itch.io

The main advantages I see that it's yours: no account, no free tier limits. Also since it's open source, if it doesn't do what you need, you or anyone else can add it and everyone gets it. As most creators on itch can program quite well, I think it can work.

That said, if you want a top 10 running in five minutes and don't care where the data lives, a hosted service is less hassle. It's a trade.

What have you been using for hosting leaderboards?

Hi thanks for the reply!

Nothing's for sale, did not mean it to come across that way! The idea is to make it open source so other devs can just take it, run it, and build on it, and hopefully improve it for everyone here.

You'd host it yourself, so the only cost is hosting, and that's free on plenty of the free tiers out there.

Totally agree on ease of use. If it's annoying to set up, nobody's going to bother. What usually puts you off using something like this?

I made a mockup, this is how it could like like in a webpage, what do you guys think?  😁

Any game developers interested in this concept? If want a leaderboard in your game, what do you usually use?

Very nice puzzle game! 

Hi, I played your game and its pretty impressive! I like the concept behind it! I tried some easy levels which I completed in about 2 minutes. However I was not able to complete a Medium or Hard level. 

I might just be figuring out the puzzle still, but I feel like I have not quite figured out the 'rules' on how I can complete the puzzles without guessing, especially when the invisible faces appear in Medium or Hard levels, I felt like I had to guess a little to get things right? For me the best puzzles are the ones where you do not need to guess, and everything can be found based on the rules that are inherent to the puzzle. It might be a skill issue thou.

A small potential improvement could be ways to annotate! In most online puzzles, you can annotate things you know which can then help you figure out the puzzle. In your game I felt like I was kind of missing this. Two examples:

- When two faces next to each other add up to 7, I wanted to kind of place a line "|" in between them so it was clear that these two numbers should never be in the same color group.

- For two faces with the same number I also wanted to annotate something. For example, you know that two faces with the same number (for example 6) will never belong to the same color group. It would be nice to also be able to annotate something so this can be clear. I currently did this by just marking them with different colors.

Anyway, a very good concept for a puzzle game!

Hi everyone!

I've been toying with the idea of building my own leaderboard service and putting it open source online. The idea being that other people could host it themselves if they wanted, or just connect to one that I host. I plan on using it for my own games, as every game that I created until now has needed a leaderboard so it seems useful for myself at least.

Nothing exists yet, I'm mostly just curious whether anyone would actually be interested in this before I sink a lot of time into it.

If you've put a leaderboard in a game before, or wanted one and didn't bother, what would you want it to do? I've got the obvious stuff in mind, submitting a score and showing a top 10, but I don't really know what people run into past that. Per-level boards? Weekly resets? Lower-is-better for time trials? Showing a player where they rank? Some way to deal with cheated scores?

Anyway, let me know what you think! Any opinion is appreciated! 🙂

Hey pixelwashgame,

I played your game for a bit! First of all, for your first game this looks very good! Overall its a very clean experience, and it feels like a mobile game.

1) The core mechanic is quite fun, but its also very simple. I must say that I think your game fits the mobile genre better than on the pc. I feel like the mechanic of color matching and swiping is more satisfying on a mobile phone.

2) For the difficulty curve, I didn't get past level 3, I always got the message that my water ran out. I tried searching for the tutorial text again but could not find it so I didn't know how to proceed.

3) It feels fair, to be honest I don't know if it is normal, but I could see which color I was supposed to do where before drawing, maybe it was my screen brightness or something? So it felt fair because I could see where each color was supposed to be haha.

4) Didn't interact with it that much so can't really give an opinion here.

5) I think some sort of powerups or something? Maybe you can randomly find these when breaking blocks, which could restore your water somehow, or make you swipe multiple blocks at once. 

Anyway for a first game its looking really good, I think you made a very good choice with making something small. Often I hear people making their first game and immediately trying to make a huge game. The game is very good!

Good luck with developing, hopefully this feedback helped somewhat :D

Hey, I played your game for a bit!

Like others are saying here, it feels very nice to play, the movement feels responsive. The difficulty also feels fair and increases fast enough to keep me interested. So overall the game is very good!!

I do have some suggestions for maybe in the future, I think in general increasing the difficulty without just increasing the speed would keep the game more interesting. Instead of the game getting faster and faster, you could for example add moving gaps that you have to fly through, or add multiple gaps so the player feels like they need to make a choice. I think this would help keep the game interesting.

Another suggestion I have is to have a leaderboard, it would be awesome to see how my score (I got 34) compares to other players. Adding a leaderboard can be a little difficult, but there are itch.io tools that make it a lot easier (I for example have used this https://danqzq.itch.io/leaderboard-creator).

