I’ve been playing around with Flash lately and my first flash game RoboFortress (A revision of a game I made earlier this year for the Global Game Jam) should be finished in a couple of weeks. Its a pretty simple maze based shooter but should be entertaining enough for people who like fast action games with retro graphics and sound effects.
After that I’m going to have a go at making Attack of the Meeplings II in flash. Here are my thoughts based on the feedback for the first game.
- The game is too hard (Casual gamers like the retro look and feel, but the game is too hard. I’ve noticed lots of inexperienced video game players don’t even use the up and down arrow keys at first) – I’m going to have to put a bit more thought into easy/medium/hard difficulty levels
- The game is too easy (Experienced players, esp those used to playing more hardcore shooters find the game too easy. They are only challenged ~30+ minutes in after the game speeds up fast enough for them. Yes, I know this is directly opposite to the first point but it shows how games sometimes have two (or more) very different audiences.
- The game doesn’t have any powerups People have commented on the simplicity of the game. Which is of course intentional. But it feels pretty good to be big and powerful so I’ll look at adding a couple powerups.
- The music is awesome The sequal will feature more awesome music!
Also I think I will cut it down to 2 stages – Most people don’t even get through one loop of the game and I like the infinite looping concept. For the hardcore players the speed increase per loop needs to be greater each time.
If you have any other feedback on Attack of the Meeplings or ideas for Attack of the Meeplings II please leave a comment.
#1 by Erik Hogan on September 25, 2009 - 5:34 am
My two cents:
- Multiple difficulty levels is not only a good idea, but is very easy to implement if you just use scaling variables.
You -definitely- have more then two audiences, personally I consider myself to be about half way between a hard core player and a casual, so I would go for between 3 and 5 difficulty levels.
Perhaps you could make it that finishing a loop increases the difficulty level by one?
I think, if you yourself can barely finish a single loop on the game on the hardest difficulty, then you’ve done it about right.
- I don’t like the idea of cutting the levels back to 2, because it reduces the reward for hardcore players who manage to reach that far in the game. The more levels (and bosses) you have, the less repetitive the game will become on repeated loops.
Also, have you thought about having a really easy bonus stage with lots and lots of enemies that don’t shoot, like the ones on 1942?
- Power ups would be a good idea. If you want to keep things simple, I’d avoid having a shop/power meter type system. I really like the linear power-up system in Major Stryker, where you are granted a power up if you destroy all of the enemies in a single wave. And you can’t choose your powerup, rather your ship just shoots in more directions.
- Have you considered talking to Andy about getting the game on GameMold?
#2 by Joshua Smyth (Admin) on September 25, 2009 - 3:46 pm
Cheers Erik, some good points you make there.
Increasing the difficulty (as well as the speed) on successive loops might be interesting. Throw in a few new enemies here and there so the loop isn’t exactly the same each time.
I don’t like shop systems for powerups I was just thinking of something to collect that gives you an a little helper orb thing that increases your firepower that you lose when you die.
A bonus stage sounds good and would break up the gameplay a little, its something I hadn’t considered but I think I might work one in. Good idea.
#3 by Damien Caine on September 25, 2009 - 9:50 pm
Attack of the Meeplings is great (I’ve only now been able to play it)! Very playable (although I’m not the greatest twitch-player so somewhere between Easy and Normal is prolly me xD) and I love the chunky retro graphics.
Power-ups would definitely be a cool thing (a shield power up every now and then?) – they will, of course, change the balance of the game a great deal so you’ll prolly have fun working on them and reworking the fire patterns of the enemies where necessary, etc.
I like the bonus stage idea too – just having it as part of the incoming waves (after the boss stage or whatever) would be great. Perhaps you could even increase the apparent speed in that stage (stars and powerups moving faster down the screen) so that the Player will have to move quickly across the screen to catch as many of the powerups as they can?
#4 by Jawyei Wong on November 12, 2009 - 7:30 pm
I didn’t know you made this, probably why I got it wrong on your test.
For #2 I would say if you’re going to go with the lots of projectiles onscreen approach, probably a good idea to make them slightly bigger and give them a more florescent glow as to make them stand out a bit more. Also if you are wanting to go that route, the projectiles can’t be too random. I like what you those spiral guys, it’s good to have sort of a predictable no fly path but also having to worry about the next enemy not adding to your to path.
Arcade games like strikers 1945 are really skilled based requiring the player to dodge lots of things on screen but to lessen play skill one could include a shield for the plane.
Easy and hard can just be separated out by rate of enemy fire and shield.
Rear flying enemies in this isn’t the best as you’re often at the bottom of the screen. Unless you memorise when they come, it’s a little unfair. For enemies to be more dynamic you could include kamikaze type planes as to be another to worry about rather than just projectiles. Or enemies that don’t shoot but when shot, explode to 8 way projectile?
I agree with no ‘shop’ to keep the game fast pace and arcade, power-ups should just be as you’re playing.