Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 017

dot or do tablespoon.tbsp something like that. Come on in. Welcome. Welcome guys. We're gonna have a blast today. We're going to be reviewing your games. I posted on Twitter and follow me over on on Twitter or X Thomas Brushdev if you ever want to post your games. Um, and I picked three games from the submissions. So, we're gonna play those today. What's really fun about these things is not only am I gonna play these games and rip them to shreds. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't do that because I'm not that confident in my own stuff. Uh but we're we're going to offer constructive criticism and then at the end hopefully, you know, usually we have around 700 people watching by the end and we can all vote. We can all vote on our favorite game. Do not, please do not um vote until you've seen every game. And if you haven't seen every game, scrub through the stream, watch the games before you vote. Okay? But we're gonna hang tight. Don't vote until I tell you to vote. That's really what I'm trying to say. Um, I don't want you to vote just yet.

In fact, I'm going to put that in the description. I'm going to say do not vote yet until I say so. There it is. I'm going to put in the description here. Come on in, guys. Come on in. And by the way, by the way, I wanted to say a huge huge thank you to Gary Sedtoar, Bill, Stephanie, Isaiah, Andres, Sanja, Daniel, Aaron W., thank you so much for joining Fulltime GameDev. And by the way, guys, Fulltime GameDev is currently on sale today. And you know, I used to do I used to do these these sale events more frequently, and I I've definitely slowed down a lot. I think I maybe do them quarterly, if that. Um, and that's just because I've been so busy. I've been so busy on on Twisted Tower. But hey, 50% off

today. Um, and those those students I just thanked, they enrolled during the summer sale. Um, so there's less than I think there's less than I think 80 slots available. So if you want to join full-time gamedev, get 50% off. Check out the link below. This is the summer sale. It's a limited time sale. Um, and uh you're going to learn everything I've learned in the last decade of making indie games. And that includes, you know, how to get publishers, how to get uh funding on Kickstarter, how to hit the Steam front page. But Thomas, why do you have to teach us that? What do you know? Well, I've done all three of those things uh multiple times, and I'm on my third commercial release right now called Twisted Tower, published by the notoriously 30-year-old brand. Is it 30 years old? It's 3D Realms. 3D Realms is publishing Twisted Tower. And uh you're also going to get my 2D art program, my 3D art program, and my YouTube program. I've never done all three of these for free. So, this is I think my biggest sale I've ever done. Um if not this year. It's the biggest one this year bare minimum. but

I think it's the biggest one I've ever done just because I've never included all three of my other programs completely free. So check that out below. Join 4500 students. And by the way, if you are a student in any of these programs, please let me know in the chat what you think about the program. Um so yeah. Okay, I think that's it. That's enough shilling my course for now. It really is a great course though. Um I wish I had something like this when I started making games. Um, it teaches you everything from making games all the way to how to sell them. And you can actually sell your games before you even finish them, which I've done that multiple times. I did that with Twisted Tower. Um, but yeah, thanks for letting me do these ad reads. They support the podcast and the channel and the streams. Keep keep me doing YouTube. So, that's cool. Um, I think that's everything I wanted to say. Okay, guys. We got some cool games today. Some really, really cool games today. Come on in. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Spark, how you doing? Brento, how you doing? You guys want to see the

first game? All right, the first game we're going to play is called Sophie in the Tangled World. Sophie in the Tangled World. solve non uklitian puzzles in bewitching 19th century Paris where rooms loop and logic twists. I don't know. I kind of like that description. I don't know what a non- uklitian puzzle is. Okay, vote. Let's vote in the chat. What is a non- uklitian puzzle? Does anyone say yes or no? Yes, I understand it. No, I don't. Yes, I understand it. No, I don't. This is important for the developer. Um, this this is actually really important. Let me let me do a poll in the we're going to do a poll in the chat. Hang tight. Um, do you know do not chat GBT this or

search it. This is really helpful for the developer. Okay, be honest and I'll vote no. Do you know what a nonuklitian puzzle is? Go ahead and vote. All right, let's take a look here. Go ahead and vote. Let's watch it come in. Let's see here. What do we got? We got some people lying and saying yes. I'm just kidding, by the way. Um 50/50. Okay. I I would say we're potentially missing a huge margin of players because you just said something non- uklitian that nobody knows. Now, not everybody who doesn't know what non uklitian is going to be turned off by this. Some people are going to be

interested in this. Um, but I would say you're you're you're missing out on a you're I guess you you're leaving money on the table. Strubnov, which this is Strnav Studios, so you're leaving money on the table for sure. So I I would maybe describe what it is which apparently it's a two geometries based on axioms closely related to that of spe what any geometry that doesn't adhere to the axioms of uklitian geometry. What I'm not smart enough to even understand the definition. Maybe that's the point. Anyway, let's go ahead and play the game, guys. And also something I really wanted to do is see if we could get the games to run on Steam Deck. I think this is very important to get it to run on Steam Deck. So let's go ahead and search if it's available on Steam Deck. What's it called? Sophie. I'm going to go ahead and search here.

