Could you be so kind and take a look at the demo version of my soon to be finished action-puzzle game + it's website?
All kind of critics are very welcome.

Screenshots+Demo:
http://www.edu.uni-klu.ac.at/~khofer/ba/

(note: background music is not yet in the game)

I don't have the time to test it now but I have to wonder whether it's wise hosting your commercial site on a university hosted web site? Perhaps your university has no rules against it but it's often the case that you aren't allowed to host commercials sites with school resources.

Also makes the site look a bit unprofessional. One of the first things I tried when going to the site was to try looking at the root site to see other games.

This is a really fun game! It managed to capture my interest right off and is challenging enough to keep exploring. One thing however - the least interesting part of the game is the protagonist. Can you make him have eyes or something - like a character? The bees and insects seem like living characters, but the ball seems to be just a tennis ball :)

But anyway - I think you have a winner there - you should submit that to realone Arcade - I'm sure they'd want to include it in their selection.

I also agree about hosting commercial stuff on university server... you should get a cheap site + domain name.

Just got around to playing it. Pretty fun. A bit lacking on graphics and sound but still workable.

Some thoughts:

How about a button that you can hold down to speed up the gameplay (and not just the tennis ball).

Why is there so much of a pause whenever I exit a menu? In fact when I cancel going into some rooms the screen jumps? The game just seems to pause in many places a lot longer than it should for a game like this (and I have a rather fast machine, geforce 4, athlon 1700, etc). Setting the game state also seems to take a while.

Perhaps it would be better if you had to press a button to enter a door? Got a bit annoying bumping into doors. At the very least make a button required to enter completed levels.

Graphics (animations mostly) and sounds in general could use improvement. Might be nice to even have some kind of particle trail when the ball is going fast.

>>university server
That's right, i am not allowed to host commercial stuff here. Will change it to paid webspace as soon as my visa card arrives.

>>long pauses
They happen on my PC too, since i downloaded the latest geforce driver. Got a MX440. Strange phenomenon. Before that the screen changes were fast as they should be. Anyone know a solution to this problem?

>>graphics
Yes they suck a little. Programmer "art",you know...

It's great game ! ( got addicted! )

The animation is not very smooth ( i'm from the vertical sync generation and everything that's not sync looks blurry to me :rolleyes: )

The graphics are not great but i like them, they remind me of some nintendo graphic style.

Great game really.
patrice.

My girlfriend tried the game, with me watching and it was less than fun.

We did of course not read the manual, and thus in the first room we understood absolutely nothing about what to do so we left the room after the ball exploded on a skeleton. We even got stuck for a while wondering which button on the keyboard means "thrust". Then we tried two other rooms which both had less than obvious solutions (partly because the game was still a mystery to us).

So we ran away as fast as possible.

You really should consider adding a text string for each level that introduces a concept such as "use your ball to do this and that".

This game will be rejected by anyone that are trying it out briefly imho.

nice game, presentation was nice and everything ran well with no noticeable bugs.

I remember trying out Frozen Fruits quite a while ago and this seems like a good improvement :)

I did notice that you ramped the difficulty up quite a bit - I think a more gradual approach might be easier for people to get used to the game - perhaps have an optional tutorial room at the start explaining what everything does (I know it's pretty obvious, but I think it would help people if there was a room they could mess about with + it gives you a chance to show off some of the cool stuff they'll see in the registered version ;)

I like the mario style graphics and nintendo like elements. While generally well presented and having a nice-overall feel some of the graphics could be cleaned up a little. It's a pretty fun game though.

It kept me busy for 30 minutes - very playable :)
I like the style of the game but as already mentioned by others I think the graphics and sound need improving.
Also, maybe have a tutorial/easy room where the player can learn how to play and get used to the controls.

Nice game, I think kids and retro lovers could get a real kick out of it.

One problem and one suggestion:

Bug: The game forces it's own refresh rate. This is bad. Especially as my old monitor happens to dislike certain refresh rates at certain resolutions. I had to play on a squashed screen that was about three inches to the left. :/

Suggestion:

This is probably too much to consider seeing how far into development it already is, but what about making the ball have gravity? Instead of always bouncing at the same height, the player could hold a button to increase bounce height on his next bounce. This would open the door for a lot more puzzles and make the game a little more challenging in the non-puzzle room areas.

Thx a lot for the comments so far.
Some levels now got textual hints on how to solve them like Karukef suggested.
Didn't know it's so hard to play. I rather thought that these levels ARE the tutorial rooms,hm...

@damocles: What do you mean with "the game forces its own refresh rate"? I don't do that,at least i don't know that i do it. I am doing an ordinary
frontSurface->Flip(NULL,0);
Some problem with that?

I don't know directX very well, but it look slike the refresh rate is reverting to a default rate (I think it's using 75Hz) instead of using the desktop refresh rate.

I guess DX uses this refresh rate unless told not to do so. I see a few commercial games doing the same thing. Fro commercial games it's less of an issue because their games are generally marketed at people with reasonably modern hardware, but as shareware, you should consider getting the desktop refresh rate for people using older monitors.

Ran fine on my comp, and it was very fun! :)

Kept me occupied for about an hour... would have been longer to if life didn't pop in :p

One quick suggestion about the web page: Move at least one screenshot to the top of the page (possibly the title screen and possibly to the left of the "Download Free Demo" button.)

Screenshots get people more excited than a bunch-o-text.

On my 1280x1024 screen, all I saw on the first visit was a screen full of text. Even on the smallest font, the screen shots don't start till almost halfway down the page.

At 800x600 (the most common screen resolution), no screen shots are visible at all, and the visitor must scroll down to see them (scrolling == bad).

Show them some cool screen shots they can quickly scan over and get excited about, then if they want more info they can scroll down a bit.

David

hey, just wanted to say I played Bound Around today - fantastic! It's an original game! Difficulty ramps too quickly though.

Cas :)

This is the kind of game where having a level editor would really make it take off in popularity :)

Great game!

I thought it was rather difficult, but I can imagine it must have been a lot harder before you added those help texts, hehe :) The level selection world is a really great idea, it really made me curious about what the next section will look like.

I think the graphics are nice, but as already suggested you should perhaps give the ball a little more character somehow.

EDIT: By the way, I'm also suffering from slightly annoying pauses when I choose options in the menus or switch scene/enter a level. That's kinda weird since I've got a P4 2.4 GHz with 512MB RAM and a GeForce 4 Tornado...

Originally posted by triptych
This is the kind of game where having a level editor would really make it take off in popularity :)

And I thought it was obvius you get one when you buy...

Originally posted by Addictive 247
It kept me busy for 30 minutes - very playable


took me 2.5 hours...

Originally posted by princec
Difficulty ramps too quickly though.


the excuse for my slow learning curve ;)

I've noticed you've implemented a great "level lobby", made me even more confident doing the same in my game.

no slowdowns here (GF2MX).

Great game you have in your hands. Good luck with it.

Just took another look at your home page, and see you've moved the screenshots to the top ... MUCH better! :)

David