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[pixelprototype]

From someone with training in marketing, presentations and comercial design, the best advice I can give you is to always do PR on your terms. If you don't feel comfortable doing live performances or video blogs, try creating an avatar in such material. Maybe even get someone to read a script for you if you're not comfortable to record your own voice. If you record your own voice, don't be afraid to do as many takes as necessary.
This also applies to interviews. If you don't feel comfortable doing a voice interview, ask if messengers are an option. You can take your time formulating answers and it mostly is easier for the journalists too, as they don't have to do a transcript later.

There's a saying in German "Wie man in den Wald hineinruft so kommt es auch zurück!" You'll get the echo according to how you call into the woods. Meaning that you can foster the kind of tone of your PR on your terms. That can be aggressive or sterile, friendly or cocky, as long as it conveys your enthusiasm and devotion to your game.
Be genuine and mostly you will find that the response will be positive. Make sure to adress criticism, even if unfounded and don't get too defensive. Again, the PR interactions have to happen on your terms, so if you find that you get upset about a comment or troll, it's better to not react publicly.

Your game looks quite charming by the way. Wish you all the best.

Thanks so much for this advice it's actually really refreshing to hear someone say doing it at your own terms could work (though I do understand being more proactive will probably have wider reach at a faster pace). I'm socially awkward so I feel that sometimes doing the latter will work against me lol.

By the way I downloaded your game Prost and like it a lot, easy to get into (though I found out I was quite bad at it in the beginning hehe..) -- I am a sucker for pixel art and thought the art was awesome!

 

[SeanNoonan]

Almost done with the last level...

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

I love how he's running then just is all "oh fuck" and facefalls.

 

[timetokill]

Log, I love the fox kid generally, but he's definitely pretty sexualized which makes it a bit odd... at first I thought it was a (flat-chested) girl fox due to the overall slenderness, hip size and the low-seated "fur pants" -- and if it was in fact a girl I would've said it was straight-up over-sexualized.

My thoughts, raise his pants up and give him more fur elsewhere... it's just too clean of a "human/fox" split going on. With the faun you mentioned, he's got fur in weird places on his upper body, especially the denseness on his arms

It kind of reminds me of the typical "cat girl"/neko representation in anime, which is incredibly fan-servicey, where the "cat parts" only come out in the right spots, but never anything that would affect its overall humanness. I'd say go heavier fox. Hell, do something crazy and make his upper body fox and his lower body human. I'm sure it's been done but I've never seen it.

 

[Jobbs]

No thats totally fine with me, just tell me what you really think.
Could you go a bit more into detail why you find it grotesque and tacky? How is it different from similar figures like lets say the faun in Narnia?

I don't care for the faun in narnia either.

In any case, in the art you presented there's a very odd cut around the pubic region and the character looks like a little boy and together this is very off putting -- and there's nothing distinguishing as far as unique attributes or accessories to make it more on putting.

It looks like generic CG character who is a little boy who is naked and has weird attention being drawn to his pubic region.

 

[Professor Lich]

Kept forgetting to post about the project I'm working on. We just had a large update so I figured I'd shoot a link here for people to check out.

Link.

Long story short, we're pushing forward pretty hard with our new systems in place. Biggest additions being dungeon generation and a slightly tweaked combat system. (Which doesn't mean much since I doubt anyone played our first demo.) Things are going pretty well for us but we still got a lot of content to cover. A good amount is environment art which is on my end, but I'm having a good time getting it all together. I'm going to work at posting more if I can if people seem interested. And to get people interested, here are some .gifs from that large update. Don't want to post to many since I'm not sure how 'heavy,' they are. There's a lot more information, and images, in Kickstarter update that I'm leaving out though.

Heavy Attacks

New Worm Boss

Level Themes with Dungeon Generation

If anyone is curious about anything, just ask and I'll get back to you when I can.

 

[Loginius]

Thanks for all the feedback guys.
So basically the problem for most of you is that he looks androgynous, joung and sexualized.
Thats actually a good thing since this is exactly what Im going for.
The story of this game gets into some heavy psychological trauma stuff (Pans Labyrinth style just less horror) and I dont want to spoil too much yet but some characters represent parts of our mcs psyche.

I think satyrs/fauns (Narnia etc.) are typically associated with looking older, for one thing. It's weird to see one look like a child. Facial hair, different body type, etc. could help.