Yep. Okay. We're going to try and install this. So there it is. And this is important for the developer because we really want the developer to know number one what you guys think what actual audience and what an actual audience of game developers and players think about a game. It's good to maybe know what Thomas thinks, but it's also good to see like how's it running on Steam Deck? Because the truth is is that my games, I didn't even think about Steam Deck, but Steam Deck is a is a it's a small portion, but it's an important and loud minority that will review bomb your game if it sucks on Steam Deck and you say it's supported on Steam Deck. Also, Steam Deck is a really good baseline if you can get it running on Steam Deck or at least have options and settings in your game in the pause menu so that you can turn off certain things to get it running, then it's a really good baseline and and you'll know that the game is going to run pretty much pretty good for most

players. So, anyway, I'm going to hit play on my Steam Deck here and just see how it runs. And then let's also hit play on today's stream. Let's hit play and see if it loads up. So, it's loading up on Steam Deck. Okay, cool. So, we can't obviously Thomas, you dummy. Oh, it runs really good on on Steam Deck. Hang tight, guys. We can't play it on on both Steam Deck and my PC, but it's running good. Frame rate's good. We're looking at a GPU usage of 15%, which is awesome. 45 frames per second, stable. Let's hit start game and just take a look and see how this is running. Good frame rate where it's a perfectly stable 45. That's great. I think 45 is fine. I would prefer 60. Okay, it runs. Let's go ahead and turn

that off and get get started on here. We do not want to connect. We want to play on this device. And let's go ahead and start playing, guys. Sophie and the Tangled World. No, I don't want to do that. Hang tight. Let me let me turn off my Steam Deck or or close the game. Sorry, guys. One sec here. So, let's close it. Okay, so that's great. Runs on Steam Deck, which is awesome. Good. stable 40 frames per second. Obviously, we haven't played the whole game, but pretty stable. Um, let's go ahead and play here. Made with Unity. It's my favorite game engine and also the worst game engine. I'm being a little bit sarcastic there. I'm just frustrated because if you want to make a really nice first-person shooter, which I'm trying

to do, it's tough. All right. This menu feels amazing. Oh, yeah. What about Oh, good. It works with the uh up and down keys as well. ASWD works as well. Uh-oh. I'm telling you guys, if you want someone to break UI and also critique your UI, you've come to the right place. So, that is messed up. Good to good to fix that. I think it's cuz my mouse is over it. But don't assume. Here's what you need to do to the developer. You need to force my mouse. It's I think it's called teleport or warp. You can warp the mouse position and move it to the right hand corner if they press a vertical key. Okay. No. Move it up there. Hide it. And then that way it won't interfere with anything. Let's take a look at the options menu. Feels good. Okay. Start.

[Music] Madmoiselle Sophie, there you are in the attic again. As if you don't have a room of your own. Okay. I don't love that UI. It's hard to read. It's not as peaceful in my room as it is up here. And of course, you've spent the whole day reading again. What is it this time? Pride and Prejudice. That book seems like it'll never go out of fashion. It will not, especially with people like my wife. I actually love that book, too. I bet young ladies will still be reading it 200 years from now, unless something worse comes along. You say that as if you haven't read it yourself. I have, but I've read a great deal more than just that, Madame Wiselle. By the way, have you finished everything you were assigned? I read the Iliad and started on the

what? Aniad. I don't know what that is. Excellent. But you do realize that your father, as a renowned mathematician, has other priorities for you. I wish my Okay, I'm just going to kind of read this because we got a lot of games to to go through. She has her dad, blah blah blah. She loves her dad. I know it's a story game, but we got to move. We don't have uh too much. Well, I guess we've got an hour here. Uh, Madame Moiselle, no one else comes up here besides you. And believe me, that little patch of bear wall troubles no one. But if you don't finish the next section of Landre, many people. Okay, so first critique here. I love how it feels. I love the the the way the UI reads out. It's reactive. When I press E, it it skips the dialogue quickly. Believe it or not, not every UI feels that reactive. Um, the graphics look decent. The music and the mood is great.

I don't know if I would do a big exposition this hardcore in this day and age right now. I would I would kind of get to the point and then you can do some exposition later. Try not to fall asleep up here. Okay. Now, where was that silly book? Okay. Okay. I would shorten that by like to 25%. And let me do something first. Okay. So, for some reason, I believe we're having an issue with the lighting. She looks really flat, but the rest of the world doesn't. We've also got potentially specular on certain things, and not on other things. So, I would say there's potentially some shader issues. I would go full tune shading here and I would remove any normal maps and specular or or match it to the character. The character we need some kind of rim light because she is very flat right now. Okay, let's and I would

it's really big right there. Okay. Ah, here it is. I can read books and go into them. Whoa. Cool. What just happened? Where did that hole come from? This is so much fun. That is so weird. Don't fall in the hole, Thomas. So, it's kind like Alice in Wonderland vibes. Okay, there's a Okay, I understand. I think I get what this game is trying to vibe with. I I think I understand what the vibe is. It's right up my alley. These are the kind of games I make. There's a shader issue and a lighting issue. And I would love We'll play a little bit, but I I'd love to to jump into Photoshop and show you kind of what this could look like. Um

because it's it's a little flat. The game's a little flat. Okay, we beat it. That feels good. Yay. I kind of wish there was a a a rewarding sound. What am I doing? So, I need to go in reverse now. This is really interesting. Okay, so I don't quite know what to do. I don't know what that is. Oh, that's a pause menu. Okay, so this I guess would be a mobile game or it could be a mobile game.

