If you return to the menu at any time during a level, a music recursion occurs that almost broke my speakers it was so loud. The only thing that saved them was me barely unplugging them in time because *the mute music button does not work* at all; this recursion would be completely unacceptable in any sort of programming used by anyone who actually plans on making money. Fix it immediately.
@AuronCartuum, about a PvP combination of this and "Don't Touch my Gems," that's called Wintermaul Wars. It was a WC3 PvP Team TD map made years ago. A flash version would be nice, but it would never compare to WMW without balancing and lots of support from experienced game developers.
To make a toggle, create a memory bit, then wire up a NOT gate to each input. For the condition input of each NOT gate, wire those up to opposite outputs of the memory bit. For the power inputs, wire those up to a single input. Then, whenever a signal is received, it will be routed to the input whose memory output is currently *not* on. If it doesn't work, try switching which inputs the NOT gates go to.
Scenes heard around the Gnome Cafeteria... "Sir! We're fighting a war! Why should we lose a battle when we destroy their town but not their gold?" "Because, soldier, my satisfaction is more important than your curiosity!" ... "Why can't we hit their propulsion system if it would achieve the same objective? Sir!" "That would cause civilian casualties, soldier!" "But aren't we supposed to -" "Next question!" ... "You tell us to use the proper weapon for the right situation, sir! But your talking prevents us from assessing the situation, sir!" "Are you questioning my right to free speech, soldier?" "Sir, no, sir!" ... "What happens if they fire back, sir?" "Have you ever been in a war where that has happened, soldier?" "But, sir, this is my first -" "OF COURSE NOT soldier! This is a war, not some video game!"
I loved this game, just as I loved Shadow of The Colossus. It is beautifully done, much in the style of SoTC. It is (like others have said) difficult to piece together what the colossus actually looks like in your head, which makes finally 'finishing' a colossus all that much more rewarding. It would be amazing if the colossi were more mobile, although the rotating camera (a brilliant addition) made it feel as though they might throw you off. I also think that it would be nice, once you 'finish' a colossus, that the game would make you almost regret killing it, via a longer sequence with a more complex death animation. Because, that is partially what the game is about!
A fun game. Rather short, I must say. While the upgrade system certainly makes you become absurdly powerful by the end (I had everything but max HP to max) it is still fun. A couple things that would make it better IMO: downgrade the upgrade system. Like I said before, you can become absurdly powerful, to the point of where it *everything* vs you and you win. Give the player fewer points to spend and make them think about the upgrade choices before buying. On that note, also give detailed explanations (and maybe examples) of what each upgrade would do. And the other thing: make environmental things besides bases, such as: slow movement zones, blocks, fast movement zones, hide zones (you cannot see anyone, or shoot but they can't hurt you) npc bonuses, and other things found in similar games.
As far as art games go, this is a great game! The lack of lag is very nice. I do have a few suggestions though: First off, the scales. When you drag a slider even such a small distance as a single pixel, that slider increases by 4-176 (depending on the slider). What I would like to see is either a scale that increases on a 1:1 ratio or be able to type in our own values for the scales. Or both would be great. Also about the scales: instead of making the slider % linear (25%=25, 50%=50, 75%=75, etc.) try making it a curve (25%=10, 50%=30, 75%=70, etc.). See the "Phun" physics simulator for a great example of curved scales using sliders and text inputs. The Blur and attractor/repulsor Strength sliders by far suffer the most from this non-curved slider problem. If you can't make changes to those, then at least make changes on the other side of the ratio by allowing us to change to weight of the pixels so that we could scale it to our own creation, instead of having it scaled for us.
Fun game, well made but most certainly not well tested. Depending on how fast your fingers can move, the numerous loading delays of ~1 second each can either kill you or save you. I tested it, you can win every single spacebar-spamming minigame by pressing the spacebar only in the loading delays. The desert directions disappeared after you finish the mini-quest, and it's impossible to find them out again inside of the game. And the timing 'hitbox' for the bomb on the final boss is ridiculous. If you hit it before the bomb is tossed you fail, and if you hit it once the bomb is ~25%+ of the way through, you also fail.
