itch.io

Hey,

I didn't get much work done yesterday, but I played the first few minutes of your game. Here's my thoughts so far :

Start Menu :
I wish you could use arrow keys and mouse to navigate it. It comes more naturally to new players I think, unless a tutorial on menu usage would be provided. I would have probably thought the menu broken, if I hadn't read your game description before. Actual in-game controls are of course explained by the tutorial and fine as is.
The Menu feels sluggish. When I double tap 's' for example, the caret will only move down to the next menu entry, instead of the one after that. I would also expect the selection to wrap around as in, if I move down 1 from 'Exit', I would expect to arrive at 'New Game' again. Same for up from 'New Game'.
Combat : 
The roll seems very far. I wish I could only roll behind the enemy, so I could immediately retaliate without running back to it. Maybe holding the roll buttons could lengthen the roll to a degree, just like with jumping?
The single flying monster absolutely massacred me the first time I fought it. It kept hitting my caravan when I aggroed it, and when I ran away from the camel, it switched aggro from me to the caravan again. When I had finally figured out the timing of its attack in relation to my jump and attack, it was already too late. 
Didn't help that I lost another camel before while spelunking. I don't know how I'm supposed to go down into caves to get treasures if monsters can spawn anytime from the portals and massacre half the caravan before I have any chance of getting back up to them. A clock above the portals would really help make the spawning more predictable I think. Or alternatively an emergency teleport if the caravan is under attack. Or just a shout of warning from the caravaneers once they spot enemies approaching them. Or anything else that lets me explore caves just knowing WHEN I need to run back.
Story :
I really enjoyed the story and worldbuilding. Nothing negative to say unfortunately :D .

Best,

Sven

I looked at the log and this is the start of it : 

[Screens.ScreenManager]: Adding screen Title Screen
[Screens.ScreenManager]: Screens: [Title Screen: Active]
[PlayerModel]: Initializing PlayerModel
[PlayerModel]: Awake, seed is 1690126827
*******************************************************
[Screens.ScreenManager]: Unhandled Exception!
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at Assets.Scripts.IO.InputHelp.GetButtonDown (Assets.Scripts.IO.InputHelp+Buttons button) [0x001cb] in <f6ffd33d2fea43b288c20ba161375ee3>:0 
  at Assets.Scripts.Screens.TitleScreen.HandleInput () [0x002f8] in <f6ffd33d2fea43b288c20ba161375ee3>:0 
  at Assets.Scripts.Screens.ScreenManager.Update () [0x00087] in <f6ffd33d2fea43b288c20ba161375ee3>:0 
*******************************************************

The "Unhandled Exception"  then repeats what seems like every frame. Nothing else, just a super bloated file with the same error message over and over.

Hi,

I have access to Windows now. Your core game-mechanics are well executed.

I see 3 things that would increase the quality of your project immensely though.

1) There is currently no highscore. You don't need to give the user permanent scores, just add a score counter to the top that gradually counts up. That alone would keep the player more engaged I think.

2) Either disable the fullscreen mode ( eg by setting the window type to 'borderless window' ) or scale your game with window size, so fullscreen works better (that's probably a lot harder to do).

3) Increase your font's resolution. Usually you can set the font size in the font component/node. I think you just scaled up the entire font object, which causes the font to become blurry.

Good project for a start!

Best regards,

Sven Hollesen

Do I need to have some specific vc++ versions installed?

Also what is the difference between your 2 download links? (I tried both with the same result)

Hello Joshua

Thank you for your detailed feedback!

The blank tutorial pages are a pretty major issue I thought I had fixed. This bug only appears randomly, and no browser errors or warnings get logged. It's really frustrating. I think I found a solution though. By manually checking the content of the tutorial SVGs, the browser seems to realize when it messed up, and silently loads the content again. But let's not ramble about technicalities :D It hopefully works now.

The tutorial is the part of the game that took by far the most work to do. But I'm not very good with non technical explanations, so it apparently needs more work.  I had hoped the animations would be enough, but maybe I need to hire a professional writer...

The 'Block' tower blocks tiles it points at. Meaning if you put it on a tile with an up-arrow, it will block the neighboring tile above it. Since monsters can only move along arrows, 'blocking' here refers to 'removing all arrows', i.e. making the tile impassable.

All other neighboring tiles will get 'unblocked', i.e. made fully passable, i.e. receive arrows in all directions.

As for the HP thing : HP is a mechanic that would get introduced in the 4th tutorial level. It is hidden at the start to make it easier for people without the tutorial to figure out the mechanics. Any solution to the first 3 levels should always result in acceptable amounts of damage for a perfect score.

