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Bunny Bunker needs some feedback - and I will do "A test for a test"

A topic by Polyspice Games created 9 days ago Views: 288 Replies: 13
Viewing posts 1 to 4


We just released a new version of Bunny Bunker and it have a bunch of new things that you can play with. New buildings, new rockets etc. 

You can test the game here: https://polyspice.itch.io/bunny-bunker

What I am interested in, is simply seing recordings of how you play

If you are no up to that, then any feedback on things that you liked about the game, and things that you would improve of change in the game, are also something I would really like to hear about. 

If you test my game - please share a link to your game here, so that I can find it and test that

If in doubt about how to redcord and give feedback, I made a video. Watch the first 2.5 minutes for how to record.

Looking forward to playing your game, and seeing you play my game :)
(+1)

Hey, I'm interested in "trading tests"! I need people to test my Recolonizer as well... And though I don't need recordings, I'd appreciate it if you also recorded it, as it's indeed interesting to watch how others play! I'll try to find sometime to test and give feedback this week/end. 

Cheers! And good luck with your project.

(3 edits)

Amazing, let me see if I can do a recording this morning :) 

Edit: After trying to download your game I get this message, I will test the browser version.

Do you have a thread here where I can post the feedback?

Sorry for the slow reply. Here is the video and the playback. A bit embaressing.. I recorded it friday, but somehow forgot to upload it and post it here :D

What I liked: 

The great upgrade and combination of the different towers, and how they compliment each other. 

The upgrades and how there was small changes, and I really had to use my head to find out what to update. The fixed position to build towers on, made me think really hard on what tower to place where. 

What I would improve: 

The UI could need some polish and the transparency of what is going on. As examples, when zooming out, the "pick a location" were covering towers, so I was unable to access all of my towers. 

Picking up the booty from the ships could be improved. Few suggestions: Instead of clicking, just move your mouse over it, or make a rowboat that collects the booty, in combination, so you can still click if you want the booty fast, but if you are busy, then the rowboat will get it for you eventually. 

Watch the video for all of the feedback


(1 edit) (+1)

Hey mate, sorry for my slow reply. Things have been quite hectic, but I got around to playing your game. I recorded myself playing, but couldn't voiceover, so I took notes.

I really liked the game, and will definitely follow up at some point to try the further levels, as a tutorial-only gameplay doesn't do it justice. But alas, here are my notes:


Bunny Bunker Feedback:

Main menu

  1. Polished UI
  2. Nice settings UI

Tutorial:

  1. Clear instructions
  2. Love the "making new bunnies" particle fx
  3. BUG: When we get instructions, the speed shows 3x but it's been reset back to 1x
  4. Nice set of buildings to play with
  5. Pretty mature (well thought, not too crazy) economic system 
  6. Day-night cycle where day = farming sim, night = tower defense is quite fun and engaging
  7. Lovely theme music. Didn't make me exhausted from repetition
  8. Nice to be able to zoom

Points of attention:

  1. NavMeshAgents of the defenders act a bit weird when lumped together. Perhaps the fighters should patrol randomly around the map to avoid clumping up in the bunker.
  2. Although I saw them chatting with each other there, so IDK if there's a lore reason for them to just hang out in the middle of the map
  3. I had a snake break through my gate and destroy my shit before any of the bunnies did anything about it. Because of fog of war, it was invisible. I couldn't command them to move either, or I wasn't sure how. You can see that in the video. I selected the bunny, then clicked on the location of the enemy. Maybe this is a skill issue.
  4. Zoom and pan controls feel a bit loose, like there's a huge ease value on the cinemachine cameras. I personally prefer my camera movement a bit more snappy.
  5. Fix the communication on time controls: Value on the UI should reflect actual speed, and changes made to the time scale should come with a sound effect so users are more aware when this value has changed.
  6. Rocket says "launch me" even though it has no fuel

All in all, great little builder, cute visuals, cohesive design, well-thought mechanics, and some innovation with genre mixing thrown in.

Excellent game mate!

TESTING QUESTIONS:

Is it predictable?

Yes. To someone who is vaguely familiar with these kinds of games, I quite quickly understood how to interact with the game. However I jumped the gun and started building the rocket before I had fuel, but the tutorial quickly indicated that to me at the "right" time.

Maybe you could change how you emit the tutorial messages to make the fuel message appear when either of these happens first:

  • get to the point where the message usually shows up
  • build a rocket or anything else that requires fuel

Is it consistent?

