Re: Unforbidden (platformer)
Well well... This has a lot of potential! I have to admit that my first impressions are pretty good: It looks decently nice and plays well enough. I wouldn't exactly give it the "Best game ever" award right now but the potential is pretty high and it's actually fun in it's current state. A few things I liked:
- The gameplay has this kind of "modernized old-school Prince of Persia" feel. It does slow the gameplay pace, but at the same time it makes every movement feel more deliberate. For example, you need to actually press Up to stand up instead of the usual "Let go of the Down button". It manages to do that without becoming clumsy and lumberingly slow.
- There's a few pretty swell animations in there, especially the "climb up the side of a wall" and things you don't usually see like the crouch-then-crawl sequences.
- The heroine talking bits. It's pretty nice: It's not obnoxious since it doesn't stop the action (Unlike, say, constant Metal Gear Codec calls when you are in the middle of trying to do something) and it adds bits of storyline, knowledge and mood that would be very hard to do in a textless game.
And here's a few things I found myself a bit less pleased or concerned with and a few suggestions:
- While the "climb up platform" animation is very smooth (although maybe a tad long), there's a really jarring part at the end of it. She's clambering up smoothly in a tons of animations frame, then it transitions in 1-frame to the crouching animation and then it transitions in 1-frame to the standing position. She pretty much "blink" up at the end of the climbing. That effect is present but not as annoying in the "climb wall" animation.
- While I didn't find the starting jumping tutorial too hard or long per say, I did find it too punishing. Teaching players the jumping and climbing mechanics is certainly a good thing. The problem is the amount of punishment the player face when they fail the jump. While the character lose nothing, the player lose progress. Due to the current platform layout and it's nearly completely vertical progression, the player can easily find themselves all the way back at the bottom, 15 steps back from where they were. It's an heavy punishment to inflict on players who are literally just starting learning how to play the game, especially since there hasn't been anything to "hook" their attention yet. Having to redo 2-3 jumps on failure would discourage people far less than potentially 15 steps, even if the number of total jumps to win the tutorial remains the same. Just for reference sake, personally most of my falls came from not holding "Up" during the jumping process and thus not grabbing the edge. Silly mistakes on my part that I laughed at myself at when it happened a few times near the beginning, but considerably less funny after it happened twice near the end and brought me at the very beginning.
- It might be a good idea to give a brief invulnerability period after breaking free of a grab. I got in a situation where a wolf grabbed me, I free myself, and it instantly grabs me again. That repeated each time I broke free until I had to let the wolf win to get out of the chain grab. It seems to be a relatively rare occurence from what I can see (you usually have a few instants to stand back up) but it can certainly happen.
- While the character model is fine at normal gameplay distance, the "face-zoom" image is considerably less appealing. I would suggest maybe using something like Daz Studio to generate a better-looking face to use in the talking window. It wouldn't impact your zero-budget restriction either: The application itself is free and while it only comes with a tiny selection of objects, the included Aldora hair looks pretty close to what your character have. I'm pretty sure that using only the default stuff that Daz Studio comes with, you could make a much, much better face image (or multiple ones actually since you can make different expressions). And best of all, it'd be 100% legal to put in your game, as you are allowed to use renders you make using Daz even for commercial products as long you have a usage license for the objects (ie. it's either free objects, or you have purchased them and not pirated them) and that you don't include the objects themselves (which wouldn't be the case here as it would only be images). I could try a few renders myself and present them to you if you want, although I'm not exactly an expert at those things...
- I'm a bit worried at how the gunplay is going to be, but as I don't have any real suggestions so far I'll wait until at least a draft of it is available to comment.
- The biggest reason why so many games like these (H games in particular) are abandonned is because they are too ambitious. The creators often have huge sweeping goals that only get bigger with fan demands. Development starts quickly, things are fun. And then problems start, the "boring" parts of gamemaking sets in and the creators are now understanding just how much work their goals will actually require. I'm not saying that this will be your case (and I dearly hope it won't be), but I can't help but be worried when you mentionned the planned size of the game compared to Metroid, especially for a first project. I would really advise in not planning the game too big, either in terms of scale or enemy types. Enemy types in H games obviously take a lot longer to make than in regular games, especially if multiple animations are present... And of course, a game like Metroid took multiple months for a team to create, and they didn't have to animate monsters having fun with Samus either.
I really recommend not aiming too big: I'm not talking about making a 5 minutes game of course, but even something like a 4 hours game firstplaythrough with like 12 different "grabable" enemies is bigger than what I would aim for. You know yourself better than I know you obviously, but do keep in mind that overambition has been the death of many games. Beside, you can always make Unforbidden 2 afterward to put more ideas in later
