I PLAYED YOUR GAMES! | Game Design Feedback.

for this video i asked you to send me your indie game so i can give you some feedback my name is jonas i make indie games as well and i've been completely humbled by the amount of awesome stuff you've sent me i would say let's jump right in okay i'm playing the exophobia demo oh i can't look up or down i'll see if i get used to that because i really would like to be able to look up and down even though it's a very 2dish game no that's just one of the ways i would modernize these old retro games is just allowing me to at least look up and down a little bit dash space now what yo wanna destroy these little embryos in there let's go that came out wrong i take it back obviously because i can't look down i also can't see that the text is only visible on these platforms like i can only see the text when i'm standing on these platforms at the beginning i was like why did the text disappear so quickly and there was literally also nowhere for me to know because look i can't even see the tile on the ground so one thing i would do is make the text stay there for a little longer when you walk over the tile and the other thing i would do is just let me look down please please or at the very least you know what you can do is you can can have a setting in the menu that allows me to look up and down [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i did not understand why i died there maybe something was behind me in that case it would be nice if there's like maybe an indicator or something that there's something behind me okay okay so maybe i should read the text some enemies can't be killed now but why why can they not be killed like i don't in in the terms of contextualization i don't see why i wouldn't be able to kill a plant with what seems like a very powerful laser gun not everything has to make sense in games i'm just saying if there is a way to make make it make sense then obviously you should do it and look the enemies make even even make spots on the ground that i'm not allowed to walk over but i can't look down can i walk over these puddles here i can but it slows me down that's a lot of green fog here i can see a wall spawn there can you see that as well although this might just be my personal opinion but the vision range seems a little tight i know this is retro and this is how these games used to be but also i the the way i interpret this is right that you want to make a modernized version of these old games so maybe you can think about increasing vision range a little bit you know what i mean i'm starting to lose orientation so let's summarize we can destroy metal walls with our gun but we cannot destroy plants like if you want to teach me that i can't destroy certain enemies yet then maybe take a really tough looking metal steel one and not not a plant okay so how do i open that door um i don't know hey there's a there's a lot of wall popping in some cases look at that that it's not appearing out of the fog that's just popping into existence that act back there i don't like it but should be an easy fix when i press to the right i go left do these projectiles invert my movement oh they do invert my movement they don't deal any damage they invert my movement well i i would appreciate some better feedback for that then make the screen have a little bit of a dizzley effect or something because i think i was taking damage from that and was just confused why why my controls are all messed up and also i have completely lost orientation now i have no clue where to go anymore [Music] there was some text bad place to reach text action or shoot to use the timer switch um i would not put that text next to an enemy i would make sure that first switch your encounter is a little more visible because that seems very easy to miss especially when you put it next to an enemy like that you know the the enemy is kind of distracting me from what's really important here um once again i would kind of look like to look down to the button a little bit instead i'm just like this my head is locked into this position oh do i get a new gun [Music] what changed okay now i'm getting some tutorial hold dash and shoot to shockwave okay yeah yeah i like this room i like this room because this is a memorable room i'll when i get here again i i will know that i've been here already which is very good [Music] okay i think the shock wave doesn't have a sound effect yet which i'm sure it will oh okay okay okay okay i see now i see now so now i can see where i've been already and now i can see that i should maybe try going to the right here yeah that is cool but i did not get that at all that i can do something here okay it says literally there's a menu at the top so i think that's just because i'm stupid but let's try and go there i don't understand you need to be so close to make the shock wave but if you get too close like that range seems to be a little unreasonable also the shock wave gets bigger the longer you charge i would like to see some feedback for that [Music] okay i'm entering the hive where maybe the fog color should change maybe okay we made it through the demo i like it it's just a couple of minor things i think all in all it's very good so i'm not really even sure what to say it's very good okay so this is anchored up by orange flag studios has very chill music and the reason i select this game is because i've seen it on youtube before it's always that psychological effect when you've seen something before you kind of more likely to want to play it customize ship you obviously want to have cannons right or you can only have two cannons okay very nice ui sounds as well sound design very good art style decent so