Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 037

of the Black Friday sale slash well, it's really Cyber Monday. We shifted to Cyber Monday, but Cyber Monday is basically the same thing. So, we're celebrating with one final stream. We're going to play some games today. Huge, huge thank you. Before we play these three games and vote on our our favorite games and also we're just going to provide feedback as well. Before we do that, I have a huge, huge thank you to Orion V, Daniel M, M, Roomie, Jason R, Jacob S, Whitney M, Nola V, David B, Kristen P, and Juan R. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Fulltime GameDev. And by the way, guys, look, Cyber Monday, BlackF, it's really Cyber Monday. Edge didn't change this graphic, but it's the same exact sale. Uh, in terms of what you get, there's three hours left. This is it. This is it. This is closing soon. So, if you want to get the few I think there's like 20 seats

left. Um, if you want to get it and you want to learn from an actual gamedev, but Thomas, you're not an indie gamedev. Please, please spare me. Just cuz I make YouTube content doesn't mean I don't make games. These are my games for Nintendo Switch. Oh, this one's cool. I like this one. So, I actually do make indie games. I'm on my third commercial release, which is called I'll find it for you. Twisted Tower. And if you don't know, Twisted Tower is published by one of my favorite childhood publishers, 3D Realms. 3D Realms. So, if you want to learn from an actual game dev on how to not only, you know, make a game in Unity, GDAU, uh, or Unreal, you could pick whichever engine you want to learn. But you also want to learn how to hit the Steam front page, how to get funded from a publisher, how to get funded on

Kickstarter, how to reach out to p uh how to reach out to streamers, um how to do 2D art, how to do 3D art, how to do YouTube content to build your your game your games audience. If you want to learn how to do that and get 50% off and also get all those art courses and YouTube course completely free, you got three hours left and then this is gone. Over, done. This is the biggest sale every year. This is the biggest sale. So, if you want to join, now's the time. And by the way, if you're a student, let me know uh what you think about the program. And if any of you are these students here who went full-time, let me know in the chat. I'd love to say hi. Chris sometimes shows up. Um Bart sometimes shows up as well, but these students actually went full-time. So, it's a it's a legitimate course taught by a legitimate indie game developer with people who go legitimately full-time, which is pretty sweet. Is it easy? No. Am I promising anything? Heck no. It's tough. But I want to show you everything I've learned

in the last decade. All right, let's jump into some games. How you guys doing? How you guys doing? [Music] I'm going to pull up these game. What can someone tell me? I'm going to load up Steam here and we're going to play some games that you guys submitted. Um, why is it that Steam takes forever to load? Does anyone know? When I click on Steam, it doesn't even even look like I clicked on Steam. It's so weird. Um, okay. The first game we're going to play today is a game called Devoid. All right. So, let's jump on in to Devoid. Made by Unity, of course. Okay. I like this menu. That's Well, never

mind. Oh, there we go. I like this menu. This is cool. Wow, that feels really good. Um, the music is like really quiet compared to the ocean. So, I would I would probably switch the two volumes. The music should be much louder than the ambience. Also, that's not that's not an ocean. That looks like a lake, but I'm hearing an ocean sound, so it's really disorienting. Um, also, okay, let me just show you what I mean here. Okay, we have we have great art, but like most games that I play on this channel, the sound is what's killing us. Okay, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to just open up YouTube, okay? And we're just going to find some ambient sound. And by the way, if you ever want to find ambient sound like this, you can find it on freeound.org.

You can find it on artless.io, Pawn Five. You can find it on Story Blocks. You can find it on vec easy. There's just sound everywhere now. I think it's on vec easy, but I'm just gonna find it on on YouTube here. I'm gonna find um uh uh spooky lake ambience. Let's just hear this. Yeah, you want something more like this. And you're probably thinking, Thomas, you're just googling YouTube videos. Yeah, that's what I do all the time when I'm playing my when I'm building my games. I just look for stuff that inspires me and I figure out what they're doing, right? And then I add that into my game. Okay, works a little bit. Okay, not a huge fan. So, let's just find Here

we go. Moody storm on a lake. Here we go. And then we're going to also find I like to use YouTube during these streams because typically I won't get demonetized because the videos are are using I don't know p public music. But anyway, I'm going to type in horror ambient. Okay, here we go. What do you think about that? Now that that feels professional. The game sound is quiet. Let me turn it up for you guys. How's that? Is that better?

