I've been lurking here (and posting occasionally) for the last eleven months or so, sucking up as much information as I could while we've been working on our first game. It's not the most inspired game in the world. It was originally supose to be a quick first game, but it didn't quite work out as planed.

If you have some free time, I would appreciate any feedback you can give. Let me know what you like/hate about the game, post bugs, tell me to get a real job...whatever. I personally believe that it's quite polished, so feel free to shatter my ego.

You can download the game here (http://www.muttonheadgames.com/tigamadag/TigamadagInstall.exe). I also have screenshots up here (http://www.muttonheadgames.com/tigamadag/screenshots.html).


The webpage isn't quite finished. The only content that is going to stay as is, is the support page and the character descriptions, but I would also appreciate any feedback you may have on the site (http://www.muttonheadgames.com/).


Thank you.

Hi,

I started a game, clicked things, wondered what the hell I was supposed to do, then I looked at the rules. Once I had finished looking at the rules, there was no obvious way back to the game I had already started, so I had to start a new one.

It took me a couple of minutes to figure out what the point to everything was, but once I did it sort of reminded me of playing patience. Not particularly unpleasant, although I never felt like I was being forced to think. I could pretty much just pick up singles with no adverse affects.

I think the game suffers (not download size mind you!) from being
a 'proper' windows application. No fullscreen mode, and non-alpha'd explosions make it feel very basic. I think the game would benefit from the stacks being a bit chunkier if it were fullscreen as well.

Also I notice there's a pause option, but I didn't see any indication of a timer or time-limit while I played it.

Your 'About' box is missing its' ok button. On a similar note, I think there should be a confirmation box with the standard 'Quit your current game? Yes/No' dialog when I start a new game and I'm already playing one.

You've spelt 'guarantee' as 'guarentee'.

Hope this helps a bit. Good luck with the game!

SC

P.S. Does the title screen deliberately have 'place tagline here' on the image or is it just an unfinished graphic?

Thank you for the feedback.

there was no obvious way back to the game I had already started, so I had to start a new one.
I'll add a 'continue current game' option to the Game menu.


I could pretty much just pick up singles with no adverse affects.
Should I only allow you to pick up groups of two or more tiles?


but I didn't see any indication of a timer or time-limit while I played it.
After the second level, you start to lose points. It makes for some frantic game play, but unfortunately not until the fifteenth or twentieth level.


Does the title screen deliberately have 'place tagline here' on the image or is it just an unfinished graphic?
Our artist put that in as a placeholder, and we decided that we liked it, so it stayed. I'm glad you mentioned it, though. If it will confuse our customers we may need to remove it.

Is there any possibility to lose the game? Whats the benefit to get tiles destroyed in combos?

Destroying more tiles in a combo will give you more points.

You loose X amount of points per second where X is the current level you're on. It's posible to loose, but it's not so likely in the demo. My partner can't get over level 20.

Couple of points:

You appear to be blitting the backbuffer constantly to the screen, so you're getting excessive mouse flickering. (see the mouse flickering thread (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1746) )

Also, it would look more professional if you halted the blitting when the menu is active (catching the windows events) so that you don't get excessive flickering there too.

Besides that, there are several spelling mistakes or typos apart from those mentioned above, both in the help screen and in the 'why register?' screen.

Overall I thought it looked polished, but visually basic.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing as it's probably what people are looking for in these type of games! (Windows games that is).

Having said that, I'd personally put a much brighter backdrop initially than the one you have.

Hope this helps some!

Best of luck.

[edit]forgot to mention that a shortcut on the desktopo would be niice too!

Great feedback so far. Thank you.


I'm running 2k, and I'm not getting any flickering (except for when the menu is up). Are you getting flickering outside of the menu?

Its just looks like once the menu is active, you keep the rendering loop going.

A new version has been uploaded with the following changes:

* You can no longer 'pick up a single'. You can only destroy blocks with that have a neighbor of the same color.

* The score countdown has been changed. Instead of removing a large number of points once per second, we now remove single points much faster. It still works out to the same amount of points being lost, but it's much more noticeable.

* We changed the scoring to make a bit more sence. (before you would occasionally get the same score even if you destroyed more blocks)

* You can now maximize the window.
* A shortcut is now put on the desktop.
* The about box has an ok button.
* You can continue an old game if you check the rules.
* Some spelling mistakes were fixed.

I'm still working on stopping the renderer when the menu is active.

Ok, have given the game another bit of a play...

The game still lacks any tactical depth. The only way to play it seems to be to pick a colour, move any of that colour to the top and then explode them. Since there is no limit to how many moves you can make there's no real tactics. I would consider this your biggest problem - you have a puzzle game with no puzzle. A simple points cost to the player for each move made would help. I suspect there's a better solution. Whatever it is, it needs to be obvious to the player.

The second problem with the gameplay is the single tiles. It seems that some tiles are predestined to be left until the end of the game. This again shows the lack of tactics, since no way of playing it can change this. Perhaps another move could be added to the game which swaps the top tile of two adjacent stacks? Again, you want to limit the player so whatever you do for problem 1, I'd do for this as well.

If you do both these things then you'll probably want to look at whether or not 'picking up singles' should be valid or not. Actually having it could add some more depth since the player then has to decide whether to explode single tiles to move through a stack (losing the chance for a combo) instead of making a move that costs points. I'd suggest you do a version of the game with both sets of rules and see which you prefer.

Other than that, add 'Pause' to your options menu, don't leave your about box at 0,0 (centre it nicely), and if you pause the game when the user goes in to 'about' then you should probably unpause it when they come out.

SC