Also, the waistline is odd. Since the legs dive down, it looks like it's going to be naked and then the crotch is covered with fluff. If you want to compare with Narnia again, take a look at how the waistline is even all the way around:

This is actually hollywood toning it down, look at greek painting and statues of fauns, they are pretty much naked with pubic hair (if any) and depending on the artist very young. Its the antique after all.

Log, I love the fox kid generally, but he's definitely pretty sexualized which makes it a bit odd... at first I thought it was a (flat-chested) girl fox due to the overall slenderness, hip size and the low-seated "fur pants" -- and if it was in fact a girl I would've said it was straight-up over-sexualized.

My thoughts, raise his pants up and give him more fur elsewhere... it's just too clean of a "human/fox" split going on. With the faun you mentioned, he's got fur in weird places on his upper body, especially the denseness on his arms

It kind of reminds me of the typical "cat girl"/neko representation in anime, which is incredibly fan-servicey, where the "cat parts" only come out in the right spots, but never anything that would affect its overall humanness. I'd say go heavier fox. Hell, do something crazy and make his upper body fox and his lower body human. I'm sure it's been done but I've never seen it.

Oh? How come its not straight up over sexuallized when its a boy? Im just kidding, I dont want to start anything here. I get what you mean. I actually thought about adding more fur to the arms and stuff so thats what Im going to do when the effect is too extreme atm. Its important that he has a human face tho so I cant go switching top and bottom.

I don't care for the faun in narnia either.

In any case, in the art you presented there's a very odd cut around the pubic region and the character looks like a little boy and together this is very off putting -- and there's nothing distinguishing as far as unique attributes or accessories to make it more on putting.

It looks like generic CG character who is a little boy who is naked and has weird attention being drawn to his pubic region.

Yes, so the intention is tho have the fur start out looking like pubic hair and then merge into fur and it seems that works out even if you guys dont like it. It putting you off is good so thats fine with me as long as the effect isnt too great and it seems like it might be. The part that worries me is that it looks like a generic cg character.
I thought the freckles, crazy hair and well, fox stuff, might be overkill so he has nothing else. He is also supposed to look rally raw so physical accessories are out.


Thanks for the feedback, I know its a risque design and thats exactly what Im going for. You guys confirm to me that Im striking the right spot, now I just need to make sure I dont go too far with it.
Im definitely going to keep a eye on this character and peoples reaction to him, dont want to hit people too hard, just enough to get them thinking.

 

[orioto]

Reworked again the jumping and running (especially the running needed to be way more dynamic and energetic)

The running is still kinda broken (the second leg moves more than the first one lol) but with the scrolling of the sprite it will work better now and it's moving quiet fast so that's better. Also he's more determined now!

 

[thomasmahler]

Reworked again the jumping and running (especially the running needed to be way more dynamic and energetic)

The running is still kinda broken (the second leg moves more than the first one lol) but with the scrolling of the sprite it will work better now and it's moving quiet fast so that's better. Also he's more determined now!

Love the style!

 

[fabricated backlash]

Thanks so much for this advice it's actually really refreshing to hear someone say doing it at your own terms could work (though I do understand being more proactive will probably have wider reach at a faster pace). I'm socially awkward so I feel that sometimes doing the latter will work against me lol.

By the way I downloaded your game Prost and like it a lot, easy to get into (though I found out I was quite bad at it in the beginning hehe..) -- I am a sucker for pixel art and thought the art was awesome!

Thanks man! A general rule when doing PR, is always to set the terms yourself. PR is in it's simplest form a carefully constructed communication platform. You have to choose how much interaction you want in advance. You can be proactive without having to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation. Just be genuine and share your passion, but remember, sometimes it can also be a positive to get out of your comfort zone.

 

[fabricated backlash]

Reworked again the jumping and running (especially the running needed to be way more dynamic and energetic)

The running is still kinda broken (the second leg moves more than the first one lol) but with the scrolling of the sprite it will work better now and it's moving quiet fast so that's better. Also he's more determined now!

I love the style, but I think the timing is off. Maybe try to increase the "Air Time" when both feet are in the air. The character look like he's light, so a bit more time in the air should also make it look less "busy".

 

[orioto]

Love the style!

Haha thx Thomas

I love the style, but I think the timing is off. Maybe try to increase the "Air Time" when both feet are in the air. The character look like he's light, so a bit more time in the air should also make it look less "busy".