Yes, I wasn't caught by surprise by any occurrances.

Does it give instant feedback?

For the most part yes, save for the time control issue I encountered. Perhaps also indicating that a building needs workers more clearly, which is already done by the top UI that lists your workers/builders, and how many are idle (which was 0, predictably); the point is, my building was missing workers because I didn't "make" enough bunnies, but I took a while to realize it, after already assigning workers to it and thinking it would do the trick.

Easy but deep?

Yes, absolutely. When I have more time, I wanna continue playing it to see how far the rabbit hole goes :)

Player automony

Yes, I felt free to build how I wanted, even if the order of buildings was not quite right.

(+1)

This was WAY more than I expected. Thank you so much, it was really insightful. I have a bunch of my own notes from watching the video (Which I did before reading your notes, to avoid bias) And then comparing them to your notes is super helpful. 
The whole thing worked out perfectly.. there is some high level things that I see missing, especially with feedback and timing. There are things that I as a designer would have liked you to understand earlier (and without trail and error). In your notes though, you describe these as natural and not a problem, so I have to find out if this is a trend.. or if I have to do something about it. 

I think overall, the nights seems to be confusing to most and the monster/bunny behaviour is not logical, and need some re-thinking. 

There were many small things that gave me ideas, and showed me weakspots in my design
As an example, the way that you placed the walls, indicates that you are not aware of where the monsters will be arriving from, or how the night is going to pan out. So, I am definately going to work more on that. 

Thank you so much for doing this, and taking your time.. this was amzaingly helpful.

First off, I'm happy to hear the feedback was of some use. I do want to point out that 

> the way that you placed the walls, indicates that you are not aware of where the monsters will be arriving from, or how the night is going to pan out

is not a problem in my view. I like the uncertainty, and having to make a decision without clear indications, to then have to adapt it once you get your first incursion of snakes. But then again, I made a game where you have no idea where or when enemies will attack you, so take my perspective with a grain of salt 😆

(+1)

Regarding your review of Recolonizer:

  1. Thank you so much for taking the time! And good to hear you had a decent time with the game. I am watching the video and responding to certain points as I see them!
  2. Not sure if it was the case at time of recording, but I added a setting to control camera move speed with the keyboard, which seemed to be too high in your video. But now you can at least control it...
  3. The buy-UI fails to update when you get money, but I am pretty sure you can still buy it if you click it... Sorry!
  4. Indeed the progression is quite weak at the moment. There's no communication in the UI, and there's no real progress between levels. My upcoming major updates should address this in the next few months: 
    1. Infinite waves: I'll overhaul the wave system to show which wave we're in, whether it's the last wave, and a button to call the next wave. By design, it should be able to procedurally call in waves for a new arcade mode.
    2. A real campaign mode: I'll introduce a real campaign mechanic, where you have your ship which carries your cannons and money, allowing you to bring some of your defenses and cash to the next level, giving a better sense of progression.
    3. The combination of these two should enable an interesting mode where you bring your campaign ship to defend an island on arcade mode, putting your defenses to the test, and increasing replayability.

As for the written feedback:

  1. Good to hear the design of the upgrades and cannons + placement locations had the intended effect of promoting strategization!
  2. Thanks for the feedback regarding booty collection, I agree 100%, and in fact the booty collection ship is a tower that is not yet in the works, but it's in the pipeline as an idea I want to work on.
  3. Good feedback on the positioning of the location selection buttons. Originally the only interaction you could do from the map view was collecting booty, but I accidentally enabled upgrades from there, and liked it, so I kept it.  I'll address this in a future update. 


Thanks again for the review trade, and I hope you come back to Recolonizer at some point! :)

(+1)

Oh, man, makes me so damn happy that you could use the feedback for something.
I find it really productive and valuable for me to play other games, and have conversations as we have now. The back and forth on the feedback like this teaches me so much.

I have done this a few times now, and it always amazes me how much value I get from it :) 
So thank you again. 

(+1)

I am sorry, but I could not finish the tutorial. The game (Bunny Bunker) felt very un-intuitive. I had a bunny who was mining and I wanted him to do something else. I  could not figure out how to reassign him. I bult the juice factory and clicked the little make fuel box, but I could not figure out how to make fuel. I had to build a tower and wall long before seeing a single enemy.  I had no idea where I should put them so I just put them down wherever. I am sorry, but I hated the tutorial. It told me what to do but not how or why, or if it did it didn't do a good job. I did not make a recording, I stopped reading the post at the link to the game. I think the tutorial assumes I know more about the game than I actually do.