far let's go so the creator of this game told me that he used my how to come up with game ideas video to kind of make this game which i thought was pretty cool and i have to say it looks very unique right when i saw this on a screenshot when you see this on steam it looks very unique it looks interesting it looks unlike stuff you've seen before and it also has kind of an appealing fantasy you have boats who doesn't like boats one thing i'm noticing about the art style here is i'm not sure there's any post processing oh yeah there's a little bit i can see some slide vignette i think if i'm not completely mistaken but there could be more and also the near clipping plane of the camera is too close to the camera as you can see in the bottom right corner there um i'm constantly clipping through the terrain i know that is not clipping there's just a triangle there what the hell is that why is there a triangle in the corner yeah so honestly i think you could get a lot more out of this game visually speaking just by tweaking the post processing a little bit and maybe doing something with the background because one thing you have to keep in mind is the background it it feels such it's like it occupies such a massive area of the screen that it really pays off to do like something more interesting with it obviously you don't want it to be too distracting either but you know there are some things you can definitely do maybe maybe at least a gradient or something like that i do appreciate the birds and the clouds the little details that's nice yeah so there doesn't seem to be a tutorial yet so let okay i've fired another cannon shot no so it seems like i'm rotating exactly around the center of the map with the camera and i cannot move the camera so that makes me think maybe the entire map could be a little further up like so i can see more of the map god damn it when i click on the canon it fires or how does that work or do i have to click on the sales maybe what do i have to click on okay so you might want to add a tutorial okay here are the controls what the hell don't no make a tutorial this is not right let's try that again [Music] oh wait what that doesn't make any sense like so i can only click on a tile while pressing shift no no no no no that doesn't seem right i should be able to click on it even when i'm not pressing shift look after a while i'll get where i can move and then i'll just be able to move there so to be honest maybe it should just always show where i can move and maybe it should just not be as obnoxious maybe just should be a little dot there or something there will be more self-explanatory and we all already have these super thick lines on the grid anyway so right so having a little more ui on the map honestly that wouldn't be that big of a problem and then not make me click the shift button okay so what happens if that so my ship got captured interesting so you're not supposed to touch the enemy ships yeah come here there's a stupid victory the paid petrol ship has sunk you continue sailing westward okay also ui could use a little bit of love the text as well maybe i know ui is hard to do a little bit of a reoccurring theme today as we will see let's try the next one i do not like these rain particles nor do i like these white particles at the border here i think if you keep experimenting with those particles a little bit you'll you'll see what i mean that you can just get a lot more out of these still you can get a lot more out of these particles and it will make your game will feel a lot more expensive if you switch out these particles for something that actually looks a little bit better and which boat am i i am the blue boat okay so i cannot go next to them at all is what you're saying kind of tough then [Music] aha victory whereas i understand a little bit of the interesting part of this game is that you can also choose where you want to put your weapons on the boat but i cannot switch that while i'm playing which is a little silly i cannot as mentioned if i press escape nothing happens so even if i want to change my setup now i really can't and now we have some different obstacles here so i assume i can't move over them but i can shoot over them which is cool okay here take that or that another boat sponge maybe a little bit of a spawn animation would be nice oh no oh [Music] oh is it just me or are laser guns like do they destroy the fantasy a little bit because everything seems pretty realistic like all of the environment all of that stuff and then suddenly we have a laser gun on there i'm not saying remove the mechanic i think the mechanic is probably fine just saying maybe there's and we can find a way to um recontextualize that to maybe a you know a super powerful cannon or maybe a sniper rifle or something like that just switch out the graphics maybe if you want i'm just making suggestions here oh what it does block projectiles so i would say either make it not block projectiles or make it a little higher so it's clear that it blocks projectiles oh this is difficult uh although why can't they capture me and i cannot capture them and why do they keep spawning ah so this is anchorapp it's available on steam go wishlist as you might know i've been working on a game for a while as well now it's called will you snail okay look at that i'm a professional gamer here i'm dodging all of squid's traps i'm way smarter i think the reason you died there is because not enough people have wishlists that will use nail yet you started saying that before i even died how did you know he's too smart just kidding you suck try again and i need to press [Music] you don't stand a chance i can simulate entire universes millions of them in