Feedback on existing games?

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Comment by Harrison Lee on July 19, 2010 at 7:15am

Hi Jesse,

Check to see which keyboard setting you are on. In the emulator fceux (the one I would recommend), there is a family keyboard setting and subor setting. Make sure to use the family keyboard setting as the game will not be responsive otherwise.

Comment by Jesse Fuchs on July 18, 2010 at 9:24pm

I downloaded the file, and checked it out using NEStopia, which might be why I wasn't able to get the keyboard to respond on the Hanuman Typing—the opening screen looked really nice, and at the bottom of the screen it said the word (?) "ZOCK", but that's as far as I got.

The Malaria game is also difficult to comment on, since at this point it's too early for me to know what you're intending to do with it. The graphics are pretty, and I like the kid sprites—the collision detection on the flyswatter seems a little wiggly (sometimes I didn't hit when I thought I should, and sometimes it swatted them without me hitting the button at all.) Even this early in development, one thing that I think should be added soon would be sound effects—if there had been a swish when I missed and a smack when I hit, it would have felt more like a game, or at least a satisfying toy.

Hanuman quiz game, on the other hand, felt like a real game, although the ending was a little abrupt: with my timer at around 300 I made it to the top of the clouds, at which point there was a horrendous monotone honk and this screen until I figured out how to quit NEStopia:

Screen shot 2010-07-19 at 12.01.00 AM.jpg

I'm pretty sure this was a program glitch, although admittedly it is kinda always what I expected the afterlife to be like.

Anyway, the game itself is pretty fun, once I figured it out—for a while, I was just running into the objects that looked friendly, which worked just often enough to confuse me into not figuring out that I was supposed to catch the objects in my bag, which I didn't notice. Presumably those familiar with Hanuman will get the idea of a bag sooner, but perhaps an simple, arcade-style opening tutorial screen is in order, which tells the good objects from the bad and shows Hanuman running across the screen and performing a few representative actions.

I like the shifting backgrounds, and think they make a good reward for progress: the initial background was confusing to me, though, as the trees looked very platform-like, and so I assumed they were able to be jumped on. Maybe they could be a bit rounder up top?

The quiz seems basically fun, and I like the mix of action and questions—I especially enjoy Hanuman's expression when he gets one right. There definitely need to be a lot more questions, and they of course need to be randomized—I played the game twice, and got the exact same questions each time. Also, the writing on the questions is pretty rough in terms of grammar and spelling: I've done editing and written standardized test questions professionally, so I'd be happy to help out on this end.

Besides that, I'm sure there's more to be done—I'm assuming the falling numbers will eventually lead to math questions, for instance, and the more different effects of objects the better, as then new ones can be introduced later in the game as a reward. But the core mechanic is cool, the feel of controlling Hanuman is nice, and overall, I think this is on its way to being a really solid game.