Mask Project Prototype

InvadeTech 4 years ago

This was actually a really great Idea. The controls are very solid, and the camera flows very nicely.

1. Did you have fun?
Yes, I had fun playing the levels. The mask concept was really fun as well.

2. Was the game too hard? (though the game is meant to be difficult)
Yes. The difficulty of your game made it loos fun value. You have a really great core concept with nice controls. Dying as much as I did started to ruin that. I know it's just a prototype, but I wasn't given any real feelings of accomplishment after clearing areas. It took me a while to realize that I could turn the mask on and off. So instead of saying to press R2 to put the mask on, it would be better to tell people to press R2 to "toggle" the mask on and off. Also in that room have toggle-able game objects, so that when I put the mask on it is instantly explained through visuals why I should put the mask on, and that putting the mask on has an actual effect. Dying about 6 or 7 seven times before I figured out that I could take the mask off and it would make the spikes disappear took away the curiosity that I had simply because I didn't understand your gimmick. I think that was in part due to the spikes on the blue platform were red. My brain registered the blue platform as being new but not the spikes as they matched the previous spikes. Also I didn't have any understanding of the mask ability BEFORE I got to that room, which causes me as the player not to understand that I need to be paying attention to the layout of the level.

3. Are there any levels that stood out to you? (good or bad)
The most interesting level that stood out to me was the level with the green rectangles that you had to make appear at the right moment. It seemed clever to me.

4. Any other thoughts that you think are important?
Yes. There are two videos that Egoraptor did 8 years ago that have some really interesting breakdown of two classic games.

Reply

InvadeTech 4 years ago

Sequelitis - Castlevania 1 vs. Castlevania 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM

This video makes me think of how great a core concept your game has. BUT, I can tell that you use the difficulty of the chunky level design to prolong game play so that I have to play longer to get the same small payoff each time. To me this felt very frustrating and had me questioning why I continued to play. I think Egoraptor makes a very good point when he talks about the snacks and the desert. Your game concept is a high class desert. BUT when I get difficult level design that literally works against the smooth controls of the player, you're taking that high class desert and turning it into a cheap snack food that, yeah sure because it's difficult the game becomes addictive by nature even if you don't really want to play it.

That's not to say that you have to dumb your game down and make it less difficult. But you have to take into account your level timing. What I mean by that is that when you introduce new concepts without letting the player understand how things work, you're setting them up to fail on purpose as the driving force behind your game play. Basically you're punishing your player over and over and over without giving them any reward other than oh great a new room that's even harder. :c

If you look at movies, anytime there is a stressful moment or a sad moment or really any moment that takes an emotional toll on the viewer, the well thought out movies will always incorporate comedy in the scene right after. This allows the viewer to de-stress and get back to enjoying the movie. If the movie is too stressful or depressing without any relief, it feels like a bad movie. Since your game is still a prototype and there isn't any real rewards for the player to complete each room, you don't have that de-stress element. Again, adding difficulty to make the game longer and get more playtime out of it at the cost of frustrating your players cheapens the whole experience in my opinion. So instead of that, prepare the player to be able to to deal with the difficult situations and grow accustom to them little by little.

What I mean by that is explained in the second Egoraptor video:
Reply

InvadeTech 4 years ago

Sequelitis - Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM

The most important concept that I got out of this video is learning how to teach the player how to play your game without directly telling them through boring text or generic engineering layout style instructions. Back when megaman first came out, the game system at the time didn't have the ability to display too much information due to it's hardware constraints. So the developers of megaman had to teach you how the level works part by part before increasing the difficulty by throwing everything at you all at once. At exactly 5 minutes in, Egoraptor makes a crucial point that you were shown what the spikey guys do, and THEN shown what the platforms do, and THEN they put you in a situation where you KNOW ahead of time how to deal with the situation. And the FIRST death isn't as bad when you're like, oh ok, now I know what to do, and if I screw up again, now it's MY fault, not the game's fault.

