Comments (5)
On the implication that I could go back and make this better-
No.
I tried to make this clear, but even though the game is slightly unfinished... from the moment I released it, I didn't plan on ever touching it again.
This is a very old project, and I would feel very weird just repairing issues. At this point, I could make better graphics, better sound, better code... If I started this over, it would be substantially improved in every area. But I have other plans for different things.
I really do wish I could communicate those dreams I mentioned... But for now, that's just a dream, too.
I have plenty of other things to work on.
On the procedural environments-
This was my first attempt at the concept. As soon as I got it working at all, I left it at that... I couldn't do any better at the time (and remember, that was a long while ago).
The randomness is a vital part of the game (replayability was an emphasis of the project), so taking it out would be pretty stupid. But, yeah, as it is now, it just doesn't work very well.
On the things you felt weren't explained-
Did you read the manual? The manual does talk about wall jumping, and it explains the classes to the extent I wanted them explained (which is that, yes, they are different, but you have to learn what those differences are yourself).
On the blandness-
I was trying to communicate the atmosphere of some serial dreams I was having for a long period of time. I wanted it to feel cold and austere. The grayness and the theme of water were very important.
It ended up just being boring, so what would have been one of the biggest draws of the game turned out to not be present at all. I realized that myself pretty quickly, and it was immensely disappointing, because if it had worked, this would have been a very personal game... If it had expressed what I had intended, I would have been happy with it even if nobody else was.
As it is... no one is happy with it, including me.
xP
On the idea of purposelessness-
Here is where I'll have to strongly disagree with your conclusion. The manual gives the basic premise of the game, but beyond that, you're supposed to find out what is going on by reading the terminals. I think it works really well... But the whole story isn't told until you get through about a hundred floors, and nobody is going to want to stick with the game for that long.
The previous comment got cut off, so I'll just relist the small stuff:
wall-jumps have unintuitive controls - you have to switch directions really fast from pointing at the wall to away from it
the classes are not explained, and the standard system menu used to select them looks very unprofessional, especially since you don't use the mouse anywhere else in the game
It seems like a lot of effort was put into making this game, and that's good - but it is unfortunately not a good game yet.
Procedural generation is very hard to pull off - most of the time you get something playable, but bland and boring. This is unfortunately the case here - the levels are very same-ish, and there is nothing to tickle the exploration instinct in the player.
The random level design, coupled with a not very able player character (low, short jumps, difficult to pull of wall jumps) make the whole thing irritating - traversing the level should be fun. At one point I saw an item (I assume it was, a rectangle with an arrow over it) which was clearly reachable with a few wall-jumps, but got frustrated before I was able to pull it off. At one time, the level was generated without an exit, which made me quit the game entirely.
The game lacks a sense of purpose. You are tossed into a grey, empty level with little information as to what you are actually trying to achieve. The first few levels are completely empty to boot. I was about to close the game already when I encountered the first enemies.
The graphics/sound department is okay, so no complaints here - a little bland-looking, but coherent style and it's a strong point of this game.
In my opinion, you should either ditch the random generation angle and make the level design interesting, or work on it much, much more to make the randomly generated levels make more sense. In either case, provide some story, or at least something to hook the player, and make it easier to move around the level. I would also make the game faster to really start - it's unacceptable to have the first enemy on the third level, most people will probably get somewhat bored before even getting to them.
I'd rate it 2.5 for now, which might seem harsh - but there is lots of room for improvement.
Small stuff:
wall-jump controls are not explained anywhere, and unintuitive - you have to keep pointing at the wall
Talk about a google-friendly name xP
Game Soundtrack
I heard procedures were trendy, so I put them in my game.
Actually, that's not really true. I started this over a year ago, when they were less trendy. They were probably still trendy (I honestly don't remember; that was kind of a while ago), but not as much as they are now.
This does not necessarily represent a year's worth of work. Development time was random and sporadic. The game is definitely still rough-edged, but I am more or less done working on it. There are a lot of things I don't like about it, but I'm not going to go back and fix them now.
!°µ1.53 is a platform shooter with procedurally generated environments. It has a fair number of enemies, weapons, etc., but it is very hard to get far enough to see everything.
#platformer
