aside from some bugs, it is a neat idea. a few hints from a pro game dev because it is a missed opportunity for a commercial success, and i'm surprised that your profs did not help you in this regard, probably because they lack game design and production experience, or they didn't care? but even if the latter is true, you should care:
- flesh out the ui. illustrators are often bad ui designers. the ui is not abstract enough. the ui textures are too detailed. compare it to successful strategy game uis.
- it took me a few minutes to realize what and how to do it. ui could you some help here. bear in mind that ui design in the #2 priority for a strategy game, after game mechanics, but also in general.
- animation is key. you could spent a little more time on animations. and do not animate the borders, because the eye it is the major moving area of the whole game currently.
- be cautious about challenges. challenges/missions are good for rpg's, not open world strategy games. players tend then to focus only on your challenges and stop playing once you run out of challenges or if they become generic. an rpg has combat/story at least.
- 3 game designers + 1 pm, but only 2 coders, 2 artists, 1 ui and 1 sound? an indicator of bad project management and direction. next time focus on the artists and coders. be efficient. nobody cares about game designers or pm's of student projects anyway. game quality is all that matters at that stage.
- less text in the descriptions and quests. 90 % of players read 5-6 lines only.
- the game is a little too close to a board game. you might have missed the opportunity for a video game here, guys, which goes especially to the game designers.
- as some youtubers pointed out. this game has lot of potential that you missed, so i will miss that point as it would lead to extensions or even a new game.
good luck! :)
Hi,
Thank you for your feedbacks, but I want to reply to the composition of the team: actually, we didn't have much choice for the composition, it's the same composition for each team (in our school).
I really think that almost (wink wink, team) each people in the team have done their part and were useful to the project. We didn't reach every expectations we had (this "demo" is far away from our ambitions and will but it's a start, isn't it?) but since you're a professionnal game dev, I think that you know that, sometimes, game creation goes through some hard times. And thanks to our PM who keeps an eye on our very tight scheduled, organized the work, managed the team to make all of us work as one, we ended up creating something.
Of course, we're still learning and we make mistakes but it's how the learning process work: making mistakes, learning from them, making something better. And that's why I thank you and each person who give us feedback, because it helps a lot.
However, I fully agree with the fact that we needed more artists, more coders (each time, they did their best to make everything happened) and more sound designers. Unfortunately, this isn't up to us (it's some kind of pre-requisite instaured by our school).
So, thank you again for your feedback, there are interesting advices in it! ^^ And sorry for the long text, haha!