Hi! Our team Rake in Grass is proud to presents new game Crystal Cave Classic - 2D puzzle platformer for players of all ages, focused on puzzle solving and treasure hunting in pitch black caves, pyramids and temples of ancient civilizations. Features - Play in over 170 levels in four graphic scenarios: egypt, aztecs, japan and india. - Lots of logic riddles - train your brain - use teleports, boulders and other types of rocks to solve levels. - Ability to zoom in/out during playing. - You can save your progress anytime and restore it later to try different solution. - Walkthroughs for levels will be available on youtube for players who get stuck in the game. - Original soundtrack. We are finishing betatesting now and we expect to submit the game to the appstore sometime next week. Hope you will like it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laPiV1p9GkM [hqyoutube]laPiV1p9GkM[/hqyoutube] If you want to stay informed about this game, you can also follow us on twitter or facebook.
AWESOME! I LOVED your other game "Archibald's Adventures" and not just because of the name! I'm looking forward to this game. Will be an instant purchase for me. A couple of questions though: - What will the price be? - Will you have alternative control methods, such as swiping instead of the 4-way arrows?
I agree with Brett. Archibald's Adventures is one if the greatest platformer games out there. Looking forward to this one on the iPhone.
Looks great, this will be an instant purchase for me - Archibald's Adventures is one of my favorite games
Don't forget the game is not archibald's adventure 2, it's a different game, I hope the game won't disappoint you We have choosed 3.99$ as the final price. Regarding controls, right now the game can be controlled by the arrows (which can be placed on left or right of the screen) or by touching the screen (the arrows can be hidden) - taping on the left part of the display moves the player to the left, taping on the right part moves the player to the right etc. You can see it on the video at 1:05. Or you can make a suggestion for better controls
Game looks nice and Archibald's Adventures is one of my favorite games in the app store. I'll probably pick this up day one.
Personally, I'm a great fan of the "swipe anywhere" method touch and swipe your finger anywhere on the screen in your chosen direction.
Do you mean that the controller (arrows or whatever) is placed to the position where you first touch the screen and stays at this position as long as you keep a finger on screen, or for each movement direction you need to touch screen again and swipe in the direction (and if you want to change the direction, you need to touch again and swipe again)? The latter seems a bit inaccurate to me, and slow if you need to change direction fast.
The method I mean would be described like this... There's no arrows on screen, not any other visual indicators. You can just place your finger anywhere on the screen and swipe in a particular direction to move your character in the same direction. So if you place your finger on the right side of the screen and swipe to the left, then your character moves left. And if you place your finger in the centre of the screen and swipe to the left, then your character moves left. And also if you place your finger at the top of the screen and swipe to the left, then your character moves left. The important thing here is the direction of the swipe, not the initial placement of the finger. The other important thing is that if you want to move your character just one grid square, then your finger does a "press-down, quick swipe & lift" action. If you want your character to move across several squares, like the entire width of the screen for example, then your finger does a "press-down, swipe & hold" action, keeping your finger still pressed down on the screen for the whole time you want your character to be moving. Then when you want him to stop moving, you lift your finger up off the screen. If you want your character to do a quick move to the left and then immediately back to the right again, you would do this: - press-down, swipe left, lift finger, press-down, swipe right, lift finger. This can be done very very quickly, and the fingers can move just as fast as your character can. The way I've carefully described it one step at a time makes it sound like a slow and complicated movement, but in reality it's just two actions: swipe-left, swipe-right. That's it. Just as quick as tap-left, tap-right on a D-pad, but you don't have to worry about finger placement accuracy. Also, if you want to turn a corner, and there is no danger in doing so, and you don't have to be that quick in doing so, then you can do this: - press-down, swipe left, keep finger down, swipe up, then lift finger. I've used many many words to describe this method, so it might make it sound a lot more complicated than it really is, because it's a really easy intuitive method. The best way to understand it is to play a game that has this control method implemented. So you should download the free lite version of Bobby Carrot 1 here, and then go into "Menu > Options > Use Swipe 1" (3rd button). (Also set "FullScreen: On") Then play around in the game just wandering around and see how intuitive and easy it is to move your character around. The obvious benefit to this swipe method is that you never have to think about where you're putting your finger. You don't have to concentrate on hitting tiny little arrow buttons, and you also don't have to spread your fingers out over the entire area of the screen, hitting hotspots around the edges of the screen. It just comes naturally, without thinking.
