Hi All,

Just finished an update to the game Jam, your feedback would be appreciated before I do the screenshots and make any final changes.

The download is only 923K and is only available via this temporary link:

http://www.redgames.biz/Dexterity/JamInstall.exe

Many thanks to Lord K on giving me feedback in the previous version, a lot of the changes are a direct result of his feedback.


Thanks in advance.

Alfie

I don't know the previous version so i can't comment on the updates.
My impression: Rather uninteresting Tetris-like game with mediocre presentation.
What i found annoying: The keyboard control. I mistook the up and down keys quite some times which led to wrong moves. Wouldn't be mouse control more intuitive?
If i placed some block wrong then a situation occured where it was impossible to fill the red target zone. Do i have to sacrifice a life then to clean it up again? Found this rather annoying.
What i liked: naming the game modes after nice fruits surely is a nice thing to do :)

hmm, the controls definately need some work - either change the rotate button to space or ctrl or something or implement mouse control.

IMHO the game was rather boring - maybe you should put in bonuses and powerups or something - it just needs *something* more.

The fact that some shapes would only rotate on 3 ways instead of 4 just didn't feel right at all. Is that intentional or a bug? - The piece that definately does it is the 3 square L shape.

Originally posted by lakibuk
I don't know the previous version so i can't comment on the updates.
My impression: Rather uninteresting

Maybe I am not giving the players enough in the Demo, bearing in mind that they can only play Jam Fink Strawberry which is only 1 of a possible 30 game variations.

Some of the other games allow you to Warp from and to the sides of the play field, and some games mean that you have to move obstacles. Which means that some of the games will need 8 keys to play, I will have a think about using a mouse system though...even if it's for a specific game/games.

Unfortunately you do have to sacrifice a life if you overfill a zone, but there are 3 other zones that you can fill and use that othe zone as a dump.

Alfie

Perhaps you could let people read the rules for all games? At least we'd know what we're missing...

This is slightly off-topic, but your home page is really ugly... You don't have to use full-bright red, magenta and cyan everywhere to make a "Red Games" website. Try changing the background to a darker red shade, and replace everything that is magenta and cyan with your current bright red... should make the page a little more uniform.

Originally posted by Khaile
[...]
This is slightly off-topic, but your home page is really ugly... You don't have to use full-bright red, magenta and cyan everywhere to make a "Red Games" website. Try changing the background to a darker red shade, and replace everything that is magenta and cyan with your current bright red... should make the page a little more uniform.

Yes, I agree. Seriously - it looks like one of these just-for-fun-bad-taste pages.

Try this one:
http://www.knorrpage.de/colormatch.html (needs js enabled)

It's a nice online tool, wich helps to find a matching color scheme. Setup one color with the 3 sliders and you get 5 matching colors wich won't hurt your eyes ;)

I concur, your website is terrible. The colour scheme, the centred Comic Sans type face, the annoying javascript scrolling menu (which occasionally covers text) ... the whole thing needs work and nothing there inspired me to download the demo.

Jiglet, The Hands-Free game.

From the screenshot, which lists controls such as "control", "spacebar", "down arrow" "enter" etc hardly looks 'Hands-Free', but maybe Im missing something that the description doesnt mention. It doesn't even seem to mention what type of game it is, what the aim is or anything.

-Z-

Originally posted by Philip Lutas

The fact that some shapes would only rotate on 3 ways instead of 4 just didn't feel right at all. Is that intentional or a bug? - The piece that definately does it is the 3 square L shape.

The rotation is intentional.

Every set of bubbles can do 4 quarter flips, including the square shaped set of bubbles. There is a light coloured set of 3 bubbles and a dark set (not sure of the colours, being colour blind). Each of these will have 2 finished states, a sort of top right and corner and a bottom right hand corner, the other one is top left and bottom left. Every flip on a set of bubbles will be different from the position before the flip.

Hope this makes sense.

Alfie

Originally posted by Khaile
Perhaps you could let people read the rules for all games? At least we'd know what we're missing...


They could read all rules in the original game. Because there are 30 variations it just overwhelmed the players. Granted, I still need to get across to the potential customers what they are missing, which I am going to try and do within the exit splash.


Alfie

PS The website, yep it needs some serious work!

I found the game good enough for a chance to sell at least 1 out of 200 downloads. But the control is hard.

Originally posted by alfie
The rotation is intentional.

Every set of bubbles can do 4 quarter flips, including the square shaped set of bubbles. There is a light coloured set of 3 bubbles and a dark set (not sure of the colours, being colour blind). Each of these will have 2 finished states, a sort of top right and corner and a bottom right hand corner, the other one is top left and bottom left. Every flip on a set of bubbles will be different from the position before the flip.

Hope this makes sense.


Unfortunately the explanation does not make sense. When I played the game I thought the rotation was buggy. Now I am even more confused. The shape which looks like:

O
OO

did not rotate in all four directions. Is this intentional?

Additionally I have a suggestion. Use two keys for the rotation and add animation while rotating. This would make it much easier for the gamer.

ergas

Ergas

"I found the game good enough for a chance to sell at least 1 out of 200 downloads."


I am encouraged with your conversion prediction Ergas, especially since a player only gets to sample 1 of the possible game varieties and flavoured modes.

Those 3 corner sets of bubbles:

The one in your post ie

o
oo

The next flip on this will result in,

oo
o

And the next flip will result in,

o
oo
And the next flip on this will result in,

oo
o

This set of 3 corner bubbles therefore will flip 4 times but it only has 2 possible configurations.

Hope this clears it up for you.

Alfie

I think the forum messed up your rotations :)

Is this what you meant to say?


0 00 00 0
00 --> 0 --> 0 --> 00

Alfie, around what axis do the bubbles turn?

Isn't Philip's suggestion;

Originally posted by Philip Lutas

0 00 00 0
00 --> 0 --> 0 --> 00


better for the gameplay? This way your conversion rate would go up to 1/150 ;) Which means ~33% more profit!

ergas

Originally posted by Khaile
Perhaps you could let people read the rules for all games? At least we'd know what we're missing...



There is now a new version of Jam at http://www.redgames.biz/JamInstall.exe

The players can now see all the Rules for the different game game varieties. There is also a mouseover popup notes for each game variety and flavoured mode.

"Takibuk
Rather uninteresting"


"Philip Lutas

IMHO the game was rather boring"

In this new version the players can play either Jam Fink Raspberry or Plum. Read the rules of Raspberry before you have a session because it can get a bit frantic (mentally that is).

Hopefully these flavoured modes are not boring.


Any comments welcome.

Alfie