fact so if you wanna do me a really big favor please pause the video for a second head over to steam and press that wishlist button real quick that way you'll get notified when the game comes out which helps me to keep making these videos and games of course thank you very much [Music] account here so this is still early in development so we don't have any sound we just have this character here f call train okay like it looks very nice already for an early prototype there's like nothing to complain about there's the train yeah yeah run me over okay that doesn't work yet either very cool very magical very mystical i love it already uh and then it even switches into first person when you're in the train really cool like i wonder if the developer made all of these models himself these 3d models probably not but you also don't have to nowadays nobody cares it does look very good though that's why i'm asking it does look very good so even though the train's still going i'm just jumping out of the train let's go ah okay so the train is basically hidden loading screen now the train is arriving okay that is very cool nice okay here we are um the hearts on the top left corner look nice uh the ui for the actual spells at the bottom i hope are placeholder because the rest of the game looks so extremely nice that i'm a little yeah yeah the ui doesn't keep up if you know what i mean okay but let's try out these spells because as far as i know that's the cool part about this game that sort of the time freezes when you use these spells okay now i can tell the projectile how to bend or whatever's gonna go there that is cool and i can also do that mid-air and then just freeze midair and with alt you can still rotate the camera that is really cool that is a really cool idea for a mechanic and also looks really cool so already i'm thinking this game has a chance to do quite well for sure if the rest is done right i i see some potential here movement feels nice as well nothing to complain about really so far let's try out the other spells what can we do with e whoa what the hell is that okay i'll deal what i what what this makes me think is i'll deal damage right and then cut i pulled myself backwards probably i'm not sure what this other icon is trying to tell me because i'm i don't understand this icon but i do understand that i can move this around yeah and does exactly what i thought it would do which is very cool there doesn't seem to be any fall damage oh the water looks nice as well love the water third spell we have is r oh you're not high enough okay and what does shift do am i just blocking oh no i'm well that is pretty cool as well so i can basically go into speed mode with shift but only if not nothing is attacking me i assume that's why it has this charge up and if nothing's attacking me i can go into this speedy form so yeah i wanted to get higher up so i can do the r spell um so here it unfortunately doesn't show me in which direction i will jump off that is not completely obvious to me will i jump off the left side or the right side like what i do understand i'm not sure if i do understand that intuitively or if that's because i've seen the the gif where he showed that is that i'm gonna jump off of this i guess you'll understand that once you've done it once and i'm assuming this is where i'll jump off so let me place that here oh and now it shows me where i jump off okay maybe it should also have at least an indicator where i land on it or something in the first part of placing it i love how that wiggles around yes and can we do a wombo combo thing with air then for example oh i pressed the wrong button so i want to do a wombo combo using all of the spells let's try that so the spells feel very nice to use i wonder if maybe having just a normal primary attack that you can fire like this probably feel nice as well i don't know we haven't even encountered any enemies yet um okay so i'll jump off here and i'll use this to jump very high into the air then i'll try to press e to shoot at something from the air and then q q qq wait now what have i even used this before wait a sec oh wait a sec oh that's interesting the spells i can use they change after i use them oh i haven't used this one either yet what oh okay that obviously means i have to ram remember a couple more icons but what i assume will be the case in the final game is that uh i'll not unlock these spells all right from the beginning right i'll probably unlock them one after another and have plenty of time to learn them because now like this it's obviously a little overwhelming okay let's check out the queue then i think i haven't oh yay i saw that in the gif as well it's very interesting i don't like it for i don't know if i like the way of controlling that though so i can basically give it five points for example i can just make one very strong or i could make a one with strength five and height two i see you see a csc or i can make it a little wider so plenty of okay yeah i guess it's pretty cool okay i'm not sure how it will feel during combat and obviously the ui doesn't look nice we'll just have to say that it doesn't look nice oh now i can also choose where i want to place it as well so plenty of stuff to choose so it's basically it's it feels like a mixture of turn based and real time almost oh and i can place that wherever i want no there there's a maximum radius ah i managed to place it in the air i found a buck oh she can wall run as well stop it oh yeah i see some enemies i see some enemies okay i'll try to shoot here and bend this projectile like that yeah what was wrong there why stop stop attacking me i need some time to figure this out hey here take that [Music] and leave