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Patrick W. Crawford282 days ago(+1)

I think the others have said it well: what I played, I know not, but it was a beautiful experience! I couldn’t tell what each section of the onboarding was meant to convey, or whether I was doing anything correct. Your visual design is amazing (sounds were good and fit well too), I do think you could reinforce gameplay by pushing the design to give clarity to specific mechanics. It’s sort of just directing that effort so it all fits together more. For instance on the scene showing the birds on the cubes, I couldn’t tell if my clicks were doing anything or what it meant for them to be “ready”. Some kind of visual indicator (or distinct audio cue, I guess for this round) to know when would help, and equally distinct some kind of audio/visual cue that it was missed.

I did love that you had a little intro cinematic, that was a nice lead in.

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spoonsweet280 days ago

Hey Patrick, thanks again for the detailed comment, its always a pleasure reading in-depth about your experience!

Agreed, seeing the rest of the comments people would prefer a more direct explanation, and with my lack of visual design and communication, its like I am shooting myself in the foot with these :D 

The audio cues are where the pigeons are situated, and then if you get them, you get a nice fried visual.

(1) roll the gear to drop crumbs. Wait for the pigeons to land and start eating.

(2) decide which laser to fire.

(3) fire! 

??? profit

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Patrick W. Crawford280 days ago(+1)

Ah with that loop you described, I wonder if I was always just firing the laser too soon.

That’s the tough thing with an audio theme round, and in general player onboarding: I probably mis learned what to do in the tutorial, and kept doing the wrong thing by habit. Something I try to do, even if heavy handed, is just creating direct notifications (in text) if the player is very blatantly not doing “the right thing”. Eg in my racing entry, it’s so tempting to press “w” to try and move, so it worked well imo to remind the player to press and hold space. In your case, it could be a warning if you’re trying to fire the laser before using the gear the first time, or if the third time you try the sequence, notify they need to wait longer for the pigeons to land etc. Stuff like that :) hope it helps, and to reiterate, I still loved the experience! Really hope to see you continue in round 2

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spoonsweet280 days ago(+1)

100%! there are so many ways this could have been done better, e.g. the cat capturing game this round has an amazing introduction, guided tutorial and constant feedback. It adds so much to the game! Agreed, communicating things to players or anticipating their reactions or natural instincts is one great way to deal with this. Thanks for the support! Good luck as well!

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