Good day, everyone,

We are independent game developers from Lithuania. We have finished
our first (as independent developers) game - Sparx.

Please, take a look at our web site BaltaGames (http://www.baltagames.com) and Download (3.75MB) (http://www.baltagames.com/files/SparxDEMO%20En%20Install%20v1.09.exe) our quite well polished and truly original game.

Any oppinions about our web site and/or our game are Very Welcome.

If you are interested in any cooperation, please, do not hesitate to send an e-mail (proninja@baltagames.com) with your thoughts.

Sincerely, we are having troubles finding a publisher. My guess is that most publishers tend to avoid developers, who created one (or two) games... We did our best to create Sparx as nice and original as possible, but it seems, that sometimes "doing your best is not enough".

Thank you in advance for any feedback from you.

Interesting game idea, here's some quick feedback:

* The dot grids used in many elements of the GUI are too sharp/visible. Tone them down a bit.
* Many of the "Level Tips" are completely irrelevant ("Alt+x is the fastest way to exit the game").
* I found the level on the attached picture completely incomprehensible. What am I supposed to do? If I hold down 1 the gun will fire and I will be game over. There is no explanation of colored mirrors. (It just now occured to me: maybe the level is scrollable? I didn't find any indication of that when playing)

Is the 80 megs of hard disk required a Typo?

Alfie

Excellent! The user interface is so simple, easy to learn and use it should be textbook material.

I have had little trouble understanding the game (except for finding out the scrolling part - perhaps a tooltip should mention it as soon as the first larger than the screen level - perhaps simply moving the mouse next to the edge of the screen should scroll).

My usual complaint about puzzle games applies to Sparx too: the demo is too easy. There should be at least one somewhat challenging level in the demo - since puzzle games are not replayable at all.

Another thing that's soreledy missed: I should be able to _look_ at the levels in the fullversion. Pop a "buy me!!!" message box if I try to _touch_ Play Dweep and see what I mean.

I found the editor to be a pain to use - I wanted for right-click as a cancel/delete button so bad. Deleting items is a pain, giving up on a creating a wire is too, putting a batery somewhere on the map after I have already selected a first tile is a pain. Unselecting the tool I use is a pain. Also, adding those 0-9 buttons should automatically increment their numbers. The icons on the side are extremely dark and difficult to make out.

Thank you for feedback.

Henrik:
* Good point about grid brightness.
* How would you call tips, which are displayed at each level? They are general tips about the game, just displayed at each level.
* There is tip about scrolling a level, but there is a bug, so tip is not displayed. Already fixed. Thanx a lot!

Alfie:
On earlier versions, we docompressed *.ogg music files to *.wav at setup process(to run game even faster) and that increased game size a lot. Later we removed this, but we just forgot to change info on our site. Good point. Fixed. Thanx.

Diodor:
* We were thinking about scrolling map, when mouse is close to an edge, but this is not good idea. Moving mouse close to panel would scroll a map too.
* Levels are easy indead. I'm afraid to scare-off players if levels would be too complicated. So, IMHO, "too easy" is better option than "too hard" (for a DEMO). And all of us are looking for a "perfect middle". ;)
* To see full version levels may be a good idea, but our point is to make player curious "how future levels will look like?", "how very last level will look like?". Aren't you, Diodor, curious how next levels look like? ;)
* We will think about how to improve level editor, but it already took half of our development time...

Thank you again. Maybe something else?

Greetings neighbours, I myself am from Latvia although I`m away form home for couple of years now:)

Its good to know that something is going on in Lithuania. As far as I know, in Latvia there hasnt been any serious game-related busineses, apart from mythic company doing some outsourcing for GBA-targeting companies (which might be urban legend as well, because its more like "my friend knows a friend who has heard of company":)

About the Sparx,

looks like solid game based on great concept. Although it is not exactly my type of game, I felt comfortable killing little time with it:)

Minor critisism: game feels a bit too dark visually. I`d sliiiightly brighten up the background.
Another way - leave it dark as it is, but make objects more stand out - sparks maybe can have some light corona around them, wires made lighter, the shooting effect made more brighter.
So that in the end visually game is made up on contrasts.

Maybe its just me, of course.

Oh, and I really like the music. Fits the mood perfectly in my opinion.

Best regards,
Nauris

Greetings Nauris! :)

I`d sliiiightly brighten up the background.
* Did you had problems with brightness sliders? (in options menu)
* Becouse we do not use 3D graphic cards (so that our game could work on older&slower PCs), alpha blending kills performance very well. Now game works at reasonable speed on my "oldy" Pentium-233. AFAIK there still are a lot people working with quite slow PCs (at work).
* Some colors (like color of wires) can be changed in *.ini files. You can easily make wires Red if you want. :) IMHO it is good to leave possibility for a player to modify game slightly.

Thanx for feed back!