So the ways that I believe you can incorporate this is to make easier levels in between all your hard levels to even out training of your player's skill level. Your game right now assumes that the players playing are hardcore platformer enthusiasts that are going to know how to play your game and are looking for a hard or challenging play experience. The problem is that your prototype doesn't have traction in the market place, so people aren't going to come looking for it hoping to quench their Legendary Platforming Skills thirst, because nobody knows about it yet. I honestly didn't even want to click on the really lame thumbnail because I thought this game was going to be horrible. But this... This is a gem in the rough.

That being said, when you first get the mask, and it tells you to put the mask on, I think it is a crucial moment where if you have the blue platform in the same room without your character needing to leave, then the player will see that the blue platform directly correlates to them putting the mask on. THEN, in the next room... yes the NEXT room, not the previous room, you can have something inform the player that they are capable of taking the mask off as well. That way they see that the mask has TWO functions. Putting it on changes the environment as much as taking it off. When I didn't know that I could take the mask off, I thought that now that I was wearing the mask I needed to figure out the levels as they were presented to me. You color coded the platforms, but not the spikes, and it caused my brain to malfunction. Also, the room PREVIOUS to the mask room had a shit load of spikes in it. I barely just learned how the mask works, and I don't even fully understand it, and now you're expecting me to go back through the difficult jumping areas but now I have to expertly execute platforming mechanics while my neural pathways are still trying to cope with creating new problems.

It's ok to go back through those previous levels, but AFTER I feel confident knowing how my new found power works. For example, after I get the mask and in the same room find out that it changes the environment, do a Metroid thing, where naturally continuing in the level causes the level to loop back onto itself. That way you can ease the player into the NEXT couple levels.
Reply

InvadeTech 4 years ago

So after the mask, block off the path to get back to the previous area. Such as have the falling ceiling stay there so that I can't go back to the left. Then in the next level to the RIGHT the game teaches me that I can take the mask off which has it's own consequences. THEN in the next level after that slowly start building up the fact that I have to use the mask and controlling the character at the same time to continue. Then the next level, instead of going RIGHT, you make the level go UP. Give me some more easy examples of how my new found power works, so that I can get used to using it and have time to develop my skills. Then the level after going UP goes LEFT. Keep developing my skills slowly with slightly increasing difficulty. I go LEFT a couple more times and then the level stops going left and DROPS DOWN instead. When my character drops down, I find out that I'm now back in the MASK level, but I've dropped on top of the fallen ceiling allowing me to go back LEFT to the level right before the mask. But NOW I'm ready to handle the difficulty of using the new power and instead of being frustrated I can easily use my new power while enjoying the wit of being able to see the old levels from the new perspective. THAT would be extremely satisfying while providing me with a sense of hope that I can actually pull this platformer off.

I made a grid of the level design just in case my paragraph was hard to understand:
the [M] is the mask room
-----------------------------------
.............................[v.][<][<][<]
[>][>][>][>][>][M][>][>][^]
-----------------------------------

Anyways, the moral is that your game concept is awesome. However the game is lacking story line, power-ups, or a hot princess to save, because there's no rewards built in. Since you have nothing but the mechanics to play with in the prototype, you're resorting to the difficulty to add more game time to your game so people don't fly through it and get bored. But this punishes your player for playing your game. If you pad in the easy levels in between the harder ones, you help your player build the skills necessary so you don't have to sacrifice the difficulty AND at the same time, you're adding more play time to the game by giving the player more levels to beat. If you can refine that aspect of making the game super fun without punishing the player, then when you go to add the story line, power-ups, and sexy princesses, the quality FEEL of your game will skyrocket while being able to appeal to people who are just beginning platformers as well as the platforming experts.

I hope I didn't come off as too harsh or critical. This is as constructive as I can be. I hope you see the amount of effort that I put into typing this and understand that it directly correlates to how much potential I see in your game.

I would absolutely LOVE to see updated versions of this game!
Keep up the good work.
Reply