itch.io

https://smurjo.itch.io/building-bill-burton-road

For five years I have released a game for Christmas. This is a screenshot from this years game:

Building Bill Burton Road is short strategic game set in 1898 focusing on single task. You are to build a road through the wilderness following your compass. Given the difficulties in mountainous terrain you'll soon learn to plan ahead using the map. The maps are randomly generated and can be saved in case you'd like to try the same map again. Here are some examples:

Have fun and preferably let me know what could be better. Here is the link:

https://smurjo.itch.io/building-bill-burton-road

Hi Krunchy, 

I tried to play your game (browser version) but got stuck very early. It was in front of the door of the police building. There was a text I should do something first before (entering the police station?) and there was an image of a tiny door. But no button worked (except esc and tab).  I played on PC with my Keyboard (I tried mouse input too, but I guess the game is not intended to be controlled by mouse).

From my very short look I quite like the graphics.

I totally agree with Pop Shop. AI is trained without respecting the artists' copyrights. Furthermore AI can produce nothing but cliché art, because this is what it is programmed to do.

Hi Amara, 

It's probably because you can name it whatever you want but your e-mail address makes me kind of suspicious. So generic. The kind of e-mail-address fraudsters and spammers like to use.  At which university do you do your PhD? Sure you have an e-mail address there too.

I don't want go into specifics for privacy reasons. It's in the field of engineering, computer science and network technology.

Albeit I love game development it wouldn't offer as much variety as a my current full time job. I actually love my job and game development as a hobby. It's very satisfying to interact with people and physical products. 

I have once used Unity to visualize a machine my husband build in virtual reality. Mostly the 3D CAD for mechanical engineering and 3D design tools for games are different worlds. Kind of like vector graphics and bitmaps in 2D. We had to find a way to convert the data format first and the resulting 3D models had millions of vertices - something that is almost criminal in game design. We had to buy a computer good enough to handle that. Nevertheless the result was impressive - you could kind of walk into the operating machine.

I use Unity and used Unigine in the past:

•  Unigine is very beautiful, but doesn't render as fast a Unity. This was the issue that made switch back to Unity with the amount and size of my meshes. 
• The creation of UI isn't as comfortable as in Unity. I could live with it though.

How can chatgpt refer my game without knowing anything about it? It might have been coincidence that referral was this quick but chatgpt must have been even quicker.

It was within minutes. I had just uploaded the new version and wasn't finished with editing the page. I highly doubt that was someone finding my game except for a bot. 

How do you know which way you need to go with the car? Also it looks like you'd want a transparent shader with alpha clipping for the  tree tops. I put in an example (in case you use Unity).

I recently updated a game which I originally posted in 2021. Because of it's topic (baroque) it necessary has some public domain content. But the rest of the content I created all by myself, without AI. I explicitly stated in the description that I don't allow my content to be used to train AI. 

Guess what - within minutes of the upload I had a visit by chatgpt.  What does it mean? What can I do?

I have released several games but I don't do any marketing. For me it's totally normal that I don't get any views for a month on a game.  Maybe it helps to tag you game properly and to make you thumbnail more appealing.

I'm not a lawyer either. But I guess you are fine as long as you make negligible money. 

If you make money, it's quite likely they'd want a piece of the cake. If you set out for making money I guess the Star Trek thing could be very helpful for marketing. Have you tried contacting them for a license? 

Why an additional button? In my games you simply move the volume slider to 0. Additionally (because I e.g. play actual baroque music in my "Building Baroque" game) I have button to display the title of the piece that's currently playing. BTW: There is a lot of public domain classical music if that would be something for your game. 

I wonder if you'd like to try Building Baroque, which I updated yesterday. It's a cozy puzzle game in baroque setting. Here is a screenshot:

I worked on a game for five years and never published it. Now I do a small game once a year for friends and family for Christmas. This way I gain experience on the complete process and build up a library of my own assets. I don't make any money with my games. I guess if you want to make money you would need to invest in marketing  and your game should better be good. Which your first game - honestly most likely - isn't.

