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0 pointshellbanner8y ago0 comments

Arcade game developer here.

I loved the game concept of ABA's "Defeat Me": http://wonderfl.net/c/9ykQ . SHMUP where each enemy is a copy of you. Round 3 you fight a clone of Round 1, Round 2, mirrored.

but I disagreed with several major design decisions:

1) Rounds were too difficult (a deadline came in very fast, the bullets were nearly the size of the ship) 2) Player movement & weapons changed rapidly (speed & number of shots per spread was a modulo on the level number 3) Losing meant you retried the same level.. at that point in the game, you basically be stuck. I wanted the game to restart.

I improved on the game with pixel-perfect collision, weapon animations and other design decisions like letting the player screen-wrap around the edge but not the clones, regaining time on the deadline when you killed a clone and more.

I even experimented with a co-op, 2 variants of 1 Versus 1 mode and a Replay site before removing them for the core experience.

I made the game because I wanted to play it. Making money was a secondary goal but I'm proud of the game and find it way more fun than most games I've played. How many games do you know that have an AI procedurally determined by your movements?

Revenue earned: 3 * $10 on "pay what you want" from itch.io. 1 from a friend's friend who overhead on a Skype chat that I made a game, 1 from an indie developer at a games meetup and 1 from a friend when I sent them a link.

+ < $100 from iOS sales (I switched from the iOS app to Desktop (Win/Mac/Linux with Eletron packager) for a better experience and more fun coding.

I think it's cool that $10 was the amount chosen by 3 people who didn't know each other as a valuation for the game. However it's disappointing that all 3 were people who knew me.

I sent out ~100 emails to game reviewers with download links and got 1 brief article but no revenue.

Why: Discovering games is hard. Marketing to people who would like this kind of puzzle-y arcade game is difficult to reach without looking like a spammer or spending $.

Differently: Not try so many weird experiments with gameplay and focus on the core relentlessly + Playtest more.

Iterations: 2 prototypes from TigJam. 2 more iOS versions then another re-write for an App Store launch. 2 Javascript versions (the latter being launched) + 1 seperate version for multiplayer.

Time: Hundreds of hours. Maybe a thousand? A lot of this was done earlier on when I was less experienced with programming + design. I playtested a lot

Lessons for Game Developers: Playtest often, stick to the core relentlessly. Carve away crap that doesn't fit no matter how cool it is or fun to make. I spent too much time iterating on mobile interfaces when gamepad controller support was far superior and passed "the bar test" (give to strangers at a bar and watch them cheer other strangers on as they pass the controller around).

Play [1], An old trailer [2]

[1] http://QuantumPilot.me (redirects to itch.io) [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy_GBLM_6Qs

0 comments

s_m_t8y ago

I just played your game, it is extremely fun but I think there is a lot of missed potential and to be honest I would never buy it in its current state. It feels like a tech demo rather than a full game. My unsolicited advice is as follows:

The art is boring. Most bullet hell games either have a mecha or anime art style with a lot of flashy effects. The closest in style to your game is probably geometry wars but your game lacks all of the color, warping, and particle effects that makes geometry wars look cool. You should invest money in the art.

It is very interesting that whenever you die in the game you are essentially killing yourself, or some sort of past version of yourself is killing a future version of you. There should be some sort of narrative element to highlight and expand upon this idea. I think it is way less interesting to sell it as "your enemies learn from you" when you could be selling as "a battle against all your past selves", way more emotional content in the latter, you're fighting all of your mistakes, all of your hubris, all of your near-sightedness, and every shot you take is another nail in your coffin.

To expound on this emotional element your character should be some sort of actual character, not just a green triangle... This doesn't mean you need a big backstory or cutscenes or anything major like that, something as simple as a drawing of a cute girl with a couple lines of dialogue will suffice. the thing you actually control can still be a spaceship but the player should know there is a character inside of it and they should know what they look like, you could make it so off to the side of the screen the characters face could pop up and react to what is going on. Go to tumblr and ask some type of fan artist to draw you a 'time traveling spaceship pilot that battles her past self and is really cute" and pay them for their work. Then when you die you can see that same character pop out of the space ship that killed you and celebrate ;)

You should rethink the gameplay progression and how the levels work. It doesn't seem clear to me why you split up the gameplay into discrete levels rather than having continuous play with 'respawning' enemies. I don't see why I have go through the weapon type progression linearly each time either (shouldn't I be able to collect or switch weapons or something?), reminds me of my main issue with geometry wars which was that I had to play for about 15 minutes before the game really became fun and that I had to redo that boring 15 minutes every time I died. Just start me with the fun gameplay or make the ramp up period very short.

hellbannerOP8y ago

Thank you for your feedback!

