Hi! Great game! I really like the athletic and the main menu screen! A couple of critiques, first the hitboxes felt a little strange to me. the player felt like they had a large hitbox but the enemies' hitbox was smaller. Not a huge deal but it didn't always feel like I got hit. I do think adding some sound would go a long way to help indicate to the player if they hit an enemy or an enemy has hit them. But adding sound could take a while so only if you have time. Also when I loaded into the level the screen didn't quite fit. The left side was cut off on my end, not sure if that's just me though. But the movement feels really good, and I look forward to seeing what y'all have next week.
When I played the other games I felt like they were complicated and hard to know where to go or how to do things but in this game I instantly knew what to do .. shoot eggs out of my bird mouth at the clearly evil backwards flying birds in front of me haha. The controls were very intuitive and the fast birds gave me a spook. The pixel art splash screen is amazing.
I think the UI could be cleaned up, and I think I was on level 2 for like 8 levels.
Add some bird music. Maybe some egg sound effects.
Maybe an awesome boss bird, like an eagle or a hovering penguin.
I am a huge Galaga fan so I really enjoyed playing a couple rounds on Free Bird. A few things that I noticed right off the bat is that once you get past round 3 on level 2 it continues to count upward. So it say level 2 round 4, round 5, etc. Also when you do eventually lose the game didnt give me an exit option so you have to kill it with the task manager. Im sure this is being implemented just wanted to mention it. As for the player movement I actually think it works very well. If you do decide to implement the ability to move up and down I think the entire feel of the game will change and youll have to change the way enemies spawn into the map. As for the projectile speed I thought it worked well but I did notice that the fast blue projectiles only took off after the enemy in front of them had been defeated. Maybe I just didnt see it correctly but if this is the case I would allow the projectiles to move from any space on the board at any time. If the fast ones have to wait in order to take off then it makes them very easy to eliminate. I think the player health is perfect. I do think that the enemies do a good amount of damage as well. Taking 3 or 4 hits seems like the perfect amount of life for the player. As you move up in level it would be cool if you were given more life based on the difficulty of the level. Or maybe increment the life by 1 every 5 levels? The only thing that I really thinks needs improvement is the HUD. It didnt really fit the style of the game overall and it was blurry and difficult to read for me. I like the set up though as it is like a classic arcade game. Great work guys!
1. I didn't feel like I was missing a different movement ability while playing, but I think it would be fine to add one as well. I think the answer to that question really depends on what you're going for. Maybe that could tie in somehow to my answer for the fourth question.
2. I'm not sure what projectiles you're referring to, as the only projectiles I saw were the ones coming from the bird (maybe that answers your question, haha). If you do mean the bird projectiles, their travel speed was fine, and spamming them was also fine. If you're referring to the dive bombing birds with this question, they were very hard to evade when they dive bombed the player right at the start of a stage, and I think they could be slowed down a bit.
3. I made it to level 2, stage 11/3, so I'm assuming I would have passed that level with ease. The only thing I ended up taking damage from were the dive bombing birds, which, as I mentioned above, felt a bit fast and cheap. Pretty much all the damage I ever took, at least from what I saw, was at the start of a stage. I think the player could have less health, especially if the speed of those birds is tweaked.
4. I'd like two things related to shooting. While playing I ended up just mashing the left mouse button, so I think I'd prefer to be able to hold the button down to save my poor finger the effort. That being said, I also think it would be good for the player to have some reason to not be shooting at some point- maybe they charge up power to do more damage on the next bullet when not attacking or are able to move faster. Even if you don't end up implementing a "hold the button" solution I think the game needs this, as the optimal strategy for the game is to just shoot constantly. If there was some sort of penalty already in place, I didn't notice it while playing.
Comments
Hi! Great game! I really like the athletic and the main menu screen! A couple of critiques, first the hitboxes felt a little strange to me. the player felt like they had a large hitbox but the enemies' hitbox was smaller. Not a huge deal but it didn't always feel like I got hit. I do think adding some sound would go a long way to help indicate to the player if they hit an enemy or an enemy has hit them. But adding sound could take a while so only if you have time. Also when I loaded into the level the screen didn't quite fit. The left side was cut off on my end, not sure if that's just me though. But the movement feels really good, and I look forward to seeing what y'all have next week.
When I played the other games I felt like they were complicated and hard to know where to go or how to do things but in this game I instantly knew what to do .. shoot eggs out of my bird mouth at the clearly evil backwards flying birds in front of me haha. The controls were very intuitive and the fast birds gave me a spook. The pixel art splash screen is amazing.
I think the UI could be cleaned up, and I think I was on level 2 for like 8 levels.
Add some bird music. Maybe some egg sound effects.
Maybe an awesome boss bird, like an eagle or a hovering penguin.
Awesome start!
I am a huge Galaga fan so I really enjoyed playing a couple rounds on Free Bird. A few things that I noticed right off the bat is that once you get past round 3 on level 2 it continues to count upward. So it say level 2 round 4, round 5, etc. Also when you do eventually lose the game didnt give me an exit option so you have to kill it with the task manager. Im sure this is being implemented just wanted to mention it. As for the player movement I actually think it works very well. If you do decide to implement the ability to move up and down I think the entire feel of the game will change and youll have to change the way enemies spawn into the map. As for the projectile speed I thought it worked well but I did notice that the fast blue projectiles only took off after the enemy in front of them had been defeated. Maybe I just didnt see it correctly but if this is the case I would allow the projectiles to move from any space on the board at any time. If the fast ones have to wait in order to take off then it makes them very easy to eliminate. I think the player health is perfect. I do think that the enemies do a good amount of damage as well. Taking 3 or 4 hits seems like the perfect amount of life for the player. As you move up in level it would be cool if you were given more life based on the difficulty of the level. Or maybe increment the life by 1 every 5 levels? The only thing that I really thinks needs improvement is the HUD. It didnt really fit the style of the game overall and it was blurry and difficult to read for me. I like the set up though as it is like a classic arcade game. Great work guys!
(This is Henry)
1. I didn't feel like I was missing a different movement ability while playing, but I think it would be fine to add one as well. I think the answer to that question really depends on what you're going for. Maybe that could tie in somehow to my answer for the fourth question.
2. I'm not sure what projectiles you're referring to, as the only projectiles I saw were the ones coming from the bird (maybe that answers your question, haha). If you do mean the bird projectiles, their travel speed was fine, and spamming them was also fine. If you're referring to the dive bombing birds with this question, they were very hard to evade when they dive bombed the player right at the start of a stage, and I think they could be slowed down a bit.
3. I made it to level 2, stage 11/3, so I'm assuming I would have passed that level with ease. The only thing I ended up taking damage from were the dive bombing birds, which, as I mentioned above, felt a bit fast and cheap. Pretty much all the damage I ever took, at least from what I saw, was at the start of a stage. I think the player could have less health, especially if the speed of those birds is tweaked.
4. I'd like two things related to shooting. While playing I ended up just mashing the left mouse button, so I think I'd prefer to be able to hold the button down to save my poor finger the effort. That being said, I also think it would be good for the player to have some reason to not be shooting at some point- maybe they charge up power to do more damage on the next bullet when not attacking or are able to move faster. Even if you don't end up implementing a "hold the button" solution I think the game needs this, as the optimal strategy for the game is to just shoot constantly. If there was some sort of penalty already in place, I didn't notice it while playing.