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

I have now applied for the position and I feel I have most of the skills that are required.

 

Applied just now.
These are the sorts of things I love to play a bit too much.
Will be happy to give lots of feedback too.

 

Awesome, I've signed up Never seen Testflight before but it seems like a smooth simple way to do beta applications on iDevices. I'm impressed!

 

Glad to be aboard. Looking forward to providing feedback Any word on when you'll be opening it up?

 

I've applied! Looks like fun.

PS. You're in Penang?? I'm from Malaysia but in Canada atm.

 

This game is magical, more people should know about it.
I haven't got the time to beta test the newest build though, will try to make time to see the new improvements.

 

While I am not certain whether my skills qualify as "mad" or merely "somewhat peeved", I nonetheless wish to break into the movies and have applied for your position posted here by sending you my testflight application. I too wish to help pixelly people make movies, and to help Nekomata help make pixelly people make movies. And so on.

But seriously, looks fun, and I am looking forward to trying it out!

 

Just got your email officially accepting me to beta test for you. Thanks for the opportunity to get an early look in!

I will definitely provide you with some thoughts once I have had a look at it you have my word on that!

I feel privileged to pass your super hard to pass application procedure now hehe looking forward to testing.

sorry about the double post I was on the edit screen for 10 minutes and assumed some one would have put another one in by now!

 

my current feedback

Hi, here are my first impressions on your game. Not sure if this is the type of feedback you wanted but I promised so here it is!

1) The beginning story is a good theme it gives you a "reason" for what you are doing

2) In the tutorial there is a grammar error where you say "Pieces on this department is now worth 15 points each". "is" should be changed to "are". I'm no expert though and its not that off putting to be honest!

3) The retro pixely style is quite entertaining, and the music is surprisingly quite good for this type of game. I like that.

4) I like the pictures in the genre selection screen, quite simple but effective.

5) From what I can see random film names are quite good.

6) Film review is interesting and the time limit to make them was unexpected but does add to the demands of the game.

Just completed the tutorial going to play with it a little bit now and get back to you

 

I don't see a time limit for the entire game (I don't mean for each movie). Does that mean that I can play on and on till I go broke?

 

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!

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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