I see...I have tried the swipe controls in Bobby Carrot and it works fine, only once in a while I have made wrong move, but I assume this still needs a little practice. But what I'm worried of is that Crystal Cave plays "faster" (the hero walks faster), while Bobby Carrot is more mild paced, so maybe the swipe method will be more error prone, but it was not difficult to add the swipe controls to the game - I haven't time to test it on device yet (will do tomorrow), but the swipe option will be available Anyway thanks for the suggestion!
I agree with everything that BrettArchibald said about the controls. Id really like to see you emulate the controls from Bobby Carrot for this game. Id also like to see the UI cleaned up a lot. Why would you have onscreen buttons for zooming in and out? There is already a widely accepted pinch-in and pinch-out gesture that unmistakably does this. If you implemented this in the game, you wouldnt need those buttons, and the user would still have precise control of the camera. I assume that the third zoom icon is to reset the camera to the default zoom level. Perhaps this can be accomplished with a double-tap. And while were at it, I'd like to see the top cleaned up as well. If these elements arent essential for playing the game, why do they need to be on the screen all of the time? Admittedly, I havent played the game yet, but to my eye, they just look like clutter. What if these elements were hidden until you did a two-finger touch to pause the game? Dont get me wrong, the game is probably great. I liked Archibalds Adventures and I'll probably pick this one up, too. But its easy to see that you havent yet made this an iPhone game. Sure, its running on the iPhone. But youre not taking advantage of the strengths of the platform, and youre not really doing anything to minimize its weaknesses. A real controller would be best here, but the swipe method that BrettArchibald described so painstakingly works just as well for something like this. And removing onscreen distractions (unnecessary UI elements), for me at least, just makes the game look that much more professional. But either way, I'm looking forward to this one. I love puzzlers like this, and the gameplay looks pretty fun. I'd just like to see some spit and polish added to this to help it stand out a little. As it is now, this looks like a port from another platform. Even if this is the case, make me believe otherwise.
Oh yes, +1 from me on this as well. I agree 100% absolutely. In my desire to address the issue of the controls (which I feel strongly about, in case you hadn't noticed ) I neglected to mention this aspect of the UI as well...
I know that the hud is not ideal, but it's always about compromises. The icons on the top of the screen are save/load buttons. Of course thay can be hidden in menu, but we have decided not to do so, because during the game you get so used to use save/load that it's distracting to do two or more clicks to save/load, and we have received this feedback from betatesters too. So we have decided to make this buttons always available before making the hud look more cool. Regarding the zoom buttons, the game allows "display controls", which means that touching left on the display makes the player move left, touching right on the display makes the player move right etc. If you allow two-finger gesture for zooming, the system can report the first finger as separate touch, which can cause movement of the player, and movement by one tile may broke the entire level. Also when controlling the game this way, it's usual to have two fingers on screen (when switching between moving left/right) and in such case zooming is not intended behavior. We were thinking about using different method for zooming (like one button which while touched, second finger can be used for zooming in/out), but each such method makes the game more complicated and more difficult to make clear for players. We are developing games for several years now, and we know that many players don't read instructions and menu descriptions - we would be really afraid to explain casual player (who dominates on iPhone platform) that "two touches" does this, "three touches" does that, "double tap" does another thing...even if some gestures like zooming are probably well known. For Archibald's Adventures that was typical that many players didn't noticed that there is options to configure controls and autohiding...we have also received support mails that people didn't even know how to jump. We have decided for simple scenario "one button -> once action", even if that makes the hud a little cluttered...
