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Yoh / PlaytestReviewsCorporateLoyaltyFrom the professor: You got the basic game to work, although I think that your last minute change of controls hurt you - they either need to be rethought (or tuned). So much of the experience seemed to be fighting with the controls... 1. Idea: I like the idea, although its not clear to me how well the humor/variety in the idea came out in the playtest. I think I might have under-estimated how hard it would be to tune the game such that things were balanced well enough that the fun elements shined through. 2. Promise: I think its still promising. The basic idea (having a variety of things to lob, and making the use of these things a meaningful choice) still seems good. 3. Current State: In the current state, i found things too frustrating: - The throwing mechanic/UI was too hard for me to get a handle on, and really got in the way - The game wasn't well enough balanced (too hard to hit things with small objects, ...) - The meaningfulness of the choices wasn't clear to me (other than cows going splat, it wasn't clear they were a different weapon, or why I should make an informed choice of when to use it) 4. Experience At the present point, it totally relied on explanation for the demo giver. There was no indication what to do. Playing (for me) was just a frustrating exercise in trying to master the throwing mechanic. 5. The implementation seems solid and seemed to perform well. And it had some nice touches like before/after splash screens. 6. Good/Bad Good: I think the basic idea, as well as the ways that you are getting some strategy into it. Bad: - The throwing mechanic! - The balance (it seems that its so picky about hit detection that its almost luck). Its either too hard/too easy - The lack of feeling like the choices are meaningful. (why would i choose to throw a monitor, not a cow?) 7. What should be fixed: You need a better UI! You need to balance the game better such that the player has a feeling of why their decisions are meaningful. And to make it more than just "can I figure out how to throw things." From the TA: This game is starting to be fun. It's definitely challenging & goals are compelling. [promise] This game could be much better given some UI improvements and game tweaks. [current state] Playable and fun, but the interface (aiming) makes it very challenging to hit things, especially at the base of your tower. [game experience] The UI had to be explained. It took a while to sink in. [implementation] Pretty solid. There were a few unexplained crashes. [good/bad] Good: You want to meet your goal. Bad: It's really hard to aim at things. [if you had more time...] Definitely change the way you aim. Click on a piece of ground to shoot a cow there. This still preserves the desires scaling of challenge (harder to hit at distances, because you have to lead). I think it should be very easy to hit things at the base of your tower. To balance this, you might have them do more damage once they get to your tower. The graphics don't convince me that you're shooting anything from your tower. The shadow of the projectile cow should travel from your tower to the target ground. Add area of effect weapons, traps, and other weapons to help control and direct the traffic of enemies. From your classmates: 1. I think the game idea is fairly creative and has a good amount of potential. Its an addition to the family of defend against a hoard game with the twist of different buildings/projectiles to use. 2. I think the game could definitely become a solid game. 3. The game in its current state is short and unbalanced, and a little too hard to aim. However beyond that its in very good shape. I say short because there is only 3 levels. Hard to aim because its hard to hit units at the base of your tower, which should be the easiest to hit. And unbalanced because getting the factory before the farm is far harder than getting the farm before the factory. 4. The only instructions I needed was how to use the controls. I think how many of each projectile I have left should be more obvious as well as when I've run out. 5. I think the game might have crashed once. Beyond that the implementation was solid. 6. The progression of picking what building to build for the next round is good. Aiming is hard. Feedback about when you hit something and when your being hurt is lacking. 7. I think the game should be balanced, aiming / hitting made a little easier, feedback given, more levels created. 1. Before playing, I thought that the idea of the game sounded very uninteresting, however afterwards I realized that it is actually a fun game. It's pretty simple; just throw items at oncoming invaders, but it has an addicting quality to it. 2. I think this could be a very good game. There is plenty of room to keep adding variety and new enemies. This makes for a game that gets harder, but also one that keeps changing to provide new and interesting challenges. 3. The game is in a good state right now. There a few control issues, but otherwise it is fun to play. It seems like it should be fairly easy to add in new levels to provide variety and longer play. 4. It was fairly easy to pick up. Some of the controls weren't intuitive, such as having to hold down the right mouse button, but there were instructions. Close range targets were also difficult to hit at first. 5. It was a pretty solid implementation. The control issues were all that needed to be overlooked. 6. The game is rather simple, but that seems like a good thing as it makes it easier to pick up. There are some nice visual effects which add to the experience. There are a few things to be fixed up, but I don't think there is anything bad about the game. 7. The biggest change would involve making the controls more intuitive. Next comes making close targets easier to hit. A part of that could involve a larger destruction radius, especially for larger items. Making your score matter could be useful. Otherwise, just try to add more levels with new challenges. The game idea is pretty cool, it reminds me of beachhead 2000. With more time the comic aspect of this could be increased and more buildings/projectiles added. In its current state the game has a pretty big learning curve in that throwing is hard. Explosion radius for objects would help this. Throwing things was pretty easy, and I like the system of it moving, which adds chalenge, but making the projectiles hit easier would be nice. There were times when the base of a building got swarmed and there was little I could do to stop them. Tossing some kind of goo onto them would be cool. The implementation did not crash, and many of the menus and text were very well done. There should be more variation in the effects of the projectiles. More buildings, fences, and bigger varing projectiles would be good aditions if they have the time. The game idea behind Corporate Loyalty is fairly simple, which is an advantage in this project with the limited time available to implement it. Especially since there's a few directions to branch the game out into that give the player a good amount of choice. Since it utilizes a simple