I don't understand what that was. Yeah, the walking animation feels a little stiff. I would I would definitely look at Animal Crossing and make it like and give me some speed and some rotation. Make me sort of sway a little bit when I run around. So, it's just a dream. Looks like I don't know what happened. Did any uh let's do a poll in the chat or just say yes or no uh for this is for the developer. Do you know what just happened with the puzzle? Yes. No, I don't. I don't know what I did. So, it's just a dream. Looks like I really dozed off without noticing any evening had come. I would change this font to be a Sarah font. Um, there's a font called Alio. I really like Alio. I think it'd look great with this. Right now, it looks like just like Helvetica or Tacoma. Looks cheap and it doesn't match the vibe. Okay, let's keep going here. I like I like the music and the sound and it's clean and it's precise

and it's solid. It's a solid game. I think there is a uh there's a art issue. Um and also that puzzle wasn't very clear to me. Okay, so people are saying no, they don't understand. So developer, if you're watching, nobody understands what happened with that puzzle. Ah, it seems this dream's still it seems this dream still isn't over. So, that should say, uh, it seems this dream isn't over. Wait, no, that works. It seems this dream still isn't over. Yep, that's right. Sorry. Okay, so this lighting is great. The problem is I Oh, man. I'm I don't know why I'm so against specular. I with this style of game, I just feel like you shouldn't have specular. You should have everything flat. That's just my opinion. I would have made that soft particle shading.

Um the door going through so that it fa you fade into it. The clipping looked really cheap. Use soft particle shading. It's in both URP and also standard. Um just just make it a particle. Um give it an emissive and then also set the soft particles um to a to like a distance greater than zero. Okay. a strange room. Everything around me feels too real to be a dream. Why did I follow that firefly? I didn't see a firefly. Did you guys? Okay, so the movement I kind of wish it was just faster, but I understand why we might not want to do that. So, look at guys. You'll notice that even though I'm in this is just a lighting thing. Even though there is a light casting here, I'm not in it. And that that's that's one of the issues I was talking about earlier with the lighting being an issue. It's not highlighting the character enough. I should I should look like this

all the time or I'm sorry. I should I should look like this the majority of the time. I should have some kind of beautiful Rembrandt lighting on one side of my face. So if I was the developer, I would I would do that. I would also bake this lighting and use mixed lighting so that the lighting is is creating global illumination. I'm sorry, indirect lighting. And it's sort of spilling throughout the room right now. It feels very contrasty. Um, and it's hard to see over here, but it looks really cool. I like the mood. The cover reads, "Analytical mechanics. Looks like I've wandered into the library of some academic institution." This is really cool. So, I can get stuck on things. See that? The player feels real stiff, man. I I would definitely rework the character or make some major additions to the character controller because I'm just stuck here and it's really frustrating. Okay,

let's keep going. Looks good. Honestly, it feels great. It's just really stiff. The game feels real stiff. There's no one here, not even a god. Oh man, these kind of games I just love, man. Okay, so let's do a little bit of art um analysis here. I'm I'm really fascinated by this game. It it reminds me of a Thomas Brush game, if I do say so myself. Um so we're going to go ahead and open up Photoshop here, and I want to show you kind what what we could do to make this look just pop a little bit. There's a there's a color theory issue. And by the way, if it seems like I'm focusing on art too much, that's because this game will thrive. It will thrive if we fix the character controller and we rework uh rework some of the lighting and rework the shading and the color theory. Um, so let me open up Photoshop and show

you guys what we could do here to make this feel a lot better. First off, I see no reason I see no reason at all why we need a gray, ugly background. Okay, what I'd do, I'm going to go ahead and create some layers here. What I would do is do something like this. Okay, honestly, just going full black might be a good idea, but you could also just have a gray glow here. Sorry, I can't see. There's a reflection in my screen. But I would do something like that. And maybe even make this a like a sepia toned gray. And I hope I hope this helps you guys. Um, and it helps the developer. Um, you can do something like that. Then what we want to do is we want to think about okay, what is the color theory in this game? In order to show you that, first I want

to do something and highlight this character. I want to make this character pop. The character should pop in this environment. Um, especially with sort of a playful game like this. Um, if this was Resident Evil, I wouldn't say that. But this isn't Resident Evil. So, I would do something like this. Make her pop in the environment. And then I'd be thinking about color theory. Okay. Let's come up with, and we've done this before, but let's go ahead and come up with three colors that are going to be central to this biome or this theme or this level. And this is really, really helpful. Or I guess you could say for this room, that could get a little bit expensive, though, because you're going to spend all this time making all these different color theories for each room. I would say think about either a level, a theme, or a section of a level that has a certain color theory. So, I'm going to use complimentary colors here. We're going to say, okay, if we want her hair to be yellow. If that's necessary,