Yeah i can't really see what you're talking about for now. It's basically updated from my experience in game, so it works for me. It's busy but it is cause it works with the speed he goes in the game. I'll post some contextual gifs. Not saying you're wrong but the path that leaded me to this version makes it work for me, for now.

Update:
Ok tried to strengthen the legs motion. It's better i think. He's actually running lol

 

[neko.works]

Sorry I have no experience with kickstarter but I want you to know that your game looks amazing!

Thanks! Your 3D art is impressive by the way!

 

[Davision]

Here is something new from me, I had entered the last Ludum Dare jam and now polished this small arcade physics god game. I also ended up fully implementing VR.

You can see the result in the trailer here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvSuE_-bCZg

Download is here:
http://gamejolt.com/games/the-get-up/189692

 

[timetokill]

To clarify, my only hesitation with saying it's "straight-up oversexualized" being a boy is because I didn't realize it was a boy at first, and because it's sexualized in much of the same ways as a girl would be sexualized as opposed to a boy... so in looking at this, I find it weird I guess more than anything. Anyway, I'm glad it's giving you the effect you want!

As for me, I just keep seeing it like his pants are falling off lol

 

[Pazu]

first public demo of Chiaro at Montreal Independent Games Festival went great. magically there were no real issues with the Vive (was worried about losing tracking in a new space). about 6 or 7 hours of non-stop demo-ing, most people who came by to try had never tried VR before and had a lot of fun. for the most part people stuck to trying the levels where they could build Boka (your steam-powered penguin mentor) and make him a cup of tea -- they had a lot of fun interacting with objects in the world and riding lifts inside our forest.

I loaded a few of the more adventurous players into a later level where they got to try out some of our Zelda-inspired mechanics (enchanted tools), got a lot of great feedback on our dungeon/temple level and the mechanics which gave me some really good ideas to improve our design.

was interesting to see how our animated cutscenes play, we use teleportation as the primary means of locomotion but cut the ability to teleport in certain areas we've staged 360 degree narrative at. some people were engaged, others very frustrated that they couldnt keep exploring and couldn't care less about the story we were trying to tell. tells me that we'll have to work harder to make the story that much more compelling, stage those moments in even stronger ways and make it clearer that they are important to the experience (and that teleportation will get cut off when you enter those zones)

my favorite part was demo-ing to people who spoke only French and no English, we had to almost completely rely on the experience taking care of the player because we were unable to communicate, so it was very validating to see that a lot of what we've built is intuitive enough to immerse someone without running into too many pain points.

all in all, MIGF was a terrific festival, met a lot of local indie devs and had a ton of fun, now back to the pain and suffering of improving everything/marching towards a complete experience!!! we're getting some demo time at VR day in Austin on the 29th at Fantastic Arcade, if anyone here happens to be at Fantastic Arcade, shoot me a line would love to chat!

 

[Afrocious]

Hi folks. I recently jumped back into Unreal Engine. I'm quite a noob at it but that's fine.

Question: you folks have any tips on making actors proportional? I was making a bunch of rooms last night to get myself acclimated with UE4's UI. I used the starter content (the small project with the two chairs, one table, and a bunch of walls and light fixtures). Is there a way or a formula to deal with walls you put together jutting out or leaving small gaps? I feel stretching the walls out to fill in gaps could mess up potential materials I place on walls.

The walls in question were 400 x 400.

 

[HellBlazer]

Montreal Independent Games Festival

That's a thing? Hmm, I guess I missed it...

 

[Feep]

Hi folks. I recently jumped back into Unreal Engine. I'm quite a noob at it but that's fine.

Question: you folks have any tips on making actors proportional? I was making a bunch of rooms last night to get myself acclimated with UE4's UI. I used the starter content (the small project with the two chairs, one table, and a bunch of walls and light fixtures). Is there a way or a formula to deal with walls you put together jutting out or leaving small gaps? I feel stretching the walls out to fill in gaps could mess up potential materials I place on walls.

The walls in question were 400 x 400.

I...don't understand the question, exactly. Unreal has nice snapping tools; just set them to a custom amount (Edit-> Editor Preferences -> Viewports -> Grid Snapping) like 400, and they should tile quite nicely. Just copy a new one in the same location as the old, and snap it over.

No matter what size the actor is, you can simply check how big it is and create a nice snap for it.

 

[Afrocious]

I...don't understand the question, exactly. Unreal has nice snapping tools; just set them to a custom amount (Edit-> Editor Preferences -> Viewports -> Grid Snapping) like 400, and they should tile quite nicely. Just copy a new one in the same location as the old, and snap it over.