So, you don't have to take a day trip to a river to get sound effects for your game. You know, you laugh about that, but I know a lot of game developers, and it's totally fine if they do this because it's like it's it's cool to do nowadays, but they feel like it's necessary to record every sound. And it's just like for most devs, they just need to uh they just need to get some get some licensed sounds, you know, and and mash them together. Okay. Um so yeah, that's the idea, but we're going to go ahead and go back into the original and hopefully you guys will see the difference here. Um, [Music] very different. Okay, I'll turn it up. Sorry. Very, very different. [Music] Also, there's no sound effects on the hover effects. My rule is that if

there's not sound effects on hover, um, the game is likely unpolished. That's that's the rule that I found to be true over and over and over again. If I'm spending too much time on a menu, that's because menus kind of prove a lot and they tell a lot about the game. Um, it's not a hard and fast rule. It's kind of a rule of thumb, but let's go ahead and click new game. Vampires appeared I would change the font. Vampires appeared six years ago. It all it's difficult to read. It all started with a single person. He is called the immortal emperor. He was the first to bring the plague. Let me let me do it in a voice now that I know that I can uh hopefully it won't fade out here. He was the first to bring the plague to these lands. Soon more and more people began to join him, intoxicated by the promises of eternal life. Human kingdoms one by one ceased to belong to humans. And

those who refuse to convert are used as a source of soul essence to feed vampires. Somebody's been watching Planet of the Apes. The Planet of the Apes movies start like that. This is cool. It's probably a good rule not to start me facing a wall in my opinion. I would I would start me facing like this. I'd put me crouched and then I'd go like this and I'd go, "Time to get to work." Hey, this looks pretty freaking good. [Music] Ah, that texture is kind of weird right there, but anyway, feels pretty good. I love the sound of the feet. Good. We have a jump sound. Thank god. I need to write this down. I'm getting inspired by this game. I love that land effect.

Land. I want to put it in Twisted Tower. land effect. [Music] It's kind of disorienting, but it feels good. Feels like I got knees. Hello.
I don't like that. I don't know why you're so import. You're so important. Okay, but the rest is over. There's a task for you. Let's just say it's a test of your principles. Your things are in the backyard. Pick them up and come back. I just burped. I'll explain the details later.
So, we have a few weird unwrapping issues. Um, it's it it to me it's it's not an unwrapping issue. It's more of a This is probably a modular a modular set and the dev didn't fully understand how to snap the pieces together properly. So, we're getting some weird tiling

issues. Um, so that definitely needs to be fixed. It makes it look really, really cheap. It makes it look like it's not retro at all. It makes it look like it's broken. Um, but I will actually say that this is one of the better looking games I've played. And there's there's charm for sure. What a strange door. That is so interesting. That is such a cool door. What? I have never seen a door like that. I freaking love that. Okay, let's keep going. Oh, wow. Hey, this game looks good.

Yes, this is great. This is actually really, really enjoyable. The art is great. The level design is great. This feels like an actual level design. Most of this feels really good. [Music] The stairs are a little bit janky when I'm when I'm sprinting here. Let's see. Yeah, that thing is like pieced together with modular pieces, which is fine. I guess it's just you could see the seams and it it really pulls me out of the game. But this is great. Okay, give me a brush sound, please. These are small things, but these are very important to put at the beginning of a game like this. That kind of stuff really makes a difference.