then we're going to do a yellow. So, that is our pop. That's our pop. Think about it that way. That is our pop for elements of the level that are interactable, hinted objects that are important, artifacts, or our character. Okay, so that but I'm going to give it a little bit more orange. So, that looks good. Maybe just tweak it just a little bit to go a little bit more orange. Something like this. Then, and I'm trying to help. I really am. I want the developer to to be successful here. I'm going to choose a desaturated tealish blue for the room like that. Okay. The browns I'm going to do a desaturate almost gray. That's it. That's our color theory right there. Okay. So, first things first, let's match our character's hair color

to that. So, let's go to yellow. There we go. Crank up that saturation, man. There you go. And but we don't want her face to be because we're trying to capture that moody Tim Burton vibe, right? So, I'm going to make sure that just her face We could even make our her eyes. Um, there we go. Go. We'll do the same for her body. We don't want to see any sort of saturation occurring with her body. Good. And then, hey, let's go ahead and give her a nice You can do this with Tuni Colors Pro. Tuni Colors Pro is an asset on the on the Unity asset store. You can add a rim light. I'm going to do it in Photoshop here, though. Crank up the rim light so that we can really get an idea of where our character is. Something like this.

We're going to do a hard rim light like that. Okay. Now, let's go ahead and tweak the colors for this scene. Um, so the green values, I'm going to go ahead and tweak them to be blue. Hopefully, we're going to have to, you know, maybe do this. There we go. Okay. And we're just going to do a really rough and dirty um, selection of the wall here. And something that I think is going to be really important is creating shadows and really darkening certain portions of the scene. Um, I'm not going to be able to do this. That's too much work. Okay, I think we're just going to assume How do we do this? There's just a lot to Let's just worry about lighting. Okay, because that's kind of that color anyway. Um, let's go ahead and just worry about

lighting. I can't cut out everything. It's going to take forever. I just realized that. So, I like that pop of color. The gray is good. I would reduce that orange or that that wood color. I would reduce that a little bit. So, I wonder if we can do There we go. Drop the red down. Got it. Okay. So, that's really all we need to do is just drop the red down so it's more gray. Now, what you could do here is we can go ahead and do some significant lighting changes. Okay. So, I'm going to darken the room. And what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and create some pops of light and make it a little bit moodier because I feel like this game could benefit from being a little bit moodier. Do you see? Now, if you just do this over and over and everything's even, even lighting kind of makes it feel boring. So, I found this out the hard

way with with Twisted Tower. You don't want to think about it practically, right? You want to think about it cinematically. So, if I was lighting a film, I might do something like this. one light and I would turn that one off like that. Then I would crank up the shadows. And because this is a sort of focused shot, what I would do is you can use real-time lighting and you're not going to get a performance hit. So that's what I would do. Something like that. And then obviously this would be So using more um less lighting actually makes things look really cool like that. Okay, let's use

some post-processing. Create a little bit of a bloom. So, post-processing could really help this out. Add some bloom. Um, and then we could probably add subtle highlights to where it matters. So, one here, right? And then the door is subtly lit by that window there. There we go. Maybe that one there. Okay. So, let's go ahead and now dim down the whole thing to be a little bit more blue. So, I can just do a color overlay or colorize and just make it a little bit dimmer. Okay. Something like that. But we want the lighting to be a little bit more orange. So, the lighting

There we go. So, we have now different hue shifts. I mean, we could even crank up, if we really wanted to, we could crank up that blue like this. Okay, that her hair is probably going to have a little bit of bloom with the um post-processing. Just a little bit. Just a subtle bloom. I think that blue is a little intense. Yeah, there we go. And then I would Yeah, I would go ahead and just make the background black. There we go. So much more moody, less flat. Crank up the contrast perhaps. There we go. Something like this. Yeah, there we go. Okay, one final thing here is once you have a maybe one or two light sources, what you're going to get is you're going to get these

really cool shadows along certain objects. And I would even go hardcore like fully dark on these. Um, same with behind this. you get just a big dark shadow on all of this and it's just going to create a lot more depth. There we go. So, that's kind of how I would approach this. Um, I would and then I would even consider doing some sun shafts, honestly. Something like that. do one over here as well. And this is all just lighting, you know. It's not it's not a lot of work. You just go into the scene and relight it. Um, we need also these bright hot lights of

emissives right here. Boom. And then boom. And that's about it, man. So, that's the approach I would do. So, there's this one. Okay. And I believe there's that one. Does that make sense, guys? That's that's how I would approach it. Notice how things are a lot moodier now. There's a lot more focus. There's a strong sense of color theory. It's stylized. Um, and most importantly, the character stands out. Now, this is also evident if you take a look at something like Little Nightmares. Same approach here. Let's take a look at the the screenshots for Little Little Nightmares. Um, you have a character, me pull this up here.

You have a character that stands out amongst a moody environment. Does that make sense? So, that's the idea. Okay. Um, let's keep playing. I would lurp the character a little bit. She's she's super super fast rotation, but this is it feels great. It's moody. It's fun. List of subjects: Greek, Latin, rhetoric, history, geometry. Awesome. So, are we in a school? It's locked. Okay. So, it's little puzzle boxes. The head of Socrates.

