Hi all, I've been lurking on the forum for quite a while, but haven't had anything to really post until now. Myself and a couple of friends have finished our first game, entitled Blob. It's a kind of board/strategy type game about capturing hexes by growing and exploding blobs, and has various game modes and multiplayer. Anyway, you can take a look at it at:

http://blob.iconicgames.com

The download is around 2.2MB, there's a 100kb screenshot here (http://blob.iconicgames.com/img/image2.jpg). Any thoughts anyone may have would be greatly appreciated.

Originally posted by Dr_Gonzo
Hi all, I've been lurking on the forum for quite a while, but haven't had anything to really post until now. Myself and a couple of friends have finished our first game, entitled Blob. It's a kind of board/strategy type game about capturing hexes by growing and exploding blobs, and has various game modes and multiplayer. Anyway, you can take a look at it at:

http://blob.iconicgames.com

The download is around 2.2MB, there's a 100kb screenshot here (http://blob.iconicgames.com/img/image2.jpg). Any thoughts anyone may have would be greatly appreciated.

Nice graphics!

Game looks cool, I like games that have the Windows menu GUI...

O.K. Guys, We're trying to run a high quality forum here and that means that threads that get bumped to the top by new posts should contain useful information that's a benefit to everyone. Otherwize everyone will check the thread only to discover there’s nothing of value (for them) in it. This equates being one of the dreaded “noisey threads” ;)

If you would like to compliment then elaborate a little more then one line. :)

@Dr_Gonzo:

I downloaded the game and checked it out. I must say I was pretty impressed, it's a simple game and you can figure it out within a few minutes of playing. All the game rules are immediately evident. Also there are some rich strategies that emerge from the combination of a few simple rules and a uniquely shaped game board. Very nice design overall.

The things I think this game does well at, for one would be design, a few simple easy to understand rules that lead to some lovely emergent strategies. I also like that you can play the game at any pace, your enemies can make their moves almost as fast as I can click. For people who prefer a more strategic game to an action game, it might be nice to have the option to draw more attention to the move that the AI just made. Make the ball flicker or outline it or something when the AI makes a move.

The interface for using powerups seems almost like it was an afterthought. I like it that you included textual pop ups that allow me to know what they are without actually having to read a tutorial or help file. However they just seem to float on the screen. It might be nice to anchor them with some sort of "power up inventory" box somewhere on the screen. I also had problems trying to use the blowup power up, I had to click it a few times to get it selected correctly and then use it on an enemy. Also the "instantly explode" power up art is a little messy, I think it would be better if all the powerups had a more iconic feel to them, like they came from the same icon library and could be lined up next to each other nicely.

While the game design is good and the game is fun. I think the demo does not do a very good job of selling the full version of the software. I saw on your website that there were some nice images of boats in the background of the game board. However when I fired up the demo it was just a gradient color background. I think you need to communicate to the customer what the benefits of the full version are, let me know what I’m going to get for my money, and it better be compelling. If it's not compelling then you'll need to consider taking more away from the demo so that people are more willing to pay for a full version.

Best of luck, I think you have a title with some great potential. I think it will be interesting to hear the insights you guys gain as you start selling this game. (just remember to come back here and post them!)

Played it, liked it, disabled the power-ups, beat the AI on the expert level at the first try. I don't know for sure whether the strategy remains interesting for the more advanced players, but there is a good chance that it does.

Thanks for your comments, especially Dan's. You've thrown out a lot of good suggestions, and I'm definitely going to bring them up with the guys tomorrow.
The comments on the demo version are helpful, it was very difficult to decide what to leave in a what to leave out, trying to make the player want to get the full version without neutering the game itself.

