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Roast my game

A topic by sargos7 created Oct 30, 2020 Views: 536 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(+1)

I'm pretty thick skinned, so feel free to be harsh with your criticism. I've got a lot more planned, so it's nowhere near finished, but I think what I have so far is at least worth a roast.


game link:

https://sargos7.itch.io/pgp


and if you want to roast my profile page too, here's the link to that:


https://sargos7.itch.io/

Moderator(+2)

Hi sargos7,

I tried to play the game on Linux, but couldn’t. I get this error:

./PolyGoneParkour-AArch64.sh: line 5: <game_root_dir>/PolyGoneParkour/Binaries/LinuxAArch64/PolyGoneParkour-LinuxAArch64-Shipping: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error

I checked the game’s page, and found this devlog:

I have not tested it yet, but it should work. Let me know if it doesn’t.

I would suggest to download a linux OS, and put it on a USB stick, then you can run linux from it without installing it on a machine. This would allow you to at least test it and confirm it works as expected.

From what I understand this is made with Unreal, I’m not familiar with how Unreal exports to different platforms, so I can’t suggest any way to fix it.

Having said that, I took a look at your profile as well, so here is some feedback for your profile page:

  • Your profile page doesn’t really say much about you. When a user lands on that page, usually it means they want to get to know the dev a bit better. Who are you? Why did you make your games?

  • The background picture has too high saturation, this makes it attract too much attention. As a background asset, it would look better to be more discreet, and allow the assets that sit on top of it to be more visible.

  • The text for your game is not easily readable, because it’s color is similar to the background.

  • I think it would look better if the game’s title was part of its image, styled in a specific way. That would give the viewers an idea of what quality to expect on the graphics.

Here is some feedback for the game’s page:

  • I see the same background is used. Apart from the feedback above, it doesn’t look as good having the same asset for both your profile page and game’s page. It’s almost signaling that the game itself will not have a big variety of assets.

  • The text is very clearly visible, which is a massive plus.

  • You mention on the game’s text the “con” of the game not having a lot of gameplay yet. I assume from that it means the game is not finished yet. It’s best to focus on the positives on the game’s page, as that’s when users are trying to decide if they should give your game a try. If the game is still work in progress, it doesn’t really matter.

That’s most of the feedback I could get so far. If the game works on Linux I might be able to give it another try later.

All of the feedback mentioned here is my own opinion. It’s up to you to decide if any changes are need at all based on it :)

(+1)

Thanks. That's pretty helpful.

(+1)

Unfortunately I don’t have time and headspace for trying out anything these days. But I do have opinions on the presentation that I could share. I will be looking at the page in stages of attention, so if you think I should have been able to tell something because it was explained in the description, that’s why. I also didn’t read Dark Dimension’s post to avoid bias - so sorry in case there’s redundant information.

  • I like the background rainbow. With my browser’s resolution it abruptly ends in a patch of brown, though. If that is intentional, I have no complaints, as the brown is easier on the eyes than the bright red. Otherwise, you could mirror the background (and shorten the red accordingly) for a more looping effect.
  • The models (and faces) look okay for 3D.
  • The world seems to be either really dark or rather bright. If that was not a conscious decision maybe soften these differences a little.
  • As far as I can tell, you’ve already done good work with the tags. Looking at the screenshots I didn’t notice any text. There’s a “Accessibility: Textless/With no text” tag that might apply. If there is, you could add the “Language: English”-tag. But I’m already scraping the bottom of the barrel in that department.
  • Poke somebody who has actually played your game (like Dark Dimension) to rate your game. Even a single 3 star rating tells me “This is an actual, working game”. Because some developers on itch (and elsewhere) use terms like “in development” or “early alpha” but mean: “So the game is currently just an idea in my head… But it will be great!” With InDev games even as much as a single rating can be reassuring. (But if such a game has a 5 star rating, I’m only reassured of the fact that they’ve gotten a friend or parent to rate their game - which tells me nothing aside from “bloody nepotism…”)
  • You should name your protagonists - in general. Not to sound too esoteric, but there’s power in names. Once somebody knows the name of the protagonist the readers/players have a better way of applying information about her story, and thus meaning, to her name. (If her name is supposed to be a secret that’s only revealed during gameplay, that’s fine as well. You could draw attention to the fact that her name isn’t known at the start to add mystique to it.)
  • The eyes changing color according to the character’s HP is an interesting feature. I like it because it sounds rather poetic. But unless she walks backwards a lot or constantly looks over her shoulder, that feature seems impractical. I’m not telling you to put her into an exosuit and attach a HP-spine or change her hair color instead. In short games I can appreciate uniqueness over practicality. But unless you found an elegant fix for the issue I… hypothesized it might be something to keep in mind for the future.

On a whole, your presentation (as well as the fact that you do development logs and your forum recent posts, btw) show me that you truly care. In my opinion, that is one of the bigger assets you can have. And you demonstrating that you care will make others care. (To varying degrees, of course, and far from everyone.) I can make no promises but I might actually check your project out in the future. And I will definitely remember the eye-mechanic. :)

I hope any of this will be of use for you, even if it’s mainly about the store page presentation.