It's locked. Alrighty. Schedule. What's this up here? These dots kind of give me the vibe that it's a point and click. And I'm not sure if I'm supposed to feel that way. Uh, this should have some kind of a shade or something to show me that there's a door there. I understand that the point of the UI was to help me know that. Okay, this looks great. Very nice.

Okay, come on. Let's go. So, the reason why I feel like we need to speed up the character movement is stuff like that. It's like, okay, if I go all the way to that side of the screen, it takes forever. And then once you get there, you realize you can't do anything. I would hint at something over here that I need to go to. Maybe like um some flowers or something on the right side. Okay, I can't go over there either. Maybe the pipes. Nope. Okay, I think overall my main interest in this game is the visuals. I think I'm sure the puzzles are great, but my main interest is is it was hoping to show you

guys how we could adjust that coloring to make the game really pop and feel unique and special. Um, so great. Uh, I just know that I I got to wrap up here in an hour, so I want to jump onto the next game. Um, and I know a lot of you requested to see more more Photoshop stuff during these streams. So, hopefully that's enough gameplay. Are we ready to move on to the next one? Um, and we're just little vignettes, little vignettes of each game. The next game, guys, is called Frog Legs. Let's jump into Frog Legs. Yeah, I I felt like the the the mood, the atmosphere was great in that game. I I think the storytelling, if you're into story games and reading dialogue, the dialogue was good felt great. All right, let's move on here to Frog Legs, which is struggling to open running install script Microsoft VC

redistributable. That's unfortunate. I'm not sure what's going on there. It's got to run the install script. Maybe we can move on to the next game and maybe that'll keep installing. Um, Randy the Raccoon, baby. Let's go. YouTube course that's free. It could be definitely could be translated to any industry for sure. Um I teach I teach about the basics of of like how to focus on your content um on the in the YouTube course. Okay. Frog legs finally started. Good. Okay. So Randy the raccoon. We're not

going to do that. We're going to do frog legs for now. Okay. Uh, keyboard doesn't work. Got to be careful with that because you're losing a good chunk of your market. [Music] That felt good. Okay, boys. Let's do this. Who's going first? Gee, guys. I don't know. Are you sure this is safe? Stop passing pissing your pants, Bill. None of us are wearing pants. It's perfectly safe, Bill. Don't worry. How about the rest of us go first? Then you'll see it's safe. Uh, okay. I guess that's the spirit bell. Okay, I'll go first. What? [Music]

Oh gosh. [Music] [Music] What? This would be hilarious if this I just couldn't I couldn't beat this part. [Music] So, where do I go? That orange thing. [Music] What? No, I it it stopped working. [Music]

Okay. [Music] Where do I go? It's the blue box at the top. Why? That's water. [Music] Really? That's weird. The water is something you don't want to jump in, but you do there. I don't get that. Okay. [Music] [Music]

Oh no. Okay. [Music] [Laughter] No, guys. Is it just me or the cars moving faster? I believe in you, Bill. He's stalling. We always knew you were a loser, Bill. Come on, Bill. You can do it. All right, guys. Here goes nothing. [Laughter] That's funny. I love that. Poor Bill. Oh my No, probably still faking. Loser. Shut the frog up, Phil.

[Laughter] Carl, we've been hopping for hours. Let's rest a minute. I don't like this place. It's creepy. Yeah, it is. Oh, no. What are we going to do now? Look guys, we just need to stay calm. We shouldn't have left Bill there. We have to go back. We all saw the same thing, Pete. There's nothing left of him to go back for. As horrible as it sounds, feels right. But we should have never pressured him. He was scared. I feel awful. How are we ever going to move past this? I'll tell you how, Pete. We leave. We leave. Didn't we just do that? I mean, we leave this dimension altogether. There's a whole universe out there where frogs can not only hop in X and Y directions, but a third one called Z.

Carl, you sure you didn't get hit by a car? What are you saying? What you're saying makes no sense. We can hop forward and backwards, left and right, and that's it. There are no other directions. No. I've heard of this third dimension. The rumors say there is a portal to the 3D world somewhere deep in the woods past the game level bounds which is holy frog. Which is right where we are now. Pete, the portal to the 3D world will be opening any second. What do we do once we're there, Carl? We try to live a normal life and we never speak of this again. Holy frog, it's opening. Hold on to your tad. Hold on to your tadpoles, guys. Hang on to your butts.

[Applause] That's fun. [Applause] I would reduce the text by 50%. and and make it easier to cross that river. The reason it was hard is because where I was supposed to land was blue. This is hilarious. I love this. It was safe, Bill. I swear to God. No. It's okay, Carl. You're just having one of your night terrors again. Son of a frog. That really scared me. It's okay, hun. All right, we got to get moving. Sorry. I know. I know. I know. If I was playing this game for four hours and doing a a full coverage of the game, I would read all the text, but we got to we got to play the game. This is hilarious. Is this unreal? This looks like unreal.

Can't do anything with that. I'm pressing E. Can't do anything with that. Classic. Okay, there's no ambient sound, which is really off-putting. I would definitely add like nighttime sounds or something. Can't go over there. Can't go over there. Why? Why am I getting Oh, yeah. I would

only make the E if when I press it, it actually does something because that's really disorienting. Okay. Okay. I got to go find a golden fly. Right. Right. Right. Okay. Did you guys see where it was? The golden fly.