Anyway, if anyone wants to play multiplayer, I'll be running a server for a little bit, remember to check the internet radio button under the multiplayer server browser box. EDIT: No longer, thanks for playing :)

Originally posted by Dan MacDonald
O.K. Guys, We're trying to run a high quality forum here and that means that threads that get bumped to the top by new posts should contain useful information that's a benefit to everyone. Otherwize everyone will check the thread only to discover there’s nothing of value (for them) in it. This equates being one of the dreaded “noisey threads” ;)
Someone's practicing their moderator skills :)

Anyway, the game was quite good. The one thing that threw me off was that the game seemed polished in some ways, and thrown together in others. The game board tiles seemed really nice, powerups seemed well thought out, etc. But then the turn/powerup indicators at the top left seemed just thrown in. The background was plain. The text looked like it was drawn with printf, and that little flag in the corner seemed out of place too. The main menu didn't highlight with the mouse. Spice those things up. Maybe have a stylized box that you can put all the indicators at the top left in. Maybe another matching stylized box along the bottom for the output. Get a custom font for the text (maybe try looking at http://www.pizzadude.dk/, he's got some cool ones for only $25)

Also, on the game tiles, although they look good overall, their is some strange pixelated lines on each tile. Maybe you could clean that up, and make it look more antialiased along some of the edges.

But overall, good game. The fun is definitely there for me. Just needs some polishing.

DLed it, played it, enjoyed it.

I agree with LordKronos comment about the polished/unpolished elements and want to add one more.

Consider changing the exploding sound. It is just too weird, although it is in tune with the blob theme, it sounded like the game was ..well... farting all the time. :eek:

::emp::

Hello there. I just tried the game out with my 7 and 6 year olds, who seemed to enjoy the game. The one thing that struck me about it was the lack of contrasts in the colors of the game... it seems like with games like Bejeweled that the bar has been raised above the standard fare... I love the gameplay, and when I saw the first combo of popping it was pretty cool!

It would be nice to have a tutorial level for the kiddies with big flashing arrows saying "click here" and showing what all happens.

The powerups were difficult to figure out, but workable. Perhaps the first time a powerup is used, pop up a dialog explaining it (do this only once though per powerup :) )

My kids liked it but got confused and frustrated by having two opponents - they felt like the computer was getting 2 turns to hit them :(

Overall the gameplay was fun - though I'd say hire an additional graphics guy to help liven things up a bit.

Thumbs up!

I liked this game, the rules was simple but still allowed you to plan ahead and use strategies. I managed to get more than 10 blobs in a single turn thanks to "chain-explosions" (that was probably because the computer had built up a lot of big blobs in the middle of his field rather than my supreme intelligence, though ;) ). I personally thought that the "creep" rules made the game more interesting, since you could block off the opponents, and the take-over powerup became really useful.

One suggestion I could have is that the game setup menu could have a "help" option too (I just tried the creep rules on chance since I didn't know what it meant).

Now, to the bottom line of all this... would I buy the whole game? Well, I'm afraid I'd have to say "no" to that. Thankfully I'm not your target audience, so hopefully you will still make some sales, but I tried to think of something that would improve your chances...

First of all, as I mentioned about CubIQ in another thread, it doesn't really say why I should buy the game. What do I gain? What's the difference between the version I downloaded, and the version I get if I buy the whole thing?

EDIT: As I was writing this I just noticed that it actually says in the main menu about the shareware limitations. However, I still believe it could make some sense on the website as well.

I think that's the main thing... Other than that; a board editor would be cool, perhaps it's included in the full version I, don't know.

Oh, another thing: In the game setup screen it says "% Chance", but the value is "0.30". I'm a programmer so I know that you mean 30%, but a lot of people doesn't know that 1.00 is the same thing as 100%. Perhaps you should change it to a 0-100 scale?

Anyway, a good game!

Thanks again for your comments. I'm just starting on a new version which will hopefully fix a lot of the things that you have brought up. I'm definitely going to try an improve the visibility of what you get in the full version.

I think part of the problem is that the people we tested with were often remote, so we ended up playing a lot of multiplayer. Therefore, a lot of the demo->release features are centered around the multiplayer experience. The main menu and quickstart options for example weren't even in the game till about a week before we released it, so it's all a bit trial and error :)