The problem is, the failure message should preferentially display the 'You didn't take enough steps' message over the 'You didn't deal enough damage' one. I fixed that! 

Your solution (top right + top center) is perfect for the first wave. Could it be, that you cleared the first wave, but didn't notice it, and landed in the second one? That one needs 7 steps, and the former fail-message would have (confusingly) been what you described. I have added a 'You cleared Wave X' message to make success more apparent.

Again, thank you very much for your feedback!

Best regards,

Sven

Hi Joshua,

Unfortunately your current build does not seem to work for me. I get an animated Unity logo, then end on your title menu. Nothing happens when I click any button (not even a click sound) and  neither do the arrow/WASD keys or enter work. On the other hand the music is still playing, and ESC closes the game. So if the buttons don't make noises, this might be a graphical freeze-frame?

I'm using Windows 10 with AMD graphics. I tried compatibility mode all the way down to Vista (XP is apparently not available any longer, well done Microsoft ~,~). Other Unity games work on this setup, I use it to develop them myself.

Best regards,

Sven

I got a 404 - Page not found.

Disclaimer : I am not a lawyer.

Making a clone of Flappy Bird is arguably legal, as long as you only copy the game mechanics I think.

Any artistic property that uniquely identifies the original title, be that the bird's design, the overall color scheme, the title font, etc, or any combination thereof can be enough for copyright protection. A general rule of thumb is :

If you show random people on the street the content, would they identify it as the original (infringed) content? If a large portion of the people would misidentify your game as the original "Flappy Bird", then you're in a bad spot. And your game is not even such an edge case. You straight up copied both the name AND major parts of the design.

That other people are doing the same should not be taken as an excuse, since it wouldn't hold up in court. Not unless it has been done for many years already and there's evidence that the original copyright holder knew of the problem but intentionally didn't address it (I'm not even sure even that would make a substantial difference, please consult a lawyer on this).

As it stands, "many people doing the same" only makes it a more juicy target for a joint lawsuit.

Hi,

I enjoy the game. I especially enjoy the art style and color choices.

On a visual level I was missing something when finishing the level. Some games have a door open/close animation, or the character enters a lift and goes down, or the character at the very least fades out or leaves the screen completely.

As for Game Design :

On level 3, if you jump onto your corpse and die you get body blocked by your second corpse. Alternatively the second body gets pushed into your first body and the physics go all jittery. Maybe corpses could disintegrate if they are pushed into walls or other corpses for several frames in a row to avoid this glitchery? Just a thought, might not work with the game design you have planned...

There's one core design that really annoyed me though. I'm very bad at platformers, and kept jumping onto the small spike platforms by having my character only stand on the platform with a small part of his body. When he then died of spikes, physics kicked in and he tilted over and fell down away from the platform. This felt unrewarding to me, because in my mind I was like "But I got there!", when really, I just sucked at jumping on the center of the spikes. 

I know that in other levels you need to die on spikes and then fall AWAY from them. Would it be possible to disable rigidbody rotation while in direct contact with the spikes to avoid my earlier peeve while still allowing the rest of the levels to work.

Having said that, I understand if this is just not what you had in mind for the game, and I'm just too much of a noob to get things right. But emotionally it is the only negative thing that stood out to me while playing it yesterday.

Best regards,

Sven

Hi,

I cannot play the game because I don't have access to Windows, but your name coupled with the game mechanics might get you in trouble.

"Flappy Bird" has been registered as an official Trademark.

https://trademarks.justia.com/862/09/flappybird-86209920.html

and a quick google search found incidents, where this trademark was actually enforced, even against games not called 'Flappy Bird' precisely, but rather 'Flappy Wings World' for example.

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/45313-flappy-bird-trademark-issue/

Even though that particular claim may have been frivolous, a similar one against your game would not, given the exact same name and similar gameplay mechanics.

So what I'm trying to say is, please consider renaming your game before some nefarious copyright trolls come along. Naming it Flappy Bird will also not help your search algorithm score. 

I'm sorry for not providing more constructive advice.

Best regards,

Sven

Hello potential feedback-person,

First of all, thank you for considering to play-test my game.

If you are a game developer yourself, please feel free to drop a link to your game in your feedback, so I can review it in return. That seems only fair.

Having said that, the title should really say all you need to know about my game. Here's the link :

https://shollesen.itch.io/tctd?secret=u2aohBOcPAreoKPjlXOOZaSWM

Best regards,

Sven Hollesen