Pixely People Making Movies - Game Dev Story / Diner Dash mix

[emdash]

Thanks for letting me take part in the Beta! I've played it a bunch now and would like to share my feedback.

First off, what I liked:

• All of and the graphics and animation. Great art style!
• The movie posters.
• The whole part where you select a movie genre and theme and actors. Fun way to break up the gameplay with something different and fun.
• The general concept of people working in each department and passing work down to the next department was clear and made sense. I easily "got" the general premise.

Here are some things that I had more trouble with:

• Even having gone through the tutorial twice, I'm still puzzled by certain aspects of the game. Once a bar fills up on a level, why does a canister sometimes drop down to the next department and sometimes not?
• Why do workers sometimes go dark and you can't click on them or move them?
• What are you supposed to do when they nap or get angry or hungry? My first instinct was to drag a hungry worker to the vending machine on the left side of the 2nd department, but that didn't fix anything. It was only a few plays into the game that I understood that characters could level up and that you could choose to decrease negative traits... is that the only way to get them to stop napping or yapping? It feels unsatisfyingly indirect.
• The auras are hard to read. On top of a busy background, blue and green look a lot alike. Instead of using a lighting effect, you could try something more pixelly and thus solid, which would read more clearly. It also doesn't help (either readability or gameplay) that the auras seem to last for such a short amount of time.
• I'm not sure what the point is of adjusting the numbers in the upper left of each department. If you know you're making an action film that needs more in the effects department, why doesn't the game just adjust that number for you?
• I found it hard to see the direct connection between having a star who gave a bonus in a certain area and what that actually did for you.
• It took me a while of playing just to realize that the characters on the stage in the top level were not my characters to move, they were just actors. I thought they were extra workers. In general, I think you could push all of the background characters and background art more into the background, ie. making it less contrasty so that the workers in the game with whom you need to interact popped more against the background. There are other ways to make them pop, such as giving them a 2-pixel outline, but it would be nice to have them more easily findable and grabbable.
• I'd suggest simplifying the icon. Spelling out your entire game title isn't very readable and missed the chance to grab a user's eye with a nice large iconic graphic image.
• The actor names are pretty odd. Not quite "amusing and funny odd," more like "doesn't quite parse to a native English speaker" odd. Weird uncommon first and last names. If they're just supposed to be funny, it was lost on me, but it may be something you could consider tweaking based on what market the game is for (like having different names for the US app store versus EU.

Overall, after playing this game for a while, I still don't really feel like I know what I'm doing or could explain it to someone. A lot of time I feel like I'm just moving workers from level to level, getting frustrated when they're not working, and scratching my head here or there. It has the pieces to be fun, but it's not quite there yet. I like the potential it has and the premise and the art enough that if I keep getting testFlight updates, I'll keep trying it out. Anyhow, hope you don't mind the comments and suggestions, and thanks for letting me play!

[justln]

Originally Posted by emdash

Even having gone through the tutorial twice, I'm still puzzled by certain aspects of the game. Once a bar fills up on a level, why does a canister sometimes drop down to the next department and sometimes not?
It only drops down when the number of department film is reached. This is shown at the top left corner of each floor as an adjustable number.

If the number is 1, then the canister will drop only after 1 bar is filled.
If the number is 5, then the canister will drop only after 5 bars are filled. You can see each department's film contribution by the bars on the canisters.

Tip: You can adjust the number to quickly move canisters that are stuck at the top.


[*]Why do workers sometimes go dark and you can't click on them or move them?
Think of it as stamina, workers need time to recover after moving from 1 floor to another. Dark colored workers just mean you can't move them for a while so make it count. There's one worker that has a trait to negate the movement penalty.


[*]What are you supposed to do when they nap or get angry or hungry? My first instinct was to drag a hungry worker to the vending machine on the left side of the 2nd department, but that didn't fix anything. It was only a few plays into the game that I understood that characters could level up and that you could choose to decrease negative traits... is that the only way to get them to stop napping or yapping? It feels unsatisfyingly indirect.
Move people who are showing their bad traits to another floor. You'll need to put points into the negative trait to reduce their percentage.