No matter size the actor is, you can simply check how big it is and create a nice snap for it.

Thank you!

 

[neko.works]

Hey guys!

The KickStarter campaign for Light Fairytale is live! Here's the link:
kickstarter.com/projects/nekoworks/3d-jrpg-light-fairytale-episode-1

I've also released a new video and a playable demo:
Trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=Rz7RUvhreck
Demo: nekodotworks.itch.io/light-fairytale

Please give me your feedback. Thanks!

 

[Minamu]

How did you decide to do a chibi style for the in-game graphics but went with a more realistic look for the portraits? Just curious.

 

[neko.works]

How did you decide to do a chibi style for the in-game graphics but went with a more realistic look for the portraits? Just curious.

Most of the retro JRPGs I like had chibi in-game models (be it 3D or pixel art), but the characters appeared in a realistic style on the portraits, status screen and cutscenes.

I think the chibi style is cute and easier to handle technically, but the realistic portraits / cutscenes help define the characters in the imagination of the player.

 

[Labadal]

Hey guys!

The KickStarter campaign for Light Fairytale is live! Here's the link:
kickstarter.com/projects/nekoworks/3d-jrpg-light-fairytale-episode-1

I've also released a new video and a playable demo:
Trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=Rz7RUvhreck
Demo: nekodotworks.itch.io/light-fairytale

Please give me your feedback. Thanks!

I'll give it a whirl tomorrow and post impressions.

 

[Minamu]

Most of the retro JRPGs I like had chibi in-game models (be it 3D or pixel art), but the characters appeared in a realistic style on the portraits, status screen and cutscenes.

I think the chibi style is cute and easier to handle technically, but the realistic portraits / cutscenes help define the characters in the imagination of the player.

Yes I realized that most old school rpgs I've played have done this, as I wrote my question

 

[Izuna]

I'm literally a couple lines of code away from pushing out a Unity app and I'm running into an issue I have fought half a day to beat.

What I have:

	int[][] LoadLevelObjects(int sLevel,int cLevel,string type,string objRefNum,int pageH,int pageW)
	{
		int[][] lvl = new int[pageHeight][];

		string[] lines = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(Application.dataPath + "/Resources/Spikes/S" + sLevel + ".txt");
		string[] cloudLines = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(Application.dataPath + "/Resources/Clouds/C" + cLevel + ".txt");

What's wrong:

Since this is meant to be a mobile game for iOS and Android ~ while the code completely works within Unity, I obviously get an error when running the app on a mobile device because it Application.dataPath doesn't work.

~

I've read that I need to use Resource.Load -- read it in as a TextAsset etc. but by doing this I'll get an exception like: "you can inherently convert TextAsset to string []" which is like, the entire point.

I'm baffled because I know it shouldn't be this complicated...

Try persistentDataPath

Oh and also post in the GAF Indie GameDev thread with these kinds of questions!

I get this if I just switch it up immediately:

DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path "C:\Users\[user]\AppData\LocalLow\[company name]\[game] Alpha Test\Resources\Spikes\S3.txt" (within Unity)

Is there to a way to get the app to copy the files to there or something?

 

[sinxtanx]

use Resource.Load to get the TextAsset

TextAsset is a special class, so you'll have to access the actual text with textasset.text which you can then split into lines

 

[Izuna]

use Resource.Load to get the TextAsset

TextAsset is a special class, so you'll have to access the actual text with textasset.text which you can then split into lines

After

TextAsset S1 = (TextAsset)Resources.Load("/Resources/Spikes/S", typeof(TextAsset));

Am I able to do anything like I did with

string[] lines = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(Application.dataPath + "/Resources/Spikes/S" + sLevel + ".txt")

~

If I do something like:

string[] lines = S1.text.Split;

it won't even work

My apologies for being inept

 

[sinxtanx]

string.Split takes a "params char[]" to know on which characters to split the string

string[] lines = S1.text.Split('\n');

 

[Izuna]

Thanks. Got a little rearranging to do because I can't get S + sLevel etc. to work, but otherwise this should start working soon.

~~

I literally didn't know this thread was on GAF. Is it okay to post a mobile TestFlight in this thread to get some impression?

