bsix2 years ago

In normal mode, you actually have a small amount of error allowed as you can miss one pumpkin smash and still get them all (on difficult each tombstone must smash a pumpkin).  Also at the very end there are 4 open spots on the board for 3 cats.   I take your point though (and others have commented as well), randomness does have a high impact on the final outcome in the last round regarding if all cats survive.


 In hindsight, I wish I would have made the following changes:

  • Added an 'Easy/Game Jam' mode that only had 2 cats (maybe keep it 3 cats) and  6 slots open at start and 6 slots open at end
  • Normal mode: round 7 dropped 2 fewer gravestones for a total of 6 open slots at end of game (3 for cats + 3 others)
  • Maybe a tune down hard mode to have one less gravestone (5 open slots) at the end as well (?)


It's kind of an interesting balance question because not getting perfect doesn't mean 'lose'.  Really the 'lose' condition is when all cats die.  And getting a perfect score in one or two tries is not very satisfying either (except this is where 'easy' mode does shine; you can get that perfect in one or two tries and then move up to normal mode).  As well, 'losing' a 'perfect' due to randomness does have a certain unsatisfying sting.

I originally planned to add in-game commentary/narration on the 'randomness' of who lives and dies in war and have some kind of commentary/narration each time a cat died to echo the same.  In the end, it didn't feel right to make the comparison or highlight the randomness of death or war.  In no way did I want the game to come across disrespectful.

At any rate, you (and others) are correct and I should moderate the gameplay for the purpose of the Game Jam submission with an easier chance for success/perfect.


Thank you for playing and taking your time to provide feedback!

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Cranberry Ninja2 years ago

RNG can be hard sometimes. The dissatisfaction is tied in with knowing even if you did better as a player it wouldn't matter because RNG has cheated you. I liked that you had planned to use it as a narrative point, it would be a powerful reflection of reality where you can do nothing wrong and still lose. That narrative would also temper the expectation of the player since they are going at it from an experience rather than a game of skill 

Personally my belief (and mind you this is a challenge to implement sometimes) is to structure RNG so that it can make a challenge more difficult to complete, but never absolutely impossible. That gives the player a feel of agency and the sense that by getting better they can improve. The golden rule I try to follow is to try to never leave the player feeling like they have been cheated by the game

I played quite a few rounds of your game and I felt the difficulty was well balanced, I only completely lost all my cats a few times, but having played it for a bit I realized I hit a wall in terms of being able to get better at my strategy because RNG would ultimately decide if it was possible to get a perfect game or not, and most of the time it would not.  

All that being said I did rate your game very highly because everything else was basically perfect. It is a really fun game with a silly theme as you scramble to save the cats.  It felt decently balanced and I had a lot of fun. Dont take the RNG feedback too critically because you really made an awesome game! 

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