What did this game do well? (Answer in a few sentences)
- The game rules are fairly straightforward, and the game has nice sound and visual effects, plus screenshakes and particle fx to add to game feel. I think it's nice that the game makes it obvious whose turn it is to move w/ the indications at the top and highlights the square that the cursor is hovering over.
- The sounds, visuals, and music enhance the game very much and look/feel good. Gomoku is also a great choice for a game that is simple but still has a lot of depth.
- Realy nice innovation on the traditional Gomoku. I like the idea that you cannot control every aspect of a game. It adds variety to the game.
- I think the game is very neat and has good game feel. I really like the music and particle effects. I think you did a good job taking an existing game and adding more depth to it with traps!
- I really like the juice effects in the game like the camera shake and particle effects. The game is also minimal and satisfying to play.
- Very nice game UI design, added trap for game-skill depth.
- A friend and I played this together. Neither of us knew the rules to Gomoku, so we had to google them. But we quickly learned and enjoyed the base game, and the chaos blocks made us laugh, particularly when they switched our colors. It is satisfying to place pieces due to the sound effect. The music is nice.
- The game feel is good, adding some new flavor to the gomoku game.
What could be done better? (Answer in a few sentences)
- - There are a couple times where there's a particle effect on the screen but I have no idea what changed, so maybe add some sort of visual indicator as to the change? (eg have different color particle fx for the event triggered)
- if it's a two player game I think the win messages should reflect the side that wins vs it being solely you win/you lose depending on how blue did
- Maybe add an indicator to show the next trap's effect so the game can have more strategies.
- I don't really understand how the game rule works. It might be better if added more visual hints.
- Too much randomness may reduce skill depth, Maybe change the trap to some more positive effect to encourage the player to use traps
- Illustrated instructions would make the game much more inviting. The chaos blocks would be even more "chaotic" if they were hidden (though admittedly this would go against the week's focus on skill depth). I'm not able to discern if one could apply useful strategies to the chaos blocks, given that their placement is known, and their effects random. But there may be an interesting risk/reward tradeoff here. Perhaps this mechanic could be simplified or refined..
- I think the game is good overall! This was mentioned in class, but the players can see the locations of the traps by scanning through the whole board. I think a good alternative to this could be that whenever a player places a block, there is a small percentage that it turns into a trap block.
- The hidden trap mechanic was a bit confusing. At first, I wasn't sure what the trap does and how it affects the game state. I think the trap mechanic should be more explicitly stated rather than a surprise mechanic.
- I think the "chaos" aspect makes the game less skill based (and subsequently less rewarding for players who delve deep into learning the game) by adding potentially very affective random factors to gomoku while also not being prevalent enough to feel like its own unique experience that isn't just playing regular gomoku.
Also the description and the game messages(YOU WIN!/YOU LOSE!) make it sound like its a singleplayer game vs an AI but its multiplayer only as far as I could tell. Perhaps making it PLAYER 1/2 WINS or BLUE/PURPLE WINS would be better.
Although a singleplayer gomoku game where you are playing with the normal rules vs an AI who can cause the various "chaos" effects sounds like an interesting premise too!