But on the plus side, the art was wonderful, it held together cohesively extremely well, and the dialogue was hilarious.
This is a nice TD. Nothing new about anything, all of it was done in various WC3 TDs before. The only thing that this TD does better than everything else is integration. All of its various features work so well with one another that instead of feeling like a patchwork of ideas from dozens of TDs, it all feels like one cohesive experience. In every way but one this is (in my opinion) the better TD than the (somehow) ever-popular Desktop TD. The only feature that this is missing is custom games. But it almost doesn't seem like it's missing because of the vast variety of other maps available. Overall 5/5, nothing less.
I mostly agree with Starn about the whole skill/luck thing. The graphics are a nice change from the standard Snake graphics, and are nicely crisp. There are a few things that I think would be nice, though. First, the ability to increase game speed on the fly. Perhaps using the - and = (- & +) keys. I think you should be able to increase the speed by say 1/4 square per second each move. But the score only increases by 1/2 or 1/4 speed of the speed increase to avoid cheating. Also, when you buy 5 powerups from the blue item menu, it would help to be reminded how to use the powerups (like which key) - I forgot and had all 5 until I died quite a while later. Also, instead of saying "1 used" or "2 used," it would be helpful to say "2 out of 3 used." Also, there's a typo on page 6 of the instructions. hope this helps.
Here's my experience with the game: "Ok... odd intro... typos everywhere... looks like Grim had a party with the game's grammar... Let's see... ok... how to play is rather confusing... 'patturn?' Oh... it actually means 'pattern.' Let's try playing the game. Ok. Oh, NOW it tells me that this is like tetris... but needs major restructuring. Well, let's try some combos. Ok... first water. Oops, that heals it. Next earth. Hmm.. that heals it too. Well, then how about "air." What, still gets healed?!? Well, fire it is. WTF?!?! IT GETS HEALED BY FIRE TOO?!?! THIS IS ****ING ****!!!" Hope this helps you ""balance" the "game."
And my biggest two issues have to do with movement: when beginning, it's often hard to differentiate between various terrains in the pathing map. And even when you know those, the pathing map is often very finicky, blocking my path even when it's pretty obvious to me that it shouldn't be. The second large issue is with mech speed. Even with the slowest possible, the mech goes way too fast for the zoom level. Either slow down *everything,* including mechs and projectiles, or zoom the camera out. I really can't tell where I'm going sometimes. And one last thing: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop spawning enemies when they reach the camera's bounding box. It kills the whole cautious and careful thing, makes it impossible to do anything but move, and practically lets the player cheat by killing an enemy and then stopping and recovering, even when the next enemy is only a single pixel off screen.
At first this seems like a Mechwarrior (The ORIGINAL Battletech game) look-alike, but then you realize that there's no story, and that the only things that you can customize are the chassis type and weapons. But it gets better from there - there are new weapons. Ballistic weapons are pretty simple, but you really can get only four or five weapons and still have it be called ballistics. Energy weapons have the same difficulty, but again it's not necessarily hardcircle's fault. The back "weapons," however, are a tad lacking. I find that no matter what weapons that work well together that I can equip have two essential problems: they either overheat way too fast (even with the coolant tank) Or if I choose a "lower" level weapon they don't do enough damage for their level. Also, why does ammo decrease while weapon level increases? It's kinda... counter-intuitive.
This game has promise, but it definitely needs improvement. First off, if the original starting ball is at a 90 degree angle, you can get like 6 or 7 close calls from (just by staying still) it before the second one hits it. Although this might make it too much like other games, it would be nice to have a rechargeable boost meter to escape tricky situations. And I found that multiple times I was caught totally off-guard by a ball that spawned right on top of me. You may want to make it more obvious when/where a ball is going to be spawned.
Hmm. I see what you mean. But the point that I was trying to make (sorry, I should have made it more obvious, my bad) was that (please don't take this the wrong way) if you're the only player at the moment who can beat the game on 'max difficulty,' perhaps you should suggest having a separate difficulty ('extreme,' for example) for people who can play at your level, instead of simply improving all the difficulties of AI. Otherwise, the game would become inaccessible to people, like most of the rest of us, who can't play at your level. Do you see what I'm saying?
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