Another margarita in the freezer. I need to find the key. A key hunt isn't my favorite thing. I'm guilty of this, too. Hey there, sweetie. I don't love key hunts. What's the rule, guys? make a key lock puzzle not a key lock. So, you can always have a locked door, but sometimes you can theme it so that it doesn't feel like a locked door. For example, there's a a a fire on the stove and I have to put the fire out with a fire extinguisher and then there's a hole through the stove. It's like a key lock puzzle, but it's just different, you know?

I just got it though. Um, did I miss something, guys? Maybe I wasn't reading. It was in this room, right? What? What did I miss, guys? Look under the staircase. Okay, I got a fly. There it is. Okay, that's kind of hard to collect. There we go. Thank you. All right. What? What the frog? Oh, come on, Carl. You're just seeing things. Let's focus on the task at hand. 75, baby. Let's go.

Sorry. What? What is that? Looks like it's a post-processing issue. That's motion blur. So, uh, okay. So, that wasn't the code. 75 wasn't the code. Was there another code puzzle? I don't like flashlights like this. It

always bugs me when it's so dark and there's just a flashlight. I don't know. It's just not my favorite thing, especially when it's not scary, you know? It's like I'm not scared. So, just turn on the lights, you know? Um, go back to the picture. number of margaritas. Oh my word. Really? Is that the puzzle? The code is 7516. Yeah, the world does feel a little bit empty. I'll just cheat here. Granny loves margaritas. 7516.

Would would you guys Yes or no? Would you have figured that out? Yes. No. In the chat, let me know. Yes, I would have figured it out. No, I would have not figured that out. How did y'all know that? Okay. So, that that's a a game design flaw that I've I've um I I'm guilty of. Don't give the key before the lock. Um so, I found a fuse before I found this. Um you have to figure out a way to design your puzzles, especially at the beginning of your game, to showcase the lock before you find the key. In this case, the fuse uh the fuse box before the fuse. This looks way better. We got some real-time global illumination going on, I think. Oh, for the love of frog. Who would be ringing my doorbell?

Okay. There's no one here. What the door is locked. Oh no. Let's see here. Someone in the garage. Someone behind us. Yeah, there's there's global illumination trailing from the post-processing. I think it's what that's what it is. You could see it every once in a while. Um, but it's not a big deal. Back door, baby. It's locked. Okay. Oh, no. You scared me. All right. Where

are we now? In a prison cell. Okay, I think we got a good idea of what the game is. Um, we didn't take a look at the store page. So, let's go ahead and take a look at the store page really quick. Um, give me just a sec to pull it up. Yeah, it might be the anti-aliasing for sure. Um, there we go. All right. Um, a short single player horror action game. Is it horror? I guess I guess we didn't we didn't fully play the full game, so it felt um the lock key stuff felt a little slow. Um, starring Carl the Suburban House Frog. Will you be able to conquer arcade challenges, solve puzzles, and ribbit and tear and ribbit and tear? I don't

know why those are capitalized. rivet and tear your way through the life you once knew. Um, I like the the cover art there. That's great. I like the concept. Uh, it feels very much like a Daniel Mullins's title. Um, really cool. Let's watch the trailer here. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music]

Okay. Um, yeah. I don't know. I feel like I feel like the the I don't know what to say about it. It's not like H. Let's move on to the next game. I need to gather my thoughts. All right, next game. By the way, those of you just joining us, just remember you can join Fulltime GameDev below. get 50% off my course which teaches how to get a publisher, how to get Kickstarter funding, how to hit the Steamfront page, how to make a game in Unity, GDAU or Unreal, and you also get my 2D art programs, my 3D art programs, and my YouTube program completely free, but only for the sale event. This is the biggest sale I've had

all year. Um, it's short. Um, it is limited time and there's, I think, 80 seats left. Um, so check it out below. See if it's something you're interested in yet. Yeah, the frog game. It felt really empty. It felt really empty. And I'm not sure how to It's For some reason, I'm having trouble articulating what what I think about it. This just a demo. Blah blah blah blah blah. Okay. Whoa. It's really really big. Whoa. I can't read that. Whoa. Someone dropped a bomb to your car. Don't slow down. Get rid of all signal senders to be What's a signal sender?

Okay. Oh, this looks cool. What? Get rid of all signal centers. Okay, that's a signal center. Okay. Yeah, there's a there's a incohesiveness to the graphics here. The the menus kind of felt all over the place. The graphics here look good. I I would get rid of the pixelation. I don't see the value in it. It's just a a weird screen filter that I think we don't need. Murder. Okay. Destroy. Who's the fox? The controller feels pretty good. I like the physics of the character. It's really fun. Wiggly, wobbly.