Oh, good. Thank you for telling me. To restore health, hold R. To restore energy, hold T. To restore health, hold R. To restore energy, hold T. Okay, good. You start me with no health. That's a great idea. I need to write that down. Start with less health. That's a great idea. So that you force the player to use it. What was it? R. Very nice. This feels really good. Pull the bow string. Hold the right button. Mouse. Release the arrow. Release the right button. So, what what I would recommend is if you want to do screenshots like this and

you're not I'm not this is just hard to understand right here. I would do either icons showing how to how to do it or show a show a video. It's totally fine to show a video and then show the the the mouse clicking and then releasing. I think that's much better way to teach this. Um, also I wouldn't introduce all four mechanics at once. I would do this slowly over time. Um, how do I select my bow? You can't. A weak blow is to press the left button mouse. A strong blow. So yeah, sort of walls of text like this are much less ideal than showing an icon on the on the screen with video footage on what whether the player is using gamepad or they're using the mouse. A strong blow is to hold the left button. A blow from

behind, you need to be behind the end. Yeah, this is rough. Uh I don't even know how to reward this, but I would have it nice and clean right here. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. This is rough. Uh, y'all rate this a A+ to F minus on what you think how you feel this is being communicated. Don't, if the developers watching, don't just rely on me. Um, look at the chat because they're going to help you guys. Oh, that's a loud sound. This feels good. [Music] So, yeah, a nice a nice I would say we need a earth sound. We need a stone sound. And we need a thud sound. Thud would be for grass, carpet, [Music] right? Wood sound is a crunchy wood

cracking sound. And that would be used for this. That would be used for this. That would be used for this. And then we'd have obviously the stone sound. So, this is really this really takes me out of it when I just hear the sword on the ground. But this feels really good, actually. That's a cool looking sword. I I'd say the developer of this game really understands uh game field. They They've got game. It's pretty juicy. It's pretty juicy. [Music] So, I can't grab that. Oh, there we go. Very good. Awesome. Great immersion here. It's not perfect, but it's it's it's clo it's uh getting there. The developer definitely knows what they're doing here. [Music] All right. Oh, there we go. Okay. So, um

I've got my sword. Yeah, the UI is rough. The UI is rough. I would clean it up if I was the developer. Uh, if the developer wants to know that I'm not just blowing smoke or like BSing here, that I have some credibility here, I would just watch the previous live stream that I did where I I break down some UI elements um for another game. Apparently, I can climb stuff. Okay, that's kind of weird. Uh oh, yeah, I got to meet the other guy. Okay, I think you're ready. I would definitely hire voice actors for this. There is a smelter in one coastal area, a large metal processing plant. Recently, they received a shipment of ore which had a mixture of strange metal. We have heard rumors that this metal is capable of healing from

vampirism. And as you know, it is very important for us to know where this metal came from. Vampires had already appeared there and quickly made the area part of the reservation. Your task is to infiltrate this. I would slow this down. Infiltrate the smelter and then find someone from this list who could tell you about metal.
Go down to the dock, my friend. My friend is waiting there. He doesn't bite, but don't provoke him. Uh, a lot of this feels like Twisted Tower, which is the game I'm working on. And that is not to say the developer copied Twisted Tower. That is to say that me and the developer both found inspiration from games. One thing that Twisted But what one thing that Twisted Tower does that this game does as well is that it sort of just goes through the text automatically. Okay, there there's a time limit and that time limit is in

this case it feels arbitrary. It feels like it's maybe 2 seconds to 4 seconds. In the case of Twisted Tower, instead of like Banjo Kazouie, it's just with Twisted Tower, you can hear it. So, it's spoken in English because the majority of the world and especially the majority of the players who are going to play Twisted Tower are are going to at least understand English. I let the text automatically cycle through. Almost like a movie with subtitles. Okay. With a game like this, you can't even hear the person talking, so you don't even know how fast you're supposed to read. Uh I I I'm also curious about this. If if he was speaking in, let's say, Japanese, I might still have a decent idea of where I need to be in the sentence while I'm reading it. But when it's that you you have no idea how fast you should be reading and so you you you you scramble through every sentence. So our

game it's probably going to cost $1,000 to $2,000 to get premium voice acting on voices.com or let me cycle through it by pressing X. So I have to I have to read it and then I press X when I'm done. I don't love the Whoa. Wow. What? Oh man. If you add dubs, don't you need to go through multiple voice actors for different languages? No, you don't have to. Um, I've never done that. If if your game is super successful and let's say let's say you're like, man, I know this game is going to do really well in the Asian market. Well, the Asian market, I think, is a particularly important one when it comes to to this kind of dialogue. where it's cycling automatically through. If you're a German or you're uh Hispanic or you're um French, you