[*]The auras are hard to read. On top of a busy background, blue and green look a lot alike. Instead of using a lighting effect, you could try something more pixelly and thus solid, which would read more clearly. It also doesn't help (either readability or gameplay) that the auras seem to last for such a short amount of time.
The color doesn't really bother me once I got used to it though.



[*]I'm not sure what the point is of adjusting the numbers in the upper left of each department. If you know you're making an action film that needs more in the effects department, why doesn't the game just adjust that number for you?
You'll need to manage your workers properly and that means producing many canisters until you reach the certain department with a high multiplier. Adjusting the number to 1 makes you push out canisters faster and 5 just makes each canister worth more.



[*]I found it hard to see the direct connection between having a star who gave a bonus in a certain area and what that actually did for you.
The star bonus affects how many auras can be active in each department.

My game lags each time an aura is activated, dunno whether it's limited to my iPhone 4 5.01 though.

[waxandwane]

Just like my upper neighbor it took me a while to fully understand how to play, but once I got the hang of it it became really addictive
I like the micromanagement of the employees, but something that leaves me confused is: when do new workers become available? Every X plays?
The only drawback I found to the gameplay is the important luck factor. Sometimes when I need only 240 I score 1200 and thus ten stars, other times I need 875 and can achieve 850 tops, because all my employees get their "negative trait" activated one after the other.
I also found some minor graphical issues, with text or sprites incorrectly placed or little typos, I have taken pictures if you'd like to see.
Otherwise it's a very funny game to play, I keep getting back to it to unlock new themes, get new employees, have new posters with humorous reviews, etc.

[emdash]

That was really helpful, justIn. Did you work on this game or have you just been playing it longer? I'd have thought the former until I read your comment about your own problem at the bottom. Either way, thanks!

Anyhow, I'll definitely go back and give it a new try armed with that information... but I'd still also suggest to the developers to make some of these points more clear in the gameplay or tutorial so you don't need JustIn to explain them to other players!

[justln]

Originally Posted by emdash

That was really helpful, justIn. Did you work on this game or have you just been playing it longer? I'd have thought the former until I read your comment about your own problem at the bottom. Either way, thanks!

Anyhow, I'll definitely go back and give it a new try armed with that information... but I'd still also suggest to the developers to make some of these points more clear in the gameplay or tutorial so you don't need JustIn to explain them to other players!

I played the previous build of PP:MM and completed the game. The game used to be really hard though.

[staffan_nekomata]

Testing testing

I wrote a long reply here a few days ago, I don't know what happened to it. :/

So just testing if this thing is on.

And if it works, thanks all of you so incredibly much and the game should be very soon. We're probably submitting it to apple tomorrow. Famous last words I know but that is the feel of it right now

Posted a long reply again, this time a noticed that it said that a moderator would have to approve it before it shows here. So any time soon I guess it pops up.

[oooooomonkey]

Originally Posted by staffan_nekomata

Testing testing

I wrote a long reply here a few days ago, I don't know what happened to it. :/

So just testing if this thing is on.

And if it works, thanks all of you so incredibly much and the game should be very soon. We're probably submitting it to apple tomorrow. Famous last words I know but that is the feel of it right now

Posted a long reply again, this time a noticed that it said that a moderator would have to approve it before it shows here. So any time soon I guess it pops up.

Cool news. After testing this for so long it will be nice to see it on the store.

[staffan_nekomata]

Hello folks!

The game will be released on june 4. The price is set to USD 1.99

This here is our debut trailer, put together by Biff Oslo himself:


Low bandwidth Version | Pop Up


Thank you all so much for your help and I hope you are interested in testing our next game! We don't know what that will be yet, we are asking what the Pixely People want to do next and everyone of them wants to do something different than the other. So maybe in a couple of months or so we will have something to show.

See you around!

/Staffan