me alone for a sec whoa what ah oh my god i'm [Music] i think i died so will this happen every time i die it's kind of cool but it also seems a little annoying or did the game just realize that it glitched out and restarted that could be the case as well i'm not sure oh not close enough yo what the heck oh no oh no i think the game just glitches out there okay so we have some minor flaws there some minor bugs yeah i think if you get used to this a little bit you can probably do some very cool stuff with it i dig it there's not much more to say it's just it's really good okay so this is a mobile game karpokolops from jensen which is why i'm looking down so much um yeah i adventure mode first map okay so there are different cars i can unlock okay so typical mobile game stuff so i need to grind a lot i get it okay okay massive buttons on the screen uh-huh okay the controls are fairly fun i'm just racing here and apparently getting some extra points for jumping over stuff and now of course i they want me to watch even more ads which i don't want to do so let's restart okay this one is for slowing down and this one is for accelerating you should even be able to see which buttons i'm pressing right because they change when i'm pressing then yeah but what if i just why did i die there like um i need some feedback like i i didn't explode i didn't fall down anywhere i don't know why i died oh and there's like a trophy appearing in the top right corner so i assume it's sort of my main objective wait what driving over people makes them go up disappear [Music] i have to be honest this wouldn't stay on my this this won't stay on my phone for very long i'm get i i get what i'm running away from now all of these poof poof clouds i'm running away from these clouds and when they get too close i lose but that should be i think that should be a little more visible should be a little more clear what i'm running away from and not just a bunch of particles all around me and then no feedback i lost also going off-road doesn't really seem to slow me down that much so i'm just gonna do that like there's no punishment for going off-road there are just less obstacles there there are obstacles as well i'll take it back okay the game crashed or maybe the the recorder i'm not sure but here we go again um for our first level in the adventure mode that seems very difficult i would make that a little bit easier and also one thing i want to say about the ads is sure ads are a great way to monetize mobile games but if people uninstall the app after their first play session because there are so many ads then you can't make any more money with showing ads so what you want to do if you want to do it with ads then tone them down a little bit especially when a player is new to the game so what a lot of mobile games do is they let the players play at the very least for like an hour or so without bothering them with too many ads and then when the players are hooked then you start showing the ads i'm realizing i'm giving you uh all of the many manipulation tactics here but like this just from a design perspective this doesn't make any sense you know okay let's let's say let's let's go again [Music] what's a short video to play from the checkpoint you know that that is a very good way of doing things i like that watch um a short video to play from the last checkpoint that is a fair deal but then don't bother with me with an ad before that otherwise i'll be so pissed at you and definitely not click that button so what i would say is this game is not very friendly to new players and both in terms of difficulty as well as in terms of ads it's not very friendly to new players so um i wouldn't be too surprised if like the retention isn't too great um but other than that it is a good game like that that's oftentimes that's oftentimes the shame right it is a good game i like it it's fun oh no i almost did it i bet that was the end of the level now it's about to crash again okay [Music] it's not hello yeah it crashed okay i didn't make it past the first level unfortunately and i'm gonna press this um [Music] uninstall button now even though i really liked the gameplay part the gameplay is good little too difficult the ads for me personally are a no-go maybe there are some people who will tolerate this kind of obnoxious these kinds of obnoxious ads but like the frequency and stuff right from the beginning nah cool that's all i have to say about this i'm unfortunately i'm not a mobile game expert but i thought it'd be interesting if i give a mobile game a shot as well yeah keep up the good work it's it's a good game it's a very good game i didn't mean to diminish your work no no no no i often times i'm just getting in a mode where i'm thinking out loud while making these videos it's a good game okay now we're playing atrio the dark wild by our fellow youtubers at easter inc i'm honestly i'm not sure if this game is a solo project or made by a team honestly it looks like it's made by a team i'm not sure i'm sorry i've seen some devlogs but i can hardly remember anything i've seen the devlog where the dev talked about this tutorial area here and i like this these kinds of tutorials where the text is just directly in in the level because that means you can just start playing right away learn the system before you deploy the surface to the surface yeah hit tab to open crafting menu graph pipe factory where are my tooltips i don't know what any of these things do that's what i have and i can put that into my quick selection down there sure let's graph pipe honestly and i see what they are now they're conveyable belts just please just call them conveyor belts and that way it will be more