Sunday, April 5, 2009

Level 1 Progress

Motivated by all the  positive feedback on the demo I got straight to work on the beginning part of the game. 
I also received some good criticism that I'm going to attempt to work on as well. In fact, I'm going to list a couple of the common complaints and some solutions right here:

  • Too much is left to guess work 
Since the demo is actually the second level of the game I've made sure that the first level will introduce the game play mechanics to the player. Also, I'm adding dialog to the game which will help solve this problem and others.

  • Needed more direction
  • Some things were not obvious enough (hidden passageways, the point of the karma system)
As I mentioned, I'm adding Dialog to the game  which will help give the game more direction, explain game play mechanics and develop the plot. I wanted to avoid doing dialog originally because I though if it sounded cheesy or contrived it could ruin the experience. But I think it's the only way I can make the game work. 

  • NPCs and enemies look too similar
This was partially a game design choice and partially because my graphics abilities are very limited. I chose to have enemies and NPCs look similar because, like in life, evil is not black and white. One's appearance can often be deceiving. There is a way to tell who will attack and hurt you and who won't and that will be explained in the game, via dialog . :)

More later...

3 comments:

KennEH! said...

Aw man. I know it's kinda late but I'll give my two cents anyway. I find to much dialogue hurts the atmosphere. Having little to no words make it more charming in my opinion.

Also maybe it's my years of gaming experience, but I was able to do everything without much thought. Except use the moneybags but I never really took them out of their areas to find out what they do, wanted to save something for the full version.

I found that using Buddha wasn't the best choice. Buddha believed that their should be a balance between good and bad Karma. I think an Hindu god like Shiva would be better. In Hindu it is believed that bad Karma induces wrongs in your life and Good Karma brings good fortune.

Just my thoughts.

Stephen Orlando said...

Ken,
Thanks for playing it through and for the critiques. I agree that too much dialog hurts the flow or feel of the game but I decided that it would be worth it so I could add more complex moral dilemmas. I'm going to leave in the symbols word bubble system as well so you can do a minimal amount of talking if you wish and still know what characters want.

As far as the choice or Buddha, I did toss that back and forth because I realize I'm not following any particular belief system. Rather it's my loose interpretation of the rudimentary research i did on reincarnation and karma. I think it'd be better if I create a fictional religious deity. But I will look more into Shiva and see how that fits.

Pixelity said...

I'm still interested on turning your game into something like this:

http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/tt138/undwight/karma.png

pls. follow link...

If you need any help in your graphics, I'm just a "pm" away.