Alien Valley
It's a top down shooter where you have to fight your way to a fallen satellite by shooting deadly aliens.
This game was made as a "One game a week" project as well.
I talk more about the game and making it (and other games!) in my blog:
https://davidvinogamedesign.wordpress.com/
Edit: The game ends once you get to the satelite!
Comments
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Hi I know it was a little project but here's what I'd recommend if you were to continue it or create a similar game in the future:
Don't make enemies have no "counter-play"
The type of enemy you put is super fast and has super high health. Less health (at least half) would have been a lot better. The way it currently is, you HAVE to die to progress. You can't make a great tactic, you have to die. It doesn't make you feel smart or powerful, it becomes a task
In contrast imagine the red enemies were very slow and could throw (slow) fire balls. Counter-play: you have to move (strafe? Jump sideways - I'm not sure how to call it in English) on the side to avoid the fireballs (which you can do). Combine that with the green enemies, keeping them fast, but with low health.
At first you'd have to shoot the fast green enemies before they reach you, while avoiding the fireballs. Once all the greens are dead, you can keep avoiding the fireballs and kill the red guy.
The 2 enemies would go well together because they act different and add counter-play; don't just avoid the fireballs while trying to shoot at the red guy, don't just shoot at the green guys before they touch you: shoot at the green guys before they touch you while avoiding fireballs.
(I didn't come up with this, Doom does exactly that for example. Otherwise the counter-play thing comes from Extra Credits)
The game would be really really fun to play if these things were different. Same thing when creating guns, it should really bring a different type of counter play (think of Plasma pistol versus vehicles and shields in Halo - counter-play)
If you consider making these changes I'll definitely play again
Hi! Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Yeah, the original idea was maybe to also have ammo, projectile enemies, more unique guns, and maybe a knife attack with knockback by the player- which probably would've worked a lot better for situations with enemies that get "too close"- and a lot was lost during time constraints.
I still think that after fighting an enemy for a couple of times, you can definitely kill them without dying or getting hurt, but the fact that it's somewhat problematic in the first time is a pretty serious issue, so I agree with you there.
"One game a week" mainly taught me that it's really hard to polish a game well during one week (and adding features- it's good for preventing feature creep though), but I'm glad you pointed those things out- and I'd definitely love to remake this game in the future, with some decent polish- I won't copy your examples completely (probably other enemies rather than the red guys would shoot, since I like the way that the red guys attack, but I'll fix the main problems you criticized).
I'll probably polish it and post it in my "one game a week" blog, a few weeks from now. I'd like to complete overall 10 "one game a week" games before working on a better portfolio, so I think I'll post it in said blog at about that time-
P.S: Extra Credits forever! <3
Finishing a game (even not polished) in 1 week is hard to pull off so you did fantastic. A lot of people have a very hard time finishing a game, including me (but I did one! Putting it on itch.io..... yesterday (ok maybe tonight.. or tomorrow... see what I meant about finishing a game? Lol)
Yes the examples were just examples (although they are good ones - Doom has been successful with it)
The idea is really to bring counter-play; for example in a multiplayer game if you add a new weapon, that weapon should be fun to play With, but it should be just as fun to play Against it
Basically, if the enemies make you feel Skilled, that's good. Or smart. For example the fireballs; you basically feel like a super smart ninja when avoiding them - it makes you feel competent. (I'm throwing things about psychology in there that I read but it applies here)
I feel like writing to here's more:
3 main things make people enjoy something/anything. 1) it makes them feel competent. 2) it makes them feel autonomous, in control. 3) it makes them relate (Movies and books -> to relate to the characters)
The little game I'm making right now was just to learn to use Game Maker and how to make a game in general, but instead of just throwing it away I decided to add some things to make it fun. 1st: make the enemies faster (not fast like yours lol, but faster than initially because they're really slow). The result is you have to shoot while avoiding not fireballs but other enemies that you can't afford to shoot right now
A game that did something similar is CrimsonLand but I think it could have been made better because once you get hit you get slowed down and it's just very hard to run away and in-between.
One thing you could do for your enemies is if a bulet hits it slows them down? Even if overall they go as fast, you could shoot one - shoot the next one - shoot the first one and juggle like that to buy you some time.
That might be fun (I never tried it you'd have to test it)
You'd keep the fast enemies but have some counter-play that makes the player feel extremely competent. From my understanding you like powerful fast enemies, and I understand that. So modifying it like that might keep the feel of the tough and fast enemy while giving good counter-play and keeping the player from feeling "cheated" (again I didn't test that, but it might work)
The knife is a great idea (actually That could be what stuns/slow down the enemy and buy you some time to shoot more without taking damage) the other weapons, I don't think weapons are that important. In theory they're great but in practice, unless they're truly different they're more like lore for the game or options (if, still taking my idea of stunning an enemy, one slower weapon (sniper?) could stun an enemy (but you better not miss or they'll get you!) could be a great weapon that is different than a normal one.
I'm really passionate about this so I'm throwing you as much as I can. You can finish a game so I think it's worth it to share this with you, you're someone very likely to use it.