Overall its a very fun game you have! Good luck :D

Hey Slug People Games,

I watched your video and it definitely looks like a nice game, the design fits the gameplay well. It reminds me a little of the game Kabuto Park on steam, in the sense that it could be a cozy game about gathering animals/insects.

It was a little bit harder for me to see the core gameplay loop of your game, which I think is important for the fun factor of the game, so would love to see that. Also, if it isn't too much work, putting a demo on Itch.io that is playable in the browser makes it really easy for other people to test your game and give direct feedback! 

Hope this helps a little, good luck!!

Hey guys, I made a small short displaying the progress of this game over time, here it is!

Wow thanks a lot for all the cool ideas! I will definitely look into Guidus to see how that game works. Also the risk rewards thing you mentioned is indeed a very good way to keep the game exciting. Thanks, your feedback helps a lot!

Hey Greysir, thanks a lot for the really nice feedback! 😀

I initially considered making this a runner game, but for now I decided against it. The main reason is that the player would constantly have to swipe forward to keep moving, which I think could get tiresome pretty quickly. I could make the player move forward automatically, but then it feels like you lose some control over the character, which I’m not a big fan of.

I absolutely love the idea of having a leaderboard in this type of game 😄 When I was a kid, I spent so much time playing games like Subway Surfers and Jetpack Joyride, trying to beat my friends’ high scores. That’s definitely a big inspiration for this game as well.

Regarding attacks that expand outward: I was thinking about introducing tile states. For example, a tile that’s on fire could spread to nearby tiles, or a frozen tile could make the player slide when stepping on it. This would then allow for attacks that set tiles on fire or freeze them. That said, I think this might make the game a bit too complex for now, so I’m putting that idea on hold 🙂

Overall, really cool ideas, thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts!

One last question, since getting the fun factor right is the most important thing for me right now: do you think you would personally have fun playing this game? What do you feel it currently needs the most to become fun? I’d really appreciate your honest opinion, if it doesn’t look fun at the moment, please feel free to say so 😊

My main goal right now is to figure out whether this idea is strong enough to keep developing, or if I should start exploring a different concept.

Damn you got some very beautiful visuals in your game. How did you get into drawing pixel art?

Hey everyone,

In the last two months, I’ve been working on an idea for an endless score mobile game where the player faces an unending series of attacks that keep getting harder and harder. The setting is a ruined cosmic castle, and the player is constantly dodging as the challenges escalate.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time on it now, and it feels like a good point to get some feedback. I’d love to hear your thoughts on a few specific things:
- Can you see yourself having fun playing this game?
- How do the visuals feel, are they appealing and readable?
- Does the setting of the ruined cosmic castle feel interesting and immersive?
- What do you think would be a visual/gameplay addition to take this to the next level?

Please be as critical as possible, honest opinions are extremely valuable. If you have ideas for interesting features, I’d love to hear them too. Positive feedback is welcome as well, since it’ll motivate me to keep developing this into a solid demo.

Here’s a GIF showing how it looks and plays right now:

I’m also happy to trade feedback, if you’re interested, I can take a look at your game and give you my thoughts in return.

Thanks in advance for your time and feedback!

Hey avowiz, I played the game and it was pretty fun!

I really liked the general gameplay of managing a garden between rot while maximizing fertilization and nurture. I felt that every card really fit that theme and nothing felt really out of place. I also liked the fact that you could build your own deck and try out different combinations with a good mix of active and passive boosts.

The main thing that I had the most trouble with was just generally understanding how to play your game. I think it would go a long way to have some more detail in your game description about how the game works. I spent the first 10 minutes of gameplay resetting and trying to figure out the game by myself. In the end I still did not really understand how to win the game (it had something to do with the lion?)

Other than that I feel like your concept is really unique and the gameplay loop was fun. Good luck and all the best!

Cheers!

Hey Duhabaaa, its nice that you have started on a game, but its hard to answer a question like this without providing at least some direction that you want to go in 😆.

In general I would advise creating a story you are yourself very passionate about, or starting from something you like or dislike. For me it always feels easier to create something I have fun memories of, or something that I feel passionate about.

Hopefully that helps a little bit, good luck with creating your game!! 😁

Damn looked through it and it indeed looks very good! If I make a game in the future needing icons I will definitely try to remember this 😁

Hey Arluc Games, thanks a lot for playing this! I watched your video and had a blast seeing you play the game. Also thanks a lot for the feedback! 

ps: I'm indeed very bad at drawing tanks 😆

Hey Noel K, thanks for the review!