 

[Vanguard]

You don't need the "Resources" directory because it's implied when accessing it via the Resources class (or considered as the root), and the file extension isn't required either, so the following should work:

TextAsset S1 = Resources.Load<TextAsset>("Spikes/S" + sLevel);

 

[Izuna]

^^^

that looks promising, I'll give a go!

EDIT: programming partner just did exactly that as you suggested. haha

YAAAAAY

  TextAsset s = Resources.Load("Spikes/S" + sLevel) as TextAsset;
  TextAsset c = Resources.Load("Clouds/C" + sLevel) as TextAsset;

  char[] splitedContainer = new char[] { '\r', '\n'};
  string[] lines = s.text.Split(splitedContainer, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); 
  string[] cloudLines = c.text.Split(splitedContainer, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

~

If anyone would like to gameplay test this mini mobile game, lemme know your PlayStore email or Apple ID for testing (PM only please)

 

[ThePhotoshop]

Had a bit of a brainwave and spent the day making an optional accessibility control scheme that allows you to play one-handed:

https://twitter.com/dhindes/status/778573552815448064/video/1

Down from two sticks and eight buttons, to one stick and two buttons!

 

[cbox]

Had a bit of a brainwave and spent the day making an optional accessibility control scheme that allows you to play one-handed:

https://twitter.com/dhindes/status/778573552815448064/video/1

Down from two sticks and eight buttons, to one stick and two buttons!

Very cool and respectable!

 

[liliththepale]

I can't even fathom how I would be able to pare down the inputs for my game, so it's super impressive that you were able to. Making an effort to include more players is highly admirable <3

 

[Feep]

Yeah, that's super tough. I'm already using essentially every input on the XB1 controller, and I have no idea how to cut that Great job!

 

[Professor Lich]

Doing a stream for the game right now if people want to check it out.

Link.

 

[Pere]

Please give me your feedback. Thanks!

I downloaded the demo and gave it a try since i've seen your project a few times and it interests me, so I'll give you my toughts.

Things i like:

• Music.
• The VR stuff is neat and a good way to include a virtual interface inside the game.
• I really enjoy that simple menu with portraits.
• The combat "transitions" are good, being able to see the npc in the battle scene is nice.
• The speech boxes are really great.
• The more realistic style.

Things i think that need work:

• Sound design, i find it really lackluster, mostly on the combat sounds, they had no impact, also they were really quiet vs the music.
  
  I don't really have any advice here.. >_<;
  
  
• You know i said that being able to see npcs in the combat is cool? that sadly causes things like this:

  

  
  Either you disable the npcs on the battle scenes or work on that camera
  
• Visually the lightning spell has no impact:
  

  

  Mostly i think it's because you can see a lot of particles and effects around the caster and the spell has less effects and it's waaaay smaller. I would tone down the effects on the caster, maybe scale it down so the spell is bigger than the casting effects.
  
• The damage numbers get mixed with the character models.
  
  You need to change the font or color, maybe do some kind of cell-shading to make it more visible. Another option might be moving the spawning point from inside their heads to a more elevated one so you only have to deal with the BG.

Random comments/feels:

• I got really confused at the start when she tells you to go to a shop in the lower part of town, then you walk around and get forced to go to a door that leads to the town. But one screen behind there was a sign with "lower part" in it, what does that mean? i'm IN the lower part? does that lead TO the lower part? does the right entrace lead to the lower part?
  
• I would really like the other party members to follow you around instead of popping out of thin air, or at least them popping from inside you and walking out.

Great job and keep up the good work

PD: Maybe i'm nitpicking stuff, but i hope my good intentions come across.

 

[Ashodin]

ARE YOU A PINBALL WIZARD

 

[Jumplion]

Making progress slowly but steadily. Most of it has been in stuff like level loading, camera system, input, etc...

Just overhauled the input stuff to just use some prebaked Unity assets that get the job done. Before I had the characters move automatically like in an endless runner and had a weird object pass/fail system, basically making QTEs, instead of just letting the characters jump on top of an object with a collider, and now I'm testing how much control I can give to the player with full left/right/jump/crouch movement.

(going hella fast for some reason, recorded at 33fps)

My main concern with letting the players have 8 keys (WASD for left, IJKL for right) is that most keyboards have a keypress limit of 4. It theoretically shouldn't be a problem since the most keys pressed down at any time would be 4 (two keys for left and right). Figured I could just make a switch to change up control schemes if I had to, so I've got it going like that for now.

