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What did people think of my game demo? (Patreon)

Published:
2022-02-28 18:00:07
Imported:
2022-03

Content

Hey, it's the new episode of Developing! This time I dissect the feedback on my Minimum Viable Product, and figure out what's next for Untitled Magnet Game! 

Oh yeah, my series has also been nominated for a Unity award in the category Insider Devlog. If you have a spare minute, I'd really appreciate a vote on the site here. 

Cheers!

Mark

Files

What did people think of my game demo?

GMTK is powered by Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit Last time on Developing, I released a “minimum viable product” to get feedback. What did people think, and where should I take the game next? You can play the demo here: https://gmtk.itch.io/untitled-magnet-game === Credits === Fan Art courtesy of Balazs and Chira Video playthroughs by SlamBamActionman, Rarelike, SamFiz, Dot[wo], Sureal, Video Game Story Time, Oliver Granlund. Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported "Share Alike" (CC BY-SA 3.0) License. YouTube Audio Library Music and sound effects provided by Epidemic Sound - https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/vtdu5y (Referral Link) === Subtitles === Contribute translated subtitles - TBA

Comments

Anonymous

Thanks for your persistence on this series mark!

Virak

Not going to lie, I'm pretty stoked that one of my survey responses flashed on-screen for a second. Haha.

Anonymous

On making the magnet more central as a game mechanic--perhaps make more of the possible actions within the game hinge on using the magnet, for example, not being strong enough to push platforms, but being able to suck them towards you or push them away with positive or negatively charged magnets. You could draw attention to magnetism as a core mechanic by making all or most movement of various elements that takes place visually associate with the idea of being pulled or pushed by magnetism, even if it isn't from the player. Also the idea of magnetic propulsion seems very cool to me as well--if the player can hold the magnet below them to be able to hover over a section that would otherwise be dangerous that would be very cool.

Anonymous

"This is a game where you overcome problems through clever use of magnetism." Like Carson said about comedy, "If you buy the premise, you buy the bit." You got this! (Personal note: When a game is meant to centrally feature a conceit, and even interacting with that conceit is several steps away - e.g. pick it up, lob it, etc. - then I feel as though I'm a layer of abstraction apart from the game. Like playing VVVVVV where you don't flip the gravity yourself, but always have to shoot a button in every room. Something inherent to the character player that centers magnetic interaction, even if all the verbs make those interactions more complex. Something something.)

Anonymous

Hey, as a software engineer for over a decade, I want to strongly encourage you not to start from scratch. Your game right now has plenty of bugs yes. But it also has a lot of bug fixes. You've run across some weird edge cases and accounted for them in your game. And you probably forgot what they were. If you restart from scratch, you're signing up for having to fix all the old bugs you already fixed and a whole bunch of new ones.

Anonymous

Two personal pieces of advice as a dev. 1) The problem with airlocks is you're basically stuck making only the cleanest designs, and the most interesting designs come out of the interconnected messiness. Cutting out the messiness is cutting out a CRITICAL time in design. You should be putting things in front of people to playtest the moment you get it working at all, even if it means they break it in 10 different ways. That gives you 10 new opportunities to ask "is this just a bug, is this a design case that leads to more interesting and better design, or is this a failure of design". You can spend a month in front of a design doc trying to answer this and discover it on paper, but it won't be anywhere near as productive as just watching someone play and taking notes. Plus, if you're only pushing 1 mechanic at a time out of quarantine, you'll have a lot of trouble building those "a-ha moments". I would go so far as to say that it's not really game design unless you playtest it. I write design docs that come at a problem with years of experience, new ideas on how to solve player expectations and mechanical interconnectedness, but none of that is done unless it survives contact with players, and none of it ever survives without messiness and reworks that can only be discovered in playtest. To not let it touch players until it's spotless is to waste a ton of time polishing work that you instead should throw out and change, and it leads to issues where you've spent too much time on a thing to justify throwing pieces out. Then you might end up looking at features entirely as "ship the whole feature or scrap the whole feature" with no in between, until that becomes "ship the whole game or scrap the whole game". 2) Don't *necessarily* start from scratch. The number one most valuable programming resource is work that is already done. 90% of the time, taking what you already have and adjusting it, or composing it, into what you want is faster and more efficient. But if there are things you simply cannot do because the systems you built cannot support it, I have two more pieces of advice. First, try and avoid unnecessary structure. Build out the pieces you need as simply as possible. Don't solve problems you don't have. Don't write functionality you don't need until you actually need it. And second, look at your coding *process* as a thing that can potentially be improved. If you find yourself writing really rigid, or messy code. The problem isn't with the end product, it's with the process that leads you to creating code like that frequently.

Anonymous

Giving the magnet a personality is a wonderful idea. My immediate thought is Maggie the magnet. Even some simple facial animations like bracing for impact could go a long way.

Anonymous
>>78863232

Great advice about the issues with the airlock method. I've had the same experience with excessive amounts of polish leading to reluctance to overhaul or drop an idea.

Anonymous

Thanks for posting this series. It’s been great seeing how you go through things. BitSummit (Kyoto) just opened their submissions today, it would be great to see you and your game in this part of the world!

Anonymous

hi everyone!