I will have to think about the art. I went for minimalist approach where nothing but core mechanical data is shown.

I see that this kind of minimalist approach isn't super popular (you + others have commented, I forgot to put that in my first comment).

In my next game (a 2P versus game, also available at www.Combo.Zone ), I experimented with excessive particle effects but art is a major weakness of my development.

Characterization + avatar: Spot on points, thank you.

There is poem at the end that sort of explains the story, but it's very tacked on. What I'm taking from your feedback is that some sort of context - no matter how thin - is critical to keep players engaged.

Levels: Thanks for bringing this up. Fully continuous gameplay felt a little too confusing + overwhelming - by clearing a wave down to the last enemy you get a moment of relief.

It takes under 5 minutes to get through all of the levels, at which point the game changes and you get a continuous set of 8 clones (still kill from 8 to 1, then the 1st in the list is replaced by your last pattern) with random weapons. It's the most fun part of the game IMO but it's difficult without knowing what all the weapons are (identified by color).

I tried a weapon unlock system where you scored points for killing enemies + could purchase a weapon between stages to upgrade. More accurate shooting gave you more points faster so you could skip the easier parts quicker the more experienced you were.

I'm sorry to hear you found the first parts boring so quickly.

If you want to try the more fun part, open up game.js in the source and change line 626 to " this.quantumpilot = true" ... to make the weapons random every level.

And ah crap, you helped me find a bug. With the new 2 color scheme for each stage, the final stage would still have all the enemies the same color instead of being differentiated. Thanks stranger.

I will send your comments to an artist I know and get their take on it.

I'm leaning towards leaving the game as is though, and moving onto new projects. My next big project is all about characters - a Choose Your Own adventure where you see the same events from different perspectives. You start as a barista in a coffee shop and whoever you give coffee too is who you play as next until they return.

s_m_t8y ago

> Thank you for your feedback!

No problem, I love ranting about video games

>Levels: Thanks for bringing this up. Fully continuous gameplay felt a little too confusing + overwhelming - by clearing a wave down to the last enemy you get a moment of relief.

I hadn't considered that, it could be that something like a continuously scrolling background could get the feeling I was looking for. I guess it has something to do with having a sense of location or presence in the game. This might seem a little bizarrely nitpicky but when I get teleported back to home position at the beginning of each level it feels sort of wrong... like, is the space I'm in now even the same space as the last level, has any amount of time passed for my spaceship since then? I'm not sure if anyone else cares about this sort of thing though...

>I'm sorry to hear you found the first parts boring so quickly.

This is a very common issue I have with games like this, geometry wars, asteroids, etc. I want to be playing the crazy parts! It's a difficult problem because the early parts also have to function as a sort of tutorial and a breathing/ramp up period and you also might not want dynamic difficulty because of things like high scores so it isn't a trivial problem. It isn't unique to your game at all and I'm not sure anyone has solved the problem satisfactorily.

>If you want to try the more fun part, open up game.js in the source and change line 626 to " this.quantumpilot = true" ... to make the weapons random every level.

Awesome, thanks!

Cool game, I'm gonna follow your future games, the choose your own adventure barista game sounds interesting

1 more reply

chrisdbaldwin8y ago

Have you tried reaching out to physical arcades? It requires a physical cabinet, but most arcades in the US that I've been to are very receptive to indie arcade titles.

hellbannerOP8y ago

I've looked at it a bit! Got interest from 1 local arcade.

Cabinets are expensive to build + take effort to maintain (replacing parts) so it would have to be calculated.

I've done a little bit of prototyping in "play games on a shared screen with your cellphone" that I think might be more conducive to the barcade scene. Something I might look into further; right now my next focus is on a GPS-based ChooseYourOwnAdventure + some tools for indie developers.

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