Um That's fun. Good color theory here. One out of five left. What? Okay. Easy to get stuck in things. Um, okay. Let's keep going here. So, I'm super lost. Are there boundaries? So this game could definitely use some,

you know, guiding the player. [Music] Okay. Um, let's look for the other I don't know what a signal sender is. I don't know why I'm doing this or who I am or I think we definitely need some exposition as to why I'm doing this. Give me a motivation. I don't know what that five is. What's that five? Does anyone know what that five is? I'm just trying to break the game and it's it's too easy to break. I mean, I feel like we need to guide the player a little bit more. Um,

yeah, you got to handhold the player. That's right. For the first three minutes, you got to get the player. Really? I can't even read what that orange thing is. What does that say? Yeah, that's why the pixelation is is not Yeah, I just the the UI and the menus are so so random. It doesn't match the game. Go to the mechanic for answers. There was a bomb. Okay. So, I need to go somewhere. Oh, there's a there's a radar up there. I didn't even see that.

Never mind us. could definitely benefit from some music and also like a timer. Maybe some sense of urgency. Okay, let's go to the me the mechanic now. So, it's like a racing game, but I'm not racing. Whoa. Is he here? I would definitely smooth out the terrain.

Is that is that where it is? Hey Randy, how you been? A bomb? I haven't worked on your car. That job was my apprentices. I'm sending you his location right now. Okay, now I got to go to someone else. So, it's it's kind of boring just cuz there's no sense of urgency. It's like a fetch quest. You're just doing fetch quests in a car. Um, pretty glitchy and buggy. Whoa. I don't want to do that.

Okay. Okay. Now we're at a gas station. All right. We found a duck now. Okay. I got to chase the apprentice now. I don't understand what's going Do you guys understand what's going on? Yes or no? Am I missing something? Okay, now I got to go back to the mechanic. There's no challenge here. There's a pig

fish. Okay. Now I got to talk to the mechanic about the bomb. Wait, what? Now what do I do? I missed it. Sorry. Um, apparently I have a boost. So, okay, some some tips here. What could we do to make this game funner? Give me a motivation. Tell me who I am, what my goal is. Give me some kind of timer, a challenge of some kind. Um, I would redo the level design so that it's much easier to navigate. Give me a loop. Right now there's no loop. It's just fetch fetch quests. Um, the music we could definitely we could

definitely get away with or we should definitely um do some I always go back to this soundtrack, but if you add music to to these kind of games, it just makes it so much more fun. um because it's a pretty simple game and because it's easy, some music will really help you. So, we could do uh you know um always always I go to this s this song because it's super super bouncy and fun. [Music] Ready? [Music] It just helps so much. But man, if you're going to have terrain like that, the controller has to work with it. I would smooth it out. [Music]

Whoa. What? All right. All right. So, we're ready to uh review the games here. Actually, let's take a look at the the the um store page. I'm going to look at the store page while you guys um vote. So, go ahead and vote below. The link is down below. Go ahead and check it out. Breaking news. Um and while you vote, the link is in the description below. While you guys vote, we'll take a look at the Steam page. Randy that raccoon. There's a lot going on here. It's hard to see what is going on. I would darken the background or do like a colorization of the background so that it's in and it so that the player pops. So you could do

like um the player is bright red, the text is bright red and the background is like blue. Even even the pig and the duck would have a tint of blue on them. Um use ridiculous weapons. Run over humans. Take down the goose mafia that wants you dead. Tow anything and use it as a weapon. Fly your stunt car across a There's just a lot here. There's a lot going on. I I feel like there's a gameplay. There's a lack of focus. Um, we should focus on one thing. So, here's an example. You're Randy the Raccoon. If it's going to be a driving game, I would not do it open world like this or whatever we're going to call it. I would make it a racing game. Okay? You have to race and while you race, you do fetch quests. Um, so for example, imagine redesigning the level. So, it's much broader and smoother. By broader, I mean it's easy to make turns. It's not tight. It's not tight. And you're on a

you're on a a track that's easy to navigate. And you go from point A to point B. And going from point A to point B, you have to deliver a bomb. Okay? And you deliver that bomb. And you have to do it before the bomb blows up. That's the loop. That's it. Um, I wouldn't. There's just a lot going on here. You could even see it in the description. Use ridiculous weapons, run over humans, take down the goose mafia that wants you dead, tow anything, and use it as a weapon. Fly your stunt car across the pack island. Do whatever you want in the Simpsons Hit and Run inspired open world sandbox. Okay, so it's Simpsons Hit and Run inspired. Um, did we get Simpsons Hit and Run vibes from this? I feel like I feel like Simpsons I've never played Simpsons Hit and Run, but I feel like the loop in that game was probably tighter. Um, yeah. I mean, it's it it definitely

needs some TLC. Okay, I'm going to make my prediction here. Uh, the winner is probably going to because I like to predict who is the winner. Um, Sophie in the Tangled World I feel like is the best one by far. And that definitely needs some character controller adjustments and some shading and lighting adjustments. Uh, font and UI adjustments. Um, then after that is probably Frog Legs and then Randy the Raccoon. I would say it's not going to be a big win though. I think Sophie's probably going to be 60%. Randy will be 30 to 40 leaving what uh 10 20% for frogs frog legs. Does that sound about right? Let's take a look at the results. Yeah. Yeah. So, overall, I feel like um all three

games need some serious TLC. Um, you know what? What what what all of them really lacked from was I I would say two major things. The first one is in the first five minutes of the games, you got to get me. You got to hook me. Doesn't mean you have to do something unique or or strange or that that's never been done before. You just got to hook me somehow. You could hook me with the izakaya principal which I learned from uh Frederick um Frederick Printer. He made a game called Corekeeper. Put me in a world that I don't understand. That's and give me a motive. If you could do those two things, it's the game is like 10 times better. An example, Sophie in the Tangled World. You hear on the door and it's this maid and she says, "Wake up, sleepy head." And you say, "Where am I?

