Game Design Music and Art

Speedgame: Lukes Garden – HanClinto

HanClinto

Administrator

Posts: 1828
From: Indiana
Registered: 10-11-2004
 		Hey all!

I'm starting threads to give feedback to all of the entrants to this year's CCN Speedgame contest. Everyone did some good things this year, and I wanted to make some threads to give encouraging comments and constructive criticism. This week, I'll be making threads for 3 games each day, so as to hopefully not bump all of the other discussions off of the main page, and give everyone some daily-focused-feedback on their games. Feedback is an important part of the CCN contest, and I hope that we can give a big "thanks!" to our entrants by letting them know how they did! I don't think everyone should necessarily give numbered ratings like I did -- just some words of feedback and encouragement would be fantastic.


Luke's Garden (by CPUFreak91):
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Clint's Ratings:
Xian: 5 (Not much here, but that's okay -- not all games need to have this)
Fun: 7 (All games should have this, and your game was certainly fun. The pace was too slow though, and it got somewhat repetetive/wearysome in the middle/end)
Orig: 8 (Very good creativity in your creation of the game -- I was quite impressed)
Gfx: 6 (I liked the visual indicators in the game, and the distinct lack of health meters or percentages for anything other than days and money.
Stab: 8 (Ran well with no stability issues)

Summary:
A casually-paced garden management/economy game, interspersed with brief periods of frantic watering and bug-blasting. Use all of the tools at your command to keep your garden thriving through periods of rain and drought in order to yield a fruit harvest at the end of the year.

Feedback:
Very cool game! I thought you had an interesting and creative way of combining your main parable (that of the Barren Fig Tree) with a complimentary one (that of the Mustard Tree). Most parables aren't meant to be combined in such a way, but I don't think you crossed any theological boundaries and pulled it off well.
I really liked your creative ways of giving the player feedback. I initially had a hard time telling how healthy my fig tree was, and it wasn't until it turned brown and died that I realized that the color and fruit count had been changing. That's a surprisingly intuitive way of giving the player feedback, and once I got the hang of it, I *much* preferred it over if you had used a traditional life meter or percentage. It helped it feel much more of a garden management game rather than just a glorified math equation that so many economy simulators turn out to be.
The game takes an extremely long time, and it would be nice to be able to speed it up (command line option to make time run faster?)
I really liked how you could stockpile things and then apply them later as needed -- it helped me feel involved as a gardener.
I wasn't entirely sure what the best way to kill locusts was, and if my small circular motions were doing anything, or if I should just blast it with full and constant direct force.
The eagles look nice!
I like the icons in the lower-left menu -- those were really cool to show you what you have available. It could be cool if those were buttons as well so that you could click on the picture of your can to quickly activate the bug spay.
I really liked the sound effects! I think the locust sound was my favorite.
All in all, great job! Very nice production for a one-man-show.

[This message has been edited by HanClinto (edited August 27, 2007).]
ArchAngel

Member

Posts: 3450
From: SV, CA, USA
Registered: 01-29-2002
 		repeating what I said in the earlier game, good game. The game, at first, was hard, but not overwhelming, so it motivates the player to refine tactics. good use of variety and conditions.

agree, the eagle was a nice touch. I kept spraying him with bug spray, now that he's no longer endangered. heh.

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"The generation of random numbers is too important to leave to chance."
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CPUFreak91

Member

Posts: 2337
From:
Registered: 02-01-2005
quote:
Originally posted by HanClinto:
Clint's Ratings:
Xian: 5 (Not much here, but that's okay -- not all games need to have this)
Fun: 7 (All games should have this, and your game was certainly fun. The pace was too slow though, and it got somewhat repetetive/wearysome in the middle/end)
Orig: 8 (Very good creativity in your creation of the game -- I was quite impressed)
Gfx: 6 (I liked the visual indicators in the game, and the distinct lack of health meters or percentages for anything other than days and money.
Stab: 8 (Ran well with no stability issues)

What would you guys recommend to make the game more christian? I don't plan on changing that aspect of the game, but I'm curious to see what you guys think.

Ok. So the game time should be shorter, and there should be something else to do near the end so that the player doesn't grow tired of watering.

Huh. I wasn't planning on that high of a graphics rating. I like the distinct lack of health meters and percentages too

Here's a few of my opinion on stability:
1) Do it once and do it right
2) Choose a stable development environment. I chose Python because so that my game will run with only 2 dependencies, and because it doesn't have a messy library system with tons of DLLs and links.

quote:
Most parables aren't meant to be combined in such a way, but I don't think you crossed any theological boundaries and pulled it off well.

Haha. Glad to hear I didn't cross any boundaries.

quote:

I really liked your creative ways of giving the player feedback. I initially had a hard time telling how healthy my fig tree was, and it wasn't until it turned brown and died that I realized that the color and fruit count had been changing. That's a surprisingly intuitive way of giving the player feedback, and once I got the hang of it, I *much* preferred it over if you had used a traditional life meter or percentage. It helped it feel much more of a garden management game rather than just a glorified math equation that so many economy simulators turn out to be.

What would you recommend as a way to alert the player to the fact that the tree is changing? Or do you think that isn't very necessary

quote:

The game takes an extremely long time, and it would be nice to be able to speed it up (command line option to make time run faster?)

You'd have to edit the source and lower the day counter (say 4 days per second instead of the current 1).

quote:

I really liked how you could stockpile things and then apply them later as needed -- it helped me feel involved as a gardener.

That's probably my favorite minor feature: Buy when you have money, use when you need it.

quote:

I wasn't entirely sure what the best way to kill locusts was, and if my small circular motions were doing anything, or if I should just blast it with full and constant direct force.

I want to make the locusts disapear slowly (like the figs on the fig tree) to indicate that something's happening.

quote:

The eagles look nice!

You can thank vincent for those.

quote:

I like the icons in the lower-left menu -- those were really cool to show you what you have available. It could be cool if those were buttons as well so that you could click on the picture of your can to quickly activate the bug spay.

They will be buttons in the next release, especially since I have become more experienced in sprite collision detection. You will be able to click on any item in your inventory and then click on the tree (You will have to take care of the Mustard tree too, but it will be a hardy tree and won't need much attention) you wish to apply the item to.

quote:

I really liked the sound effects! I think the locust sound was my favorite.
All in all, great job! Very nice production for a one-man-show.

The FreeSound project and Audacity are all you need

Thanks for the feedback. Version 2.0 of Luke's Garden will be twice the fun.

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