mechanic, the game requires a little larger amount of content to avoid becoming repetitive. Since the trade-off between the time spent to add content and the additional fun added by that content is good, I think the game has a lot of potential. The game gave me the impression that it is on it's way to being a lot of fun. It suffered only slightly from a lack of sufficient instructions. The firing mechanism is somewhat non-intuitive, but the rest of the controls were very easy to pick up. It only crashed once, the same as everyone else's game. The firing mechanism in particular needs some work. It should be either more forgiving, or easier to use. There wouldn't be anything wrong with adding a short firing time delay to limit the player. I really enjoyed the humor that the team put into the game--the exploding cows were great. I like the idea behind this game, though the user interface was aggravating. It was very visually appealing. The terrain and models looked great, though there could have been more detail in the buildings to keep up with the greater polygon count of the cows. It could be a very cool game with additional time, and some randomized enemy spawning could enhance replayability. Further, it is just plain funny, particularly the cowtapult. The user interface needs to be rethought. First, the rate of fire was limited as an artifact of the aiming mechanism, meaning it took longer to kill dudes that are further away. It was also exceedingly difficult to kill dude who were nearby. There were times I felt that I had missed just slightly and it should have been given to me as a hit. If a 750kg cow landed at my feet and erupted in a pink mist of blood and pulverized bone, I'd want to go home and take a shower, irregardless of my political ambitions and economic frustrations. The same probably goes for a computer monitor since they contain mercury. I felt as though the nuclear waste should have exploded and contaminated the nearby people. Then they could have turned into a race of huge mutant dudes, since everyone knows radiation makes things grow bigger, faster. I'd like to have access to more than one weapon to begin with. Maybe an area of effect weapon that does low damage and a projectile that is a guaranteed kill. I think there were one or two times the game crashed, but it never during gameplay. 1. The idea is pretty simple, tried and tested. The particulars of the game are neat, and the story is hilarious. I like the idea of multiple buildings. 2. Again, pretty good. In fact, I don't think the team needs that much more time for a good game. 3. Overall, quite good. There are two suggestions I had (which you guys know but I'm putting here for completeness): a change of controls to eliminate holding the right mouse button, and some way to actually hit the people who are at your tower. The first could be done a couple different ways. With the first, mouselook works like a FPS, where there is no cursor. In this mode, you would need to figure out a good way to change weapons and locations. Keyboard controls of these aspects would probably be the way to do it best, though you may or may not want to provide another way. You should be sure to display the key to press by the corresponding icon. (Maybe 1-3 to change what you're throwing and 7-9 to change the building you're throwing from.) The second way would be to leave the mouse cursor, and turn by moving to the side of the screen. With this, you would need to figure out how to fire somewhere other than straight ahead. I doubt this would be too difficult. I don't know which way would ultimately be better. The second problem is that when someone is at the base of your tower, by the time you see the orange dot, it's almost too late to react. You really need to develop a good sense of how long it will take to reach the edge. The best way to fix this I think is to draw the indication of the firing location so that it's visible even when it's "under" the tower. Alternately, you could start it at the edge, so if someone was there it would probably just be click and release. I know there was a suggestion to change the mechanic so you only have to point and click to fire, and not do the holding down the button. I don't think I like this idea. I like the mechanic as-is. 4. The controls were explained; I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have figured out the right-click thing without help. I also may not have tried clicking on the building icons to move, which was also explained. I also had to ask whether you had limited ammo. 5. Only the controls, discussed previously, were a problem. In all other respects, the current implementation was very stable. 6. Good: it's already pretty fun. It also looks really really good. I think you guys did a very nice job. I'm not sure what to say besides that. I also had a difficult time beating the second level (with just the farm). I eventually got it, and that was satisfying. Bad: see the other points for my complaints/suggestions. The only thing I would add here is a difficulty setting. It could control the number/distribution of enemies, your health, and/or how difficult they are to hit. 7. The original proposal was absolutely hilarious. I think that you should take a large part of the "detailed description" section, rewrite it only slightly, and put it in-game at the beginning. (Of course, make it skippable.) The other thing I was a little disappointed to see is that stuff doesn't bounce. This would probably be difficult to add, but I think would definitely add something. Buildings should have better indicators of health; maybe some sort of bar floating over them, or make the building itself flash when it's low on health. I wasn't looking at the minimap at all once enemies got close enough to attack. Also, do cows moo when you throw them? I forget. It'd be a pity if they don't. ;-) Idea: Great idea, throwing random objects around is usually fun, especially if there's interesting effects upon collision. Promise: Could be a lot of fun, with a large variety of objects with interesting effects. Ragdoll physics on the thrown objects/enemies would add a lot, but would obviously take some time to implement. Current State: Fun, but short. Could use more levels and more different items to throw. Some mechanics issues, such as throwing an item at an enemy close to a building. Experience: No in-game documentation, had to ask the person giving the demo for the controls. Thankfully the game is easy to understand, so it didn't take much, but some screen showing the controls and objective would be helpful. Implementation: Very solid, no crashes, no unexpected things occurred. There were no "oh, you can't do that yet" moments. Good Parts: Throwing objects is fun. Aiming is somewhat difficult but not too hard that it gets frustrating. Difficultly seemed good. Bad Parts: Short, could use more levels. Also needs a lot more weapons- there should be more than three. Aiming is a bit frustrating; the time taken to throw at a far-away enemy is a bit high considering the small hit radius. Things to be added: More weapons and levels. More feedback in terms of how much health each building has. |