It means a lot that you liked the aesthetic and music!! 

Indeed, the first level might be a little too simple, the idea was that people that aren't used to playing games could also complete that level, but it might have become too easy and uninteresting for some people.

Yeah the game could indeed maybe use some more 'creative' enemies and features. That is something to consider for the future.

Thanks again for playing! Don't forget to upload your highscore : D

Here is a short I made showcasing the enemies of level 1!

Thanks a lot for playing the game! 

Yeah I have heard from multiple people that the dash is a little awkward to use. I can't put it to right mouse button because that has an other use ; ). 

Cheers

Hey everyone, I have a gameplay trailer for everyone that might be interested : )

Also, don't forget to upload your high score, who knows you might be at the top :D

Hey, thanks a lot for your awesome feedback!

I'm really happy to hear you like the aesthetics as it was very difficult for me to find nice-looking visual theme. 

Aha, you are right that there could indeed be a bug regarding perfect waves, as I currently only check if the player health is below the health at the start of the wave! Good catch!

It's indeed true that dashing is somewhat unpredictable, I could indeed look into ways to making it more controlled.

I really like the idea of giving points based on the speed of clearing a wave, I might add that very soon!

Again, thanks a lot for the in depth feedback!! :))

Damn thanks, this is some really good feedback!

While I will probably not be able to apply all these changes soon, I will take this feedback with me when I'm working on the next update!!

I especially like your ideas of adding smaller rewards after each wave, adding a player stats window, and also the idea of increasing enemy variation by playing with size and enemy health.

Also thanks for the suggestions on the art style. The art is definitely the hardest part of making a video game for me, as I don't have much experience in that area.

Cheers!

Hey AlSoKnown, 

First of all, thanks a lot for playing and giving some feedback!

Thanks for pointing out the issues with the tutorial! It was indeed a mistake on my part. I have uploaded a new version that should hopefully fix the issues.

About the movement problems, I cannot really reproduce your issues. I have tried running the game on Firefox but the movement worked fine for me there. Could you maybe see if it's still an issue after the newest update? Would love to help resolve this problem!

Anyway thanks for playing, I would greatly appreciate it if you could give it another chance now that I have updated.

Also, what did you think about the art style, do you like it? : )

All the best!

Hey I played your game and gave it some feedback, I left it in the comments : ))

Hey nice game! I liked it!

I like the gameplay and the rogue-lite aspect of dying and returning stronger. I also liked the relaxing and soothing music. Lastly the visuals were nice!

I do have some small feedback. It was initially for me not that clear that you needed to collect the orbs that enemies drop, making my first few runs a little confusing. Also I do not understand some parts of the mechanics: why your health decreases even when you shoot and what the Aura upgrade does. I feel like all these things could be solved with either a tutorial or little more information in the description.

Anyway these are just my suggestions, it was a very fun game to play!

Cheers!

Hey DaxterFlame. I really like the game!

Currently, I'm just after the tutorial. I am planning to continue playing some more after the weekend. I like the game mechanics, I feel like the timing concept is new (at least for me) and I have also never interacted with the shield break (stun) feature. I must say it was pretty complicated at first but after playing it some more I started liking the concepts.  Another thing I liked was the music, its a really chill vibe and I feel it fits with the gameplay.

Some other feedback I have is to add graphics to the player character, I would love to see something else than the rectangles. In this type of game, I feel like a story does a lot to immerse yourself. A little bit of dialogue at the start of each battle would go a long way. Also maybe I haven't gotten that far yet, but I'm looking forward to some sort of boss battle?

Anyway, I think it is a great concept, looking forward to where this goes!

Ps: I would greatly appreciate it if you could give some feedback to my game Tiny Shooters : )). I have a post on it here: https://itch.io/t/5548079/tiny-shooter-10-update-feedback-please

Hey I played your game, I left some feedback in the comments : ))

Hey I played it for a bit, Its a very exciting game! I took me quite a while to get to 20 seconds!

For me the positives where mainly the exciting gameplay and the music that really fits that vibe. I also think its very important for a 20 second game that it isn't too hard or frustrating to play and I feel like you nailed that.

For suggestions, it could be nice to have some sort of endless-mode where you can try to get as far as possible. Another suggestion could be to add more enemies which have different patterns, but of course you would then need to make sure that it doesn't become too hard or frustrating. Its a hard balance to keep I think.

Have a good one!!

Hey Nice game!! I made it to 20 seconds :D. Got a score of 1760

Hey thanks a lot! Don't forget to upload your high score :D

Haha perfectly fits kind of game you would play instead of studying! xd

What an addicting game hah