Oh my word, 10 times better. Where am I?" And you discover what this place is. It's just like Resident Evil, the original. You're in this mansion. You have no idea where what this place is and why there are zombies. And you're discovering it. Is it Is it called the isekai isekiah principal? is a Kai principal. Uh Randy the raccoon, right? Um you are given a car from a mysterious um mobster and he says um I've got your family. Take this car and do as I say. Who are you? Who is this person? Where am I? Because if I'm confused as the player, but the character isn't confused, [Music] there's a huge disconnect. Frog legs that had the isizakai principle. But I will say this, I was

really excited about it until I found out that it was a dream. Maybe it wasn't a dream. Maybe he thought it was. I like the idea of waking up in a three-dimensional world and the frog says, "What is this place?" Boom. That's a great setup. It was so good. And then it sort of fizzled for me. Um, Frog Legs. Um, I'm sorry, Sophie and the Tangled World. The The second big thing is you've got the setup and then you've also got um game feel. So all three games suffered from game feel. Game feel is giving the character making the character controller not feel so sluggish. Now if if it's necessary for the gameplay. So for example Resident Evil 4 kind of tanky but it's purposefully tanky. It's supposed to be tanky because it's scary and it's not scary. It's not scary. If it's not

tanky, if I could just sprint around and jump and do back flips and climb walls, Resident Evil would not be scary. So, if you're going to have tanky controls, there better be a reason for it. Sophie and the Tangled World, I would just increase the player movement and speed and let me run around and have a have a good time. Kind of like Animal Crossing. Um, Frog Legs, it's tanky. I think that's fine. I would actually make it scary though, you know. Um, I'm not sure it was a scary game. So, overall, those are my thoughts when it comes to game feel with the character controller. Um, yeah, it was mainly just sluggish character controls that were bothering me for all three. All right. Why are we arguing in the chat? What's going on, Lucas? It's okay, buddy. We don't need to We don't need to fight with for all of us. Lucas, let's not fight with people. And people, let's not fight with Lucas. I'm sure Lucas would if we all hung out together and

got a beer, we'd actually be really friendly with each other. But because we're on a chat, we get f fussy. Um, so yeah, I would say that um the games today were were definitely need some TLC. How do we feel, guys? Do we agree with uh um do we agree with these the the votes? What do we what are our thoughts on these games? What what do we think Sophie and the Tangled World, Randy the Raccoon, and Frog Legs? What what are some ideas you guys have for the developers? because I really do I want the developers to see this and go, "Okay, what could I do differently to make these games better?" I'm not here to just crap on people's games. Um, I'm here to help developers make their games better. Um, so what do you guys think? Yeah, the games, all of them felt very unfinished and very unpolished. Sophie and the Tangled World did feel the most polished, but it still felt a little empty.

Um, if you're going to release a demo, guys, you better make sure that thing is polished. Otherwise, you just lose people before they even want to buy your game. Um, all right. Let's see here. Let's pull up the Steam Deck. I want to see Sophie and how it how it controls here. Let me let me uh try and zoom in here for you guys so that we can see how it looks on Steam Deck. You know, what reminds me of is Mattaline. There we go. It feels good.

Let's see how it feels once I can actually get past this dialogue. But you can imagine this this shot here, how effective it could be if it the background was black and you made that point light coming through the window like the only light source. and everything else is really dark. I would crank down the ambient light. Just remove the ambient light so that it's much darker and dimmer. Okay, I can't get past the dialogue. Okay, well, I hope that was helpful, guys, and I hope you learned a lot. Um, anyways, thanks for hanging out. Be sure to uh follow those games and and wishlist them if you think they were if you liked them and you would like to play them when they come out. Uh, check out the summer sale for a fulltime game dev below. It's 50% off. This is a limited time sale. This is my biggest sale this year so far. I think this might be my biggest sale ever. And that's because it's 50% off, but you're also going to get my 2D art programs, my

3D art programs, and my YouTube course completely free. And by the way, if you're a student of any of those programs, please let me know in the chat what you think about them. Um, with Fulltime GameDev, you're going to learn everything I've learned in the last decade of making indie games, whether it's securing funding from a publisher with just a demo. I've done that three times, actually four times. The first one was a bad deal, though. I don't like to think about that when I was 18. Uh, Kickstarter campaigns, how to get funded. I've been funded twice. Um, how to hit the Steamfront page. I've done that several times. Um, how to make a game in GDO, Unity, or Unreal. You can take your pick. And then also, obviously, you're going to learn 2D and 3D art. You also get access to the private Discord server. Um, I think there's like two to three,000 people on that server right now. Um, so yeah, check it out below. See if it's something you're interested in. This sale event will end. It really does end um in 12 days. Um, I think there's 80ome seats left. So, check it out below. I love you guys. Thanks for hanging out. I'm about to go on a date night.