Thank you a bunch for the feedback @AxalKay

We have been talking about how we wanted to control things. The initial though was that you had no control over the bunnies at all, that all you could do was to give directions and wishes to what they would work on, and then, when free bunnies were available, they would go do that task you asked to get done. 

I am guessing here, what confused you, was that you were unable to control the Bunnies directly, and assign them to the task that you want them to perform. Instead, you should click on the place you want some of them to work, and assign a bunny there. 

The "how not why" is something I take serious, so thank you for that feedback! We will look into this, with the next release. 

Do you have a game that I can test?

(+1)

I tried the game again with the understanding I am not supposed to be able to direct induvial bunnies and I finished the tutorial and the first level. Neither gave me any trouble. I did have builder bunnies who were idle so I wanted to delete them or convert them to a different type so I would not have to build more houses. I was going to complain about the carrot economy but while writing this I realized I never even tried to upgrade my farms. I checked and they can be upgraded. You told me to upgrade everything but the farms so I just kind of assumed they could not be upgraded. Can I delete / convert bunnies? Over all I think the game is fine. At first it was a little frustrating, but once I git the hang of everything it was fun.

I don't have a game I need tested. I just like being part of the community. Best of luck. 

Thank you :) again, your value is good and honest :)
In the next round of development, I am going to think about the Tutorial (Again :D ) .. I think that the problem here is that the designer (me) is not super fan of tutorials, and find them a bit boring to do.. so he jumps to other parts of the project.. and then the tutorial becomes one of the last "stress" things that gets done :D I will do better. And I will add a "Upgrade farm" mission (or something else, if I can 

It is indeed possible to convert rabbits, I will make sure to make this clearer in the next version.

If in the future, you have any games (I saw a few on your profile) just let me know, and I will return the favor :) 

This was great, thank you! 

¡Hey!

From what I’ve played so far, it’s pretty fun! But I feel like it’s not super intuitive in some areas.

  • The UI that tells you how many rabbits are idle and how many are busy was a bit confusing at first. I expected a different pop-up depending on the type of bunnies, but it was always the same, so I wasn’t sure if I had idle bunnies or not. Later, I figured out how it worked, but it wasn’t something I could immediately understand at first glance.

  • When it came to building walls, it was really confusing at the beginning. Since the terrain has natural resources like rocks and trees, I wasn’t sure if enemies could pass through them or not, so I had no idea how to place walls effectively. In Age of Empires, for example, trees form a solid block that visually makes it clear you can’t pass through them, which makes setting up defenses much easier. Maybe this gets more manageable in later levels now that I know enemies can go through things, but at least on my first try, it was a bit tricky to figure out.

  • Tying into the previous point, at first, I had no clue where enemies would come from, so I didn’t know what to defend. I eventually noticed the spawn points and the flags marking them, but maybe having a bigger, more noticeable icon (at least in the tutorial) could help new players.

  • As you probably saw in my gameplay, I struggled to understand the grid size for construction. Sometimes it felt like I had space to place something, but the building would jump to a much further spot. This was especially noticeable with small-looking objects like the campfire—I instinctively tried to place it in spots that seemed to have enough room. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just a bit confusing at first. Maybe tweaking the size of some elements or adding small details (like tiny fenced gardens around houses) could help indicate the occupied area more clearly.

  • I feel like it would be really useful to have a UI element that puts more emphasis on food production issues. Watching my gameplay, I noticed a small icon that probably warned me I was in the negatives, but I didn’t see it at all while playing. I’m not sure how serious my food situation was, but if it was bad, that means I almost lost bunnies without even realizing it. Some players might lose bunnies to starvation just because they get distracted managing everything else. It’s probably less of an issue for experienced players, but for new ones still figuring things out, it’s easy to get caught up in building and prepping for nighttime and completely miss the food situation.

  • Near the end, I tried to remove rabbits from a task, but I just kept adding more instead. I’m not sure if there’s a way to do it and I just missed it, or if the option doesn’t exist, but in either case, having the option or making it more visible would be super helpful.

Aside from these small details, everything else felt really solid and easy to understand. I loved the task automation—just needing free rabbits instead of assigning them manually is such a great idea! I only had time to try the tutorial, but I have to admit, I really liked it. I hope my feedback is helpful! It was a pleasure to test the game, and I’d definitely play more and recommend it  :)

Also... if you could help me with some feedback on My Game, I would be really grateful! ^^