Descent : The Adventure is live

[toxiccheese]

Originally Posted by geoelectric

It's unfortunate in that I know we'd all give a great and fair review. But I can understand why they do it--I've seen some hellacious astroturfing by developers and I'm certain they did it in part by distributing promo codes to different shill accounts.

You can't review a game that was downloaded using a promo code. If there are fake reviews, they still require an actual purchase.

[toxiccheese]

Originally Posted by gibtang

Yes, I agree. With 50 promo codes, they can get 50 astroturfed reviews, but that also hurts small indie developers like us.

You can't review a game that was downloaded using a promo code. If there are fake reviews, they still require an actual purchase.

[Baracus]

Guess seeing as I took a code I should throw some constructive feedback back here.

Definitely needs improvements to make it feel nicer to play otherwise its just going through the motions with little incentive for me to continue. So in no particular order:-
1) improve audio effects - they do not fit together well currently.
2) improve art - the characters don't look like they were designed together. Some are soft anti-aliased, some are hard pixelart. Generally not a strong sense of purposeful style to it all which makes it look a bit rushed and home-made.
3) animation is too stiff - very rigid no punchyness or dynamism. I don't just mean characters, but GUI also.
4) background animation of things in the sky just suddenly get cut off when it gets to within the rectangle of the tree which is poor looking!
5) nicer feel to matching. Seeing as that is what the game is all about this needs to flow better and have better visual feedback to fights and matches.
6) mechanics seem to actually punish you for making longer chains... why?!
7) global map movement is quite clunky trying to activate the level hotspots.
8) graphics of the matching symbols is pretty ropey. Maybe they should be contained within actual blocks more like icons so you could have all similar outline shape perhaps with also different colours to reinforce what you are matching at a glance.

I know you are trying to make a quick game and not get bogged down in details too much but really at this price point (or any price point) expectations are a lot higher on the appstore now so you can't cut too many corners IMO.

Hope it helps...

[geoelectric]

Originally Posted by toxiccheese

You can't review a game that was downloaded using a promo code. If there are fake reviews, they still require an actual purchase.

...now.

http://www.macstories.net/news/apple...iewed-anymore/

(May 2011)

[eAdvisory]

This game is bare bones. Not worth 2.99 and its clear that the dev skipped some steps

[gibtang]

Originally Posted by Baracus

Guess seeing as I took a code I should throw some constructive feedback back here.

Definitely needs improvements to make it feel nicer to play otherwise its just going through the motions with little incentive for me to continue. So in no particular order:-
1) improve audio effects - they do not fit together well currently.
2) improve art - the characters don't look like they were designed together. Some are soft anti-aliased, some are hard pixelart. Generally not a strong sense of purposeful style to it all which makes it look a bit rushed and home-made.
3) animation is too stiff - very rigid no punchyness or dynamism. I don't just mean characters, but GUI also.
4) background animation of things in the sky just suddenly get cut off when it gets to within the rectangle of the tree which is poor looking!
5) nicer feel to matching. Seeing as that is what the game is all about this needs to flow better and have better visual feedback to fights and matches.
6) mechanics seem to actually punish you for making longer chains... why?!
7) global map movement is quite clunky trying to activate the level hotspots.
8) graphics of the matching symbols is pretty ropey. Maybe they should be contained within actual blocks more like icons so you could have all similar outline shape perhaps with also different colours to reinforce what you are matching at a glance.

I know you are trying to make a quick game and not get bogged down in details too much but really at this price point (or any price point) expectations are a lot higher on the appstore now so you can't cut too many corners IMO.

Hope it helps...

Hi Baracus,

Awesome, thank you for the lengthy feedback. We will be looking into these issues that you mentioned.

[LucaRedwood]

Originally Posted by Baracus

<snip>

This guy right here. Great advice.


I think it it just needs more 'feel'

So the game has attack animations which already puts it ahead of 10000000 but it doesnt feel like you are really attacking.

A couple of ways 10000000 does this to think about:

• When you attack, you character moves towards the enemy on an EaseOutExpo curve, This makes the character really take off from the initial position for that punchy effect.
• The sound effect is then played at the end of the animation towards so that it really feels like that was the connection point.
• Then, the screen shakes horizontally a little bit, sort of making it feel like that attack had some really power behind it.

A nice little trick, which I don't think you consciously notice, is that when you do a critical hit, the screen shakes a lot more. You don't notice it but you feel your hit more and that feels good. The same applies to when bosses hit you.

The same applies to matching I think, which is the other area to focus attention, just juice it up and make every time you do it feel great.

I really like the background graphics, particularly the more dungeony, so great job there


Luca

[gibtang]

Originally Posted by LucaRedwood

This guy right here. Great advice.


I think it it just needs more 'feel'

So the game has attack animations which already puts it ahead of 10000000 but it doesnt feel like you are really attacking.

A couple of ways 10000000 does this to think about:

• When you attack, you character moves towards the enemy on an EaseOutExpo curve, This makes the character really take off from the initial position for that punchy effect.
• The sound effect is then played at the end of the animation towards so that it really feels like that was the connection point.
• Then, the screen shakes horizontally a little bit, sort of making it feel like that attack had some really power behind it.

A nice little trick, which I don't think you consciously notice, is that when you do a critical hit, the screen shakes a lot more. You don't notice it but you feel your hit more and that feels good. The same applies to when bosses hit you.

The same applies to matching I think, which is the other area to focus attention, just juice it up and make every time you do it feel great.

I really like the background graphics, particularly the more dungeony, so great job there


Luca

Hi Luca,

Thank you for the awesome reply. I just finished discussion with my developer and we are overhauling the audio and adjusting the graphics and fixing some issues that you and other guys have mentioned earlier to make it better as we intend to improve the game a lot more with your valuable feedback.

[cho777]

For the developers of this game, I gotta disagree with the rest of the forum. This game is really addicting for me. I'm excited about the updates and good job with the game!

[gibtang]

Originally Posted by cho777

For the developers of this game, I gotta disagree with the rest of the forum. This game is really addicting for me. I'm excited about the updates and good job with the game!

Thank you for the feedback, cho777. We just submitted 1.01 to the App Store for review a few days ago and are now hard at work for 1.1 which so far will have the following

1 - Total revamp of audio and some ambient music
2 - Changing of graphics to make it more consistent
3 - Other features that we are still discussing and deciding upon. I will publish the list once we have decided what to release in 1.1

One idea that we toyed with is the idea of pets which can buff or provide some boost in combat and also quests