Could I use you as a guinea pig, gentle reader? Please visit the link below, play the game, and would you tell me if you see any glitches?
It's a big game, so it will take a few moments to load. I still want to add sound, but the game-play itself is complete and I want to make sure it works on a variety of systems. Hence, my invitation to you!
Flash Game Promo
So--any problems? Does it play well? Did it do anything odd? Is it too hard/too easy? It is too herky-jerky?
Erm, and yeah. That bit at the end. I am planning to ePub something in the next month or so. I still have to get an ISBN. I will keep you posted!
8 comments:
I'm using Windows Vista and Chrome.
When I middle click to bring up the game, I get a blank page. If I left click, then the page appears after a brief white lag.
At first the characters don't respond to the mouse. Star in particular doesn't always respond, and the others mostly do after a bit. It all feels a bit clunky but then I'm crap at these sort of games!
I managed four kills at the first attempt.
I really liked the blurb at the end and it's an intriguing premise. I wasn't quite sure about the title but maybe that's just me.
Very ingenious all round!
9/10 first try. Nom nom.
I remember you describing this story at one point. Seems like a lot of fun. What made you decide to go the ePub route? The game worked fine for me. Since I've gamed a lot, it wasn't too difficult...but I don't think a game being used to promote another product should have too high of a difficulty curve.
My only thought was...why have us choose different characters unless there's going to be something different about the gameplay. I know it's probably so people can feel more "in tune" with a particular character's look, but since I played it twice and it's basically the same thing with a different character model, it felt a bit extraneous. I've probably just been spoiled by all the unique character creation aspects of games these days.
A little jerky. Sometimes it moved and sometimes it didn't. Reaction time was a little slow. Wasn't obvious how to move forward and backward, so could only go side to side. Not sure you can move fwd and back, but it seems like you should be able to since you can bite them once they hit the shade.(PC, XP, Optical wireless mouse)
First: LOL SERIOUSLY.
Second: I'm on a PC running Windows XP with a wired gaming mouse. I played several times (I wanted to get them all!!!), and it seemed like they moved in the same pattern every time? I agree the movements were jerky, and it seemed like they all congregated on toward the right-hand side for me. None went to the left.
I had to spam-click a lot in order to bite, which may have been partially due to my poor aim, but it seemed difficult to line them up correctly, and the reality stars were shaky.
Outside that, I loved the art and it made me laugh. The blurb at the end piqued my interest.
Nice widget. The premise of the novel in particular sounds really cool and fits the tone of the game.
My only real complaint was that it's kinda hard to aim. I felt like my vampire would switch the side he's looking at (left/right) rather quickly, and when he did his mouth changed positions and I missed.
Of course I have my mouse sensitivity set rather high--could have something to do with it. Being able to see my mouse cursor might help with that, but I'm not sure
The rest is just technical stuff, like it could use a loading screen, and you might want to pimp your novel after all 10 are eaten (not just when they quit), just because I expect lots of folks would just close the browser window once they're done rather than actually hitting 'quit'.
I'm going to play it again and see what happens when I get all 10.
Using Firefox on Mac OSX and it worked fine. At first I wasn't getting the movements down to bite their necks but after the first time, it went fine.
FairyHedgehog: Thank you for playing and letting me know your experience!
It's a bloated game, which probably explains the lags you saw. Optimization is my next task with it. Thanks for telling me the details of your system, too--that's useful information.
Josh: Thanks for playing and giving your critique of the game!
I'm going with ePub basically to let this story go. It's pretty violent, it's unlike what I normally write, and I don't think this is going to be the one to let me break into New York publishing. In other words, it's the perfect thing to ePub under a pseudoname!
The three characters are from the book. I was planning to make the sounds different for them, but other than that--customization = hard, OMG.
Sarah Laurenson: Thank you for playing and telling me about your experience!
Hopefully by improving my code I can get the slow responses minimized. The vampires do only move back and forth, so I'll try to improve the instructions to make that clearer. Thanks for pointing that out!
Steph Sinkhorn: Thanks for playing and saying what worked for you!
There is a random element to how the stars move from side to side, but it's pretty jittery and averages out to basically the same thing every time. That's something I'd like to figure out how to do better, so I'll see if I can!
Adam Heine: Thank you for giving it a whirl and saying what you thought!
The vampire's mouth stays in the same location when they flip, but I am worried about those sudden flip-flops. Gotta see if I can add a hysteresis...
Good point with moving from 10 kills directly to the ad, but I do want to leave in some kind of victory screen as reward. Perhaps I can go directly to the ad after it?
Heather: Thanks for playing and saying how it went for you!
Ah, yes, bloated code effects again. :D It's great that everyone's experiences have mostly turned up the issues I knew were there already rather than new ones! Thank you also for telling me what system you're using; I was hoping to get a Mac user.
"customization = hard, OMG"
I can entirely understand that. Plus I think it's a great way to get your story out and release yourself from it, in a way. Always keep forging ahead and don't let anything weigh you down.
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