self-explanatory in my opinion and yeah if there's an easy way to explain something like giving it an explanatory name why not do that or harvester that is an explanatory name i think by reading that name i know what it does can i not put that into my fourth or my fifth slot apparently not okay and here i can see what i need to craft something and okay and here i also have some tooltips what everything does our harvesters are or mining rocks are great for mining rocks okay this is a graph pipe yes so what does it do it's a conveyor belt just say it's a conveyor belt click hold drag to fast place graph pipes after i selected it is what you mean huh yeah okay see why you call it graph pipe because the the ground doesn't move okay fair enough i'll give you a pass on that one i'll let it go very juicy placement sounds lovely lovely lovely try building a really really long line sure it's kind of hard to rotate it in the correct direction like this is a really good tutorial i like this tutorial a lot because it lets me do things and let me lets me do things at my own pace i love this i love it factories will craft for you by setting the factory recipe to graph or i do not like when everything has weird imaginary names because then i have to relearn what everything does and can't take use any of my knowledge that i have from reality yeah yeah change recipe to graph or here you go so now it changes graph or to graph like what goes in looks almost the same as what goes out i'm not sure what this does but okay try building blood fuel so i can also harvest stuff manually okay so yeah pretty pretty factorio like but with it's a little more zoomed in than factorio which i personally don't mind at all is this the harvester no that's the factory this is the harvester oh you're asking already a little more of me and we really have to remove all of these if you want to teach me how to remove these just put a few in my way not that many like one thing i have to admit it's this is not my kind of game was not a super big fan of factorio either but some people will some people will love this for sure yeah i like the tutorial this gives me some good routine on what what i need to do oh but no i don't have any harvesters anymore oh try building blood fuel i'm am i meant to craft it manually oh maybe i meant to craft it manually because i don't have any like how do i build new harvesters let's check out the crafting menu factory okay now i have a new factory now should be able to build what i want after lasering away these flowers and here is where we turn it into blood view okay you can't see what's behind that i can see that becoming a problem sometime okay let's get started start mission whoa oh there's creepy eye oh holy moly okay this looks nice okay okay okay okay there are a lot of deer restore power and repair the base what are these eyes like does anything bad happen when i go there probably okay i think if i'm in there for too long i just die or something acceptable sacrifices so i need one global or blood fuel i can give you one glow thingy that's not a problem there you go but that will probably only last for so long right yeah it's raining i'll give you a few more that's very cool and i assume if i put like a conveyor belt there or something that i i hears where where i can put a conveyor belt to put something in automatically yeah yeah yeah what do i need to do here each box and that needs a flower as well or what upgrade what that's really cool now i can uh what what do i do with these recipes okay so i feel like um this whatever this is probably like my main objective right i need to get one blood or in there download recipes put the thing in my brain [Laughter] now i can build makeshift torch scrap wires and wires oh it's even has rain very nice and there's a deer that is essential to my survival no wait you're essential to my survival ah they're gone yeah people people will like this game when it comes out i can already tell i love these destroyed bass blocks as well where my light is about to fade let's put in some wires here [Music] oh no error who's power [Music] oh what okay i didn't expect that but i think i won why does my head explode in order to okay i'm just one of many employees and now this is maybe where we get some story bits yeah yeah yeah yeah okay i have not a lot to complain about for this one because this is all really really good like the the reason why i um like to pick these better looking games for these jonas plays your games videos is because if i like pick some random garbage there's like there are so many obvious things that could be improved that it's not really interesting to talk about that i find it more interesting to talk about games that are already at a certain level and to see if we can find some high level feedback to improve those but that obviously causes the risk that sometimes they're just so good that i can't really say anything about them though this is really this is really solid i like it yo it's been a while since we spent so much quality time together right make sure to subscribe if you're new and otherwise check out the shelf man who was so kind to edit this video he makes game dev content as well i make game dev content it's all just subscribe to everybody on youtube you know how it goes there are links everywhere wishlist will use dale i don't know see you next time you

Channel: Jonas Tyroller

Views: 174,395

Keywords: game development, game dev, indie games, indie dev, game developer, game design, indie game, gamedev, game design discussion, game design analysis, video games, let's play, game design talk

Id: Tjy0-ewKuYk

Length: 36min 4sec (2164 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021