By the way you might have a very different idea for your game, so it's totally fine if you don't do what I said. I'm sure you have your own ideas too, They're really just examples to make you see how to apply counter-play and apply it with your own ideas. (But If you do use these ideas I'm totally fine with it.)
Thanks a lot! Though, I must say that I was able to learn how to actually finish games only after a lot of unfinished, dead prototypes-
And, please post it's name here when it's on itch.io, I'd love to see it once it's uploaded!
Yeah, doom was an incredibly smart shooter for it's time. And I agree- that's definitely something I'll have to consider in my future designs, especially once I'll finally get on working with multiplayer.
Something I'd like to mention there is that people don't always need all of those three things- in movies or books the audience/readers aren't autonomous (when it comes to the plot), or competent (usually).
Yeah, I feel like the enemies in my game might be too fast for action, and they maybe fit Horror better... to the point of frustration. I usually end up making enemies in my game be really challenging, to the point of requiring quite a lot of skill in order to defeat them, and to the point where it becomes nearly impossible to kill a lot of them, without just trying to pull one towards you at a time.
(Example: https://deadmansarmour.itch.io/one-last-flight)
Hmm, I like the slow down idea, but I wouldn't want it to always be incredibly effective- maybe it would be better if enemies would be slowed by a random amount, ranging from "just a very little" to "quite a lot"- so that would make fighting crowds of enemies more interesting? It would be fun to try that.
I'm glad you liked the knife idea! I'd definitely try that out if and once I'll make a remake of this. And yeah, I had this idea of a trap gun that would make the player still run away, but instead of shooting enemies while running away, the player could, this time, try to make them step on traps instead- there are plenty of other cool features, though, like the ones you mentioned (stun and slow) or different ones, like poison/bleed effects, or grenade launching weapons- but sadly I couldn't fit them in the time constraint, and instead I'd probably add them in a remake or different projects :/
I'm definitely likely to use your feedback, but I take Rami Ismael's approach to feedback, and I usually just try to find my own solutions to problems that people find, rather than their solutions- unless those solutions really fit- like the slow one (which I'll still probably somewhat modify, but could be incredibly great to the game overall). However, I still really appreciate people offering solutions and finding problems - because that means that they care, and that really matters to me.
"people don't always need all of those three things- in movies or books the audience/readers aren't autonomous (when it comes to the plot), or competent (usually)."
Of course haha. Apologies if I wasn't clear, my point was these three things apply to everything, but it doesn't have to be those 3 things at once.
The main point is basically, challenge in itself isn't fun because it is challenging (a lot of things are hard in life for example but nobody wants to do them). What I meant by this is, the challenge has to make you feel like you're competent
FOr example in my game I have one enemy that dies with a single bullet and is slow. I have another one that is fast and has a ton of health (the second one is more similar to yours but not really, slower and a lot more health)
Alone the second one is boring even though he's tough. Because you end out just walking backwards for maybe 60 seconds in a row and you keep shooting. IT's not as fun as I thought it would be.
The slow one however, I put a ton of them (100 to 200). Then the player has to run around and try avoiding them - they die instantly but because there's a lot of them, it becomes funs. You feel super great trying to avoid each one coming at you while shooting the other ones - it's more planning and moving/avoiding than it is shooting. If there was an escape route and I removed the gun it'd be just as fun
"I take Rami Ismael's approach to feedback, and I usually just try to find my own solutions to problems that people find, rather than their solutions- unless those solutions really fit- like the slow one (which I'll still probably somewhat modify, but could be incredibly great to the game overall)"
I agree 100% with that. I give you my thoughts that I think are worth sharing, if it gives you ideas it's great, if it doesn't fit it's totally fine.
"but I take Rami Ismael's approach"
I love this guy!
"And, please post it's name here when it's on itch.io, I'd love to see it once it's uploaded!"
Almost hahahaa. I wasted a lot of time today but I'm uploading it later tonight.
Hehe, true. Though, to be honest, I guess you're right, and it's usually recommended to have all three in games, or at least a really strong sense of one of them, depending on your design.
Hmm, true. Certain enemy combinations compliment each other a lot- like, for an instance, the "Jackals" in Halo and the "Hunters"- which together, have the Hunter's deadly shot from afar, and spray of tiny Jackal plasma bullets, or the Hunter's even deadlier charge if the player were to come up close to them- which turns fighting them together into a desperate, action packed (and really risky) charge or a slow, hard, fire-fight. Stuff like that usually signals the end game, because it's rather challenging-
Same happens in some encounters in dark souls, in which a single enemy is pretty hard on his own, but in certain situations, or with some of his friends, can actually become a serious death threat.
Huh, sounds pretty interesting- I guess the "nugget" of that experience is the crazy, skill-based chase. I'd definitely love to play that game.
I'm glad you agree!
I'll check your game out a bit later, since I have A LOT to do- I recently have had creative blocks in the beginning of weeks, or "indecisiveness", which usually results in a greater crunch-period near the end of projects- which is probably now. But hey, I finally managed to get "Unity Remote" to work, which means that I work on Android projects in the future, maybe!