 

[missile]

Have you ever came across the issue of cool/tough/interesting gameplay which
can only be perceived as such if the player becomes one with the game, and if
not may come across annoying, irritating, or unfair? How to deal with such a
situation? I mean, you can't be one with the game from the get-go. So it may
take awhile, but perhaps too long for many to appreciate.

Edit:
As an example: Take WipEout HD on PS3. From my experience, most people don't
like or can't deal with the weapons, because they see them as something linear,
i.e. to just hurt another one right next to you. And if they got hit a couple
of time they may feel the game to be unfair because they think the NPC has an
advantage knowing where you are, or they feel they got bad luck in getting a
strong weapon from the last item pad while the NPCs gets all the good ones. So
basically, if you are unfamiliar with the game (or not that good), it's quite
likely (even after playing for awhile) that you can't appreciate the weapons
and the gameplay they have to offer. But the thing is, the weapons are quite
balanced. You can almost always counter one weapon with another one. There is
a huge tactical/strategical element in using/placing them at the right time
and with respect to the NPCs behind and in front of you making the whole
gameplay non-linear which really create a huge variety and a sort of
accomplishment being able to deal with it at high speeds in fractions of a
second. However, you need to get good first to really appreciate the depth of
the gameplay using all the weapons. And having seen how people struggled to
even keep the craft on the track while getting hit by the NPCs will make them
feel the game to be unfair. And this is independent of the difficult level.
For, a bomb is a bomb. Sure, damage will be less, but you may still feel bad
upon getting hit for as long as you don't understand how the weapons are meant
to be used in the game. For example, using the machine gun can annihilate any
bomb and/or mines. But people don't see the machine gun as something cool,
i.e. not having enough strength to hit other players good. Hence, they very
likely absorb the machine gun right away.

Well, such sort of gameplay may annoy the new player for quite awhile, and may
render the game/play unfair, initially, with people starting to give up or give
bad critics after having played such a game for an hour or something with you
as the developer thinking they haven't even mastered 10% of the game. Must be
daunting. Anyone?

 

[the TMO]

Hi guys! I'm a developer from Italy and I want to share a story about the developement of our game, Edge Guardian!

It's a story about the journey to create a VR beat em up.
Here is the gallery on Imgur.

You can find the game on Steam, is in Early Access and we need as much support as we can get to finish this project, really need feedbacks!

Gameplay Clip here!

 

[Pehesse]

Had a bit of a brainwave and spent the day making an optional accessibility control scheme that allows you to play one-handed:

https://twitter.com/dhindes/status/778573552815448064/video/1

Down from two sticks and eight buttons, to one stick and two buttons!

Awed that you got something like that working, and that you're doing it in the first place. Super commendable !

 

[Feep]

Does anyone have experience with Seamless Travel between Maps in UE4, and that process interacts with spawning PlayerPawns from Player Start nodes? They don't seem to spawn for me after the transition. (I'm a little unclear about how the framework system automatically instantiates player pawns/controllers/states/instances/managers/gamemodes)

 

[Water]

Have you ever came across the issue of cool/tough/interesting gameplay which
can only be perceived as such if the player becomes one with the game, and if
not may come across annoying, irritating, or unfair? How to deal with such a
situation? I mean, you can't be one with the game from the get-go. So it may
take awhile, but perhaps too long for many to appreciate.
...
Well, such sort of gameplay may annoy the new player for quite awhile, and may
render the game/play unfair, initially, with people starting to give up or give
bad critics after having played such a game for an hour or something with you
as the developer thinking they haven't even mastered 10% of the game. Must be
daunting. Anyone?

As a fan of traditional arcade games, I have noticed this problem in mainstream reviews. You've got well-known reviewers on big sites crapping on games without the slightest understanding of how to approach the game (eg. credit feeding through a hard game and then complaining about it being only half an hour long, literally asking for more filler content (!) and so on).

My thoughts:
1) Motivate the players to put in the work to learn. Show them what the game is really about, show the cool stuff that is possible with the mechanics. This is hard to do but sometimes possible in-game, more straightforward to do out of game, and videos also work as advertising before the player gets the game. Frequently you'll need both skilled play and commentary in order to understand and appreciate what's happening. Juicing the game / Pavlovian feedback could help to invisibly motivate them even if they don't yet have any clue what they are "supposed" to do - make sure you have the sound, animation, etc. feedback reward players for trying to use the harder mechanics. This obviously only works on low level, not tactical or strategic level. In a multiplayer game, leverage social motivation (eg. Overwatch's "Play of the Game" system).
2) Do a better job at teaching the player to use the mechanics. Make them believe they can learn if they want to. Integrated into the level design, as separate tutorials, as demos/videos in game, as external videos (Youtube etc.). There's only one exception I can think of where it might not be possible to teach more - puzzle-ish games where figuring out the mechanics is a key part of the fun.
3) Don't stop the learning support at casual level. For instance, let players watch their own replays and see analysis data in a RTS game, and include very hard tutorials and challenges (with appropriate warnings...) in addition to just casual tutorials.