Me as a creator have a problem too. I provide a SHA 256 with my games, which should in theory allow you to check whether the file you downloaded is identical with the file I uploaded. But what if they hack my page and change the SHA 256 too?

Downloaded the game and started it. I like the color palette and visual style a lot. I'd definitely recommend the game for its aesthetics. 

Unfortunately my Spanish isn't that good.  So I missed the opportunity to go back at some places when I noticed from the narrative I must have missed something. Given I couldn't finish in one go, I would have liked the option to quit and restart at the same place later (You could save the information of the current progress at at the PlayerPrefs in Unity).

I tried to play the browser version but it won't start. Albeit I can change the selection, when I hit play nothing happens. :-(

Very nice graphics. Albeit I managed to carry around the mushrooms and the carrot, I didn't figure out what to do with them. I usually don't play this kind of game. Enjoyed it anyway.

Hi everybody,

I am looking for some feedback on the core mechanics of my color fairy game which is to color-in things. 

Here is the link to the project: https://smurjo.itch.io/color-in-prototype?secret=yzL27XqyodSB0CKu8eMnVNWops

Specifically I would like comments about:

- Help and usability: 

• Did you find the help? 
• Did you manage to select a color scheme and and colors? 
• Did you/could you return to the main menu later?
• Something missing in the help?

- Color-In mechanics: 

• Did you manage to assign the color you choose to the objects you choose? 
• Is it fun? 
• Suggestions for improvement?

- Performance:

• Which frame rate did you get? (display in top left corner)
• Did you experience mouse clicks not recognized? (on random objects/ on a specific object)
• How long did you play (display in top left corner)

A big thanks to everybody helping me with their feedback!

Thank you ASWhalerGamer for playing my game. I found and corrected that embarrassing glitch on the third case.

For me it's definitely hard to read, especially since the font is so narrow. Don't forget that the primary "game mechanic" in a visual novel is to read text. A well readable font and size of it is even more important. Another idea might be a font-size setting (Where you have to check whether everything is visible or can be scrolled into visibility with the biggest select-able font size ).

To further improve readability I would prefer the background monochrome or only slightly textured. How about to placing the text inside a single big cloud?

My analytics:

gross revenue: $0 / views: 79 / downloads: 29 / Collections: 5 

For a game I worked a year to prepare. So I would say you are doing well.

Hi Joe,

as you made the game with Unity and it is tiny, can you try to make a browser version for trying it out? Since I am always short on disc space, I would appreciate it.

I like it a lot , especially the moment when the horns(?) start (17 second in). Towards the middle it feels a little slow-paced to me, I would possibly switch instruments at about 50 sec instead of 60.

Horse racing appeals the most to me. Horses are beautiful creatures and come with their own character for the story. Possibly you can include a horse betting mechanic - or a story character gets in trouble by excessive betting.

What exactly qualifies as "can be run on mobile"? Would there be a size limit?

I also listen to the music I selected for the project. Even if it was baroque music for "Building Baroque". It also kind of a test whether the music is good as background music.

I published my first game 3 years ago and 3 more since. I didn't get any notifications of some indexing or review by a moderator.  So either there was no review or in case everything is OK you don't get any notification.

detective-martin-gunnarson

I played it, but didn't figure out what I had to achieve. I lost with leftmost column full and 0 points

I tried to play the game in Firefox, but I fear it didn't really work. In the text it says that the green and purple blobs would harm me, but I didn't loose any health or anything. I could also walk through walls. I didn't gain any points either. 

Anyway I like the the concept and the music is appropriate for the style of the game. I found those texts explaining what single things would do but I didn't really understand my overall objective. I would have preferred a bigger area for reading the explanations (possibly opening up and closing as needed).

The intro as pure text made me impatient - as specially as it doesn't give any story, just praises the game that the player is waiting to see. I started the tutorial and think it is done nicely. Unfortunately I stopped playing then, because I found out it was a shooter. I don't play shooters on principle.