Ideas for improving my new game?

[assafsahar123]

Hi,

I usually work on clients' projects so I don't have much time for other stuff, but recently I decided to create a game from start to finish. In order to really succeed in doing this, I decided to start with a very basic game. It's based on the idea of the Simon game (from the 80's). A simple memory game where you have to click buttons (that have unique colors and sounds) in a specific order, to follow the computer's demonstration.

I've created the basic functionality and I'm looking for ideas to spice up the game play and reach the point where I'll be able to publish the game without worrying that the players will get bored to death...

Here's what I currently have (created in Phaser by the way):

http://codactive.com/work/html5/phaser/quicknum/

Any idea will be much welcomed.

Thanks in advance!

Assaf.

[ldd]

First of all, that is a very addictive game. I'm surprised by its simplicity, and at first I didn't know why the patterns repeated themselves after losing, but now I see how awesome that is.

 

If anything, you need a loading screen. For 25 seconds I didn't know if the game was working or not. xD

[assafsahar123]

Thanks for the feedback, but can you please explain what do mean by "a loading screen"? Did you have to wait until something got loaded before you could play? Did you see a blank screen or something like this?

[samme]

[mattstyles]

Same as samme for me, just phaser.min.js was slow to load, its fairly large for a js file but prohibitively so although a time to glass of 4 secs is pretty poor, phaser is available via cdnjs.com, maybe consider firing it from there (your server is just really slow, but as this is a fun project for you its probably not worth it upping your server, for a demo/fun project a few seconds is fine, its all cached after that anyway).

Nice work on the game by the way, some indication of when the game is playing the sequence vs when the player is repeating the sequence would probably be good.

Also I'm not sure on the level mechanic, its essentially a random sequence that you've made into a predictable sequence, a nice little spin on the original game but it doesn't add anything.

Given that its a memory game there are lots of psychological tests on memory recall, maybe you could implement some stuff those experiments have done to interfere with memory recall, such as adding distractors somehow. You could add some other moving things on screen to distract the user, or maybe randomise the positions of the characters for each level to increase the challenge.

[assafsahar123]

OK, so I made some changes:

1. added a loading screen

2. loading phaser from cdnjs

3. added indication for when is the player's turn to repeat the sequence + how many items left to click. also changed the background color when it's the computer's turn. is it clear enough? what do you think?

4. for distractors, I thought maybe to move the characters between themselves after each turn, so the characters will mix between the 6 available positions. how does this sound to you?

Please try it now: http://codactive.com/work/html5/phaser/quicknum/

I'd love to get more inputs. It's really helping me! I'm not sure I want to work on it too much as it's supposed to be a very basic 1st (indie) game for me, but I also want it to be very clear and attractive enough for people to make them play more than once.

again, thanks a lot for your help!!

[drhayes]

Congrats on launching your game!

One of my favorite games for demonstrating how polish looks good on simplicity is Peggle. It's essentially pachinko, but all the little touches (extreme fever, rainbows, particle effects, cheering, fireworks) make it lots of fun.

The sounds were kinda loud in my headphones, they should maybe be softer? Another thing to play around with is analytics -- where are people stopping? How far are they getting?

You could vary the board per level, add more characters. Slow down their animations. On harder levels certain characters could swap places or have special abilities when clicked. You could add a time component, finish this level in ### seconds.

[assafsahar123]

Thank you so much. I have a lot to think about. I'll probably take 1 or 2 ideas to implement in this project.

[assafsahar123]

Hi,

Please have a second look:

http://codactive.com/work/html5/phaser/quicknum/

I've implemented characters swap places on each turn + added score and mute button.

Next step I'm going to learn how to how to wrap it with something to create an app and upload to google play. what do you recommend to use for this process?

I also need a name. What do you think about "click, don't blink"?

any other smart inputs?

 

Thanks,

Assaf.

[ldd]

I'm glad you added the loading screen. It makes it look so much more polished!

All the changes that you made are welcome, except probably the background colour change. It is very possible for the player to start playing the pattern before the pattern finishes playing, so I liked it the way it was before.

I do think you need a way to tell the player that the pattern is finished, so maybe instead play a sound, or highlight the character one more last time.

I'll try to explain the problem with changing the background colour permanently:

(light blue) => pattern starts playing and finishes (still light blue) => I start doing the pattern from memory => [I'm in the middle of doing it from memory] =>(still light blue) => (background changes to purple)
 

I guess you could also make the change of colour more immediate (the difference is probably less than a second, but try it. you can start doing the pattern BEFORE the background changes for like... 400ms?

[phreaknation]

suggest some kinda intro or help screen. First click I had no idea what to do. After the second click I knew though

[assafsahar123]

ldd, how does it look now? I think it's better when the background change is shorter.

phreaknation, I think that discovery is a part of the fun in a game. especially if it's not too painful.. don't you think?

[ldd]

It works! It feels snappier too. I love it.