Obviously if you want commercial success with a hard/complex game, you should consider accommodating the players who don't master the hard mechanics so they also have a good time. Depending on the design you can't always do much without compromising the original vision, but often you can do something. Let's say you have a fighting game and you some kind of reason to make the execution of some move/combo so hard that the weak or intermediate players can't do it at all. If the great players will still pull it off all of the time, why not give everybody else an alternative move/combo with similar function and 80% effectiveness with an easy input? The pros aren't ever going to use that so it doesn't affect their experience, but everybody else gets closer to the "real game" where that type of move is supposed to be an option.

 

[kiguel182]

Hi everyone!

I haven't been super active here but I have some updates. Since the last time I posted (like five or more months ago) college kinda took over my life for a bit so the game got pushed aside. After that was over I focused on polishing up the, still called, prototype and I added some new levels and some menus.

Here's a gif to break the text:

Anyway, I also joined up with some friends to offload some of the work and to help me with art related stuff and organisation. We even have a cool logo now!

For those who don't know (or remember) my game is kinda of a puzzle thing that requires precise execution where you change directions with the space key and try to get to the end of the level. Pretty simple stuff. There's also an optional objective on each level. To get full completion you also need to catch the gold thingy while finishing it.

I have two new versions of the prototype (this is the important bit) one where there's an indication on the ball of what the next direction is (you can only change from horizontal to vertical movement) and one without those indications. If you have the time it would be great if you could test both to see if this is needed/helpful/good. There's a level selector and you can jump around to test stuff since everything is unlocked.

With indication

Without indication

Every kind of feedback besides the one I talked about is welcomed. If there's a bad level or some dumb bug I would love to know!

Anyway, thanks to anyone who can help and give some feedback. Hopefully I can invest more time into this and get it out this year still!

And, as a last update, here's the (almost) final art for one of the early levels:

 

[neko.works]

I downloaded the demo and gave it a try since i've seen your project a few times and it interests me, so I'll give you my toughts.

Thanks for your feedback! Here's my thoughts:

Sound design, i find it really lackluster, mostly on the combat sounds, they had no impact, also they were really quiet vs the music.

I've been designing the sounds myself so far, planning to work with an actual sound designer if the KickStarter is successful.

You know i said that being able to see npcs in the combat is cool? that sadly causes things like this...

The camera placement is dynamic, it can cause issues if there are things near the battle zone. I'll fix this, thanks!

Visually the lightning spell has no impact.

Yep, maybe scaling up the actual lightning effect should do it.

The damage numbers get mixed with the character models.

Yes, I'll probably put the numbers a bit higher.

I got really confused at the start when she tells you to go to a shop in the lower part of town, then you walk around and get forced to go to a door that leads to the town. But one screen behind there was a sign with "lower part" in it, what does that mean? i'm IN the lower part? does that lead TO the lower part? does the right entrace lead to the lower part?

The sign lead to the city, the entry is where all the soldiers are, but it is closed.

Thanks again

 

[Poetic.Injustice]

Thanks for your feedback! Here's my thoughts:



I've been designing the sounds myself so far, planning to work with an actual sound designer if the KickStarter is successful.



The camera placement is dynamic, it can cause issues if there are things near the battle zone. I'll fix this, thanks!



Yep, maybe scaling up the actual lightning effect should do it.



Yes, I'll probably put the numbers a bit higher.



The sign lead to the city, the entry is where all the soldiers are, but it is closed.

Thanks again

I made a thread here.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1282373&highlight=light+fairytale

 

[neko.works]

I made a thread here.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1282373&highlight=light+fairytale

Awesome. Thanks!

 

[MrHoot]

Been a little bit ! I was at PAX and TGS for another game but still did some progress on my personal project !

Now got a 4-chain ground combo, following camera, test particles, screenshake, some polish on the anims as well as the character appearing more flexible (like having a fall reception)