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A member registered Jul 01, 2014 · View creator page →
Creator of
An interactive coloring book.
a completely free, spellbinding puzzle adventure for every witch at heart!
Puzzle
Recent community posts
Hey there! I wanted to submit this feedback to your survey but didn't see a space big enough to elaborate what I wanted to say, so I hope its okay to do here.
I have zero problems with the cutscenes and the story--just so you know the mom character's walk animation took me OUT, it was so funny. All of the cutscene animations were spectacular. I also think the core gameplay mechanic is really strong and unique, but I had a hard time getting the hang of it on the first dance battle because of the lack of hand holding, so I made some notes about how to potentially ease players into it more.
1. Understanding the movement that I was was supposed to mimic was intuitive most of the time, however there were some moves Ring was doing that I was like--how do I make that shape? I like that I am able to move at the same time as her to practice before it is my turn, but adding some tutorial arrows underneath her avatar to give a hint of how the mouse should move would be helpful, as well as the parts of the body she/I am supposed to move (this is only for the first few levels while people get a hang of the controls, and probably should be toggleable in the options menu--otherwise, the glowing body parts signifier is enough). The little movement hint would be similar to other dance games like Just Dance or Dance Central. This is not technically a dance game but the patterns are recognizable already so might as well use 'em. I drew a sketch below:
Also having a spotlight on whose turn it is would be a nice additional touch. Not necessary, but keeps the visuals clean.
2. There was a long stretch of music in the dance battle where nothing happened; it was neither the player's turn nor Ring's. I think we were all just waiting for the beat to drop? This should definitely be a freestyle section, or perhaps Ring and the player can trade some witty banter, or even both, whatever can fill the space so it doesn't feel dead.
3. I think the score at the top is fine, but in order for a player to understand that they are doing well until the screen at the very end telling them if they passed/failed, they need a visual representation that compares their performance to a benchmark while they are playing. The easiest way to do this is by having a "Score to beat" at the very top, but again dance games have paved the way with the much more readable "success bar". So players can see at a glance: Bar is high, I'm doing good, or bar is low, I'm doing not good. This would be a lot of additional work, but also adding in an aura for players who are doing really well and chaining their tricks just feels really good and keeps the visuals clean.
Overall I am a huge fan of this game, If the level of quality I've seen so far continues all the way to the end of production I truly believe it has the potential a hit because it was SO funny, and the skill level could actually get quite high so watching players get good at this will be really interesting. PITCH THIS GAME TO PUBLISHERS so you can get the funding to finish it!
Thanks for reading this, and I wish the whole talented team success in their future ventures!
Workin' Under The Hood
Wow, what a day! I spent the morning starting to build a furniture object, and then I hopped in the car with a friend of mine to go to a local pinball convention (I totally forgot I bought tickets like a month ago). I had a lot of fun but I was worried that I'd have less time to work on my game. During lunch I was able to grab a notebook and quickly block out each level, so progress still happened while I was out having fun. As a quick adjustment, I decided to drop the puzzle levels from 5 to 3; hopefully this will still come off as a complete game experience!
after the pinball convention and a quick power nap, I finished the basic mechanics of my game. Mice now can identify if their friends, enemies, and all their furniture are in the same room with them and have a mood depending on how those factors turn out. This was definitely the most finicky part to figure out. I still have quite a bit of programming ahead of me before I get to the art (which is my strong suit) but it's more about building out the levels at this stage. The screenshot above doesn't look like much compared to yesterday but there is so much more work that I did under the hood!
the last thing I did this evening was set up the game rooms for tomorrow. I have a rudimentary start screen, and a game manager who will check the status of all the dormice and trigger an end event when they are all in a room and happy. First thing I'm going to do tomorrow is finish the manager, then build, build build!
I've got to hit the hay, but here's what I accomplished this evening (not bad for like 3 hours work!)
Progress:
Because so much of the game relies on grid placement, I built a small prototype to make sure I can get that to work. I am happy with it so far!
Apparently there's a cool way you can do grid placement using ds_grids, but since I didn't have time to learn how they work I did some simple janky math to get the dormouse to align with a grid any time it was picked up or dropped.(I am referring to the mice as dormice so that they are easy to differentiate between the actual desktop mouse, both here and in my code because I know I will get them mixed up otherwise!)
The dormouse can also check what it is being dropped on, so two objects can't be dropped on top of eachother.
The last thing I'm going to do tonight is bang out my to-do list for the next 48 hours, which is now in the top post. Tomorrow I'm going to a pinball convention with a friend, so I'll have even LESS time to work on this thing! hope I can finish it in time!
