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[Play in Browser] Plants vs Zombies/RTS hybrid needs feedback

A topic by Durian Smoothie Games created May 02, 2024 Views: 850 Replies: 7
Viewing posts 1 to 3
(2 edits) (+1)

Hi guys, I  am learning game development and challenged myself to make a PvZ/RTS hybrid of sorts within a deadline.

The game def still needs polishing and much more, but I am hoping to get feedback on the main gameplay loop/overall design. Balance and things of that nature can and will easily be tweaked; I am more-so focused on whether the game is fun to play, feels good, and if I executed my idea well. However, if you encounter any bugs please let me know as I have released this in as much of a bug-free state as possible.

 Thank you for reading and please let me know what you think! 

https://avocado-smoothie.itch.io/goblins-are-coming


(+1)

I really enjoyed this, and the visuals were really nice. The core idea was solid and fun.. it kinda reminds me a bit of "line wars" and some of the variants of this  in the good old Warcraft 3 days :) 

I think though, that you should try to play the game through yourself though, that is always a good idea ;) There are some gamebreaking bugs, and I was not able to win, nor loose the game. And that is pretty fundamental 

Here is a video recording of me playing your game while speaking out loud of what I am thinking.


Things that I liked: 

  • The visuals were great, and it was clear what I was supposed to do. 
  • Once I had it figured out, it was quite enjoyable, and I started putting down strategies. 
  • The depleting sheep resources, puts a limit to the tame and how long I can sustain myslef
  • having to plan a strategy and balance my resrouces was fun

Things that I would improve: 

  • I would play the game as a player a few times, there were some obvious gamebreaking bugs that you should have fixed.
  • There is the laying issues, characters going behind and in front of trees and objects.
  • The price on things should be a small tooltip, or it should be clear what things cost, I had no idea what warriors were costing, and how to plan ahead, if this is a "strategy game" then I need information that can help me create and plan a stragety on how you use my workers. 
  • I needed some sort of indication of how durable my soldiers were, adding a simple healthbar would be fine. 
  • The archers did nothing.. or at least I did not see them do anything, so I quickly stopped purchasing them. 
  • There was no indication of how durable the goblins were
  • I was unable to win the game.. or loose it, and at the end of the level there was some really though bugs that broke the game
  • The pacing ofthe game was a bit off, and I believe that increasing it so that as a player I am not ideling just as much
  • You should think about when things are automatically deselected, when puchasing new workers, I would like to buy 3 in a row, but I cannot, I have to do 3 clicks for each. 

All in all a good and cute little game, there is some obvious polish that you need to do ;) 

If you have time to return the favor and play and give feedback on my game, I would really appresiate it: https://itch.io/t/3658231/strategy-game-about-bunnies-building-a-rocket-gameplay...

(+1)

Thank you so much for the in depth feedback and the video recording! I very much appreciate your time. The video recording is EXTREMELY helpful as I have been the only play tester of my own game, so to see the steps you took in order to run into certain bugs and the thinking behind certain bad decisions in my design was very illuminating. I never realized how much I was doing things in my game the way I intended them to be done (thus causing me to miss many bugs), but I now realize I need to either break out of that box more or have more variety in play testing. It is actually a very big moment for me to watch someone else play my game! I will be taking all the critiques and advice to heart and can't wait to implement them in the next version of the game.

Absolutely no problem - Let me know when if you make a new version, and I will give it another run

(2 edits)

Hey, I really like the look of the game. It looks cute and is simple. I played the first level and unfortunately a resident “hid” behind a tree quite quickly and I couldn’t use it any further. The controls are unusual for me, I’m used to selecting with the left mouse button and executing the most common command with the right mouse button in many other games. To change the line, for example, I could select the resident with the left mouse button and send them to the cottage with the right mouse button. Then select the other cottage and directly send an available occupant to collect with the right button. That would save me a few clicks. All in all, my pre-tester has already written such an excellent text, I can’t add much to it, I’ve rather learned something that I wouldn’t have paid attention to otherwise. Best wishes and good luck! Alex

Edit: I played all the levels. It’s fun for a prototype!

  • It should be possible to optimize the gold collection.
  • I’m missing a display that shows if a resource is already being mined.
  • Maybe you could let multiple inhabitants collect at one mine?
  • When a goblin village is destroyed, I would like to keep the units and move them to another tower.

Thank you for playing! Is there any chance you remember what steps led up to the villager getting stuck behind the tree? Also, thank you for your feedback on using left and mouse buttons. I originally had a much much more simple plan for the game that only involved one mouse button and kind of worked myself into a corner. I 100% plan to implement more traditional controls in the next version of the game! The QOL changes you mentioned in the edits are also extremely helpful!

(1 edit)

I’m not sure, I think I moved the resident there when the tree was cut down. Then I had the problem that I could no longer click on it. I just tried to reproduce it, of course, that didn’t work. :D

No worries haha, I'll just have to comb through the code!