probably know a little bit of English. You're probably pretty good at listening to English. And so you'll hear the English and you'll be fine reading your own language in the subtitles. And so it'll it'll it'll come naturally to you. My my theory is I haven't even done this yet, but my theory is that if you're going to get um localized voice acting, do it for like major Asian speaking uh players. Um Mandarin, um Japanese, um can you guys think of any other ones that might be a good idea for the automated dialogue like this? Meaning it just it cycles through without the player's input. Okay, let's click retry. Am I making sense at all? Is Twisted Tower going to be low? Oh my goodness. No. No. Big mistake. Okay. To the developer, that was funny.

But you got to you got to I need a checkpoint, bro. That was rough. But let's go ahead and grab everything. Korean. Yeah, sure. Um, I mean, I don't want to leave any nation out, but at some point you have to cut it off because it's so expensive. Um, well, it's not so expensive, but it gets expensive. Yeah, this is ridiculous. The fact that I had to go through all of that because I mean, honestly, I accidentally killed the guy. I mean, can you I can you blame me? Most games don't care. Um, but let's go ahead and
Russians, do they speak English?
What do you guys think? Do Russians speak English or can they can they can they hear? So, I would love a a to advance and then like uh X to to skip.

Um, yeah. So, so we don't think Russians can understand English.
All right. All right. So, this Do you guys see why we need a checkpoint here? That was that was um It's so funny because people say, "Well, Thomas, don't do it again then." Or you you're trying to handhold the player. You want to you want to handhold the player when you first start a game. [Music] My weapon is in your hand. So like a spirit, an ancient spirit's calling out

to me, kill, save, release, contract in exchange for life. Hey, Thomas Soladev here. I'm thinking on using Audio Jungle for my game, PayPound. Is that better or better to pay an FL Studio license? Are you trying to do sound or or music? Um, Caesar, use Shadow Flight. Hold the right button to in flight mode. You can move in all directions until you run out. This is so great. Oh man, I'm very interested in the level design uh challenges that this will present to the developer. But, you know, I felt the same way with Breath of the Wild with the climbing. Okay, look. Yeah, there's only You can only do it from like the ground, I think.

Oh, wow. So, I have to go regenerate. So, that's T. Okay. So, here's the thing. We want to teach the player slowly, like they're a two-year-old child, about all of these mechanics, one little step at a time. Teach me how to heal because I woke up and I I I have a bandage on. And the guy says, "You've been sleeping for days. Quick, heal yourself and then I'll tell you what you need to do. You heal yourself. I left a sword out back for you. Go get the sword. Get the sword. Here. There's a box right here with some uh some more health in it. Break the box. Good job. There's a box on the ceiling. Use right click to to shoot the arrow to break the box. Very, very good.

Now, outside, I need you to go meet my friend. You encounter this thing. Oh no, there's a there's a spirit. And then you'll notice that the bridge is broken and I have to fly across the to get to the other side. Notice how all of those things, every single one is not present in this at all. All of those training elements are all missing. All of this stuff is given to the player for no reason. Now, there might be a reason in the future, but right now there's no reason. So, the player's going to discard what's not necessary. Human beings discard and forget things. Their brain automatically dumps and throws things away that don't feel necessary. I love those clouds. Okay. Okay. So, he was supposed to be down

here. Whoa. [Laughter] This is great. I love how retro this feels. A splash would have been very useful there, obviously. Um, and also give me a personality sound. Something when he splashes in the water and he comes out. It can all be one premixed sound that just plays the moment that the animation happens. Okay. Something like that would do wonders. Oh, don't kill. Don't kill. E. Okay, give me a little E icon there because I almost killed him. Uh, if you guys want to check out Fulltime Gamedev, you've got basically like two and a half hours left to get the massive Black Friday bundle. After that, it's over, y'all. Biggest sale of the end of the year, it's gone. Um, so you got a couple hours left. Dude, I

love this game. [Music] I feel like I'm in Way of Kings. And I love that drag there. Music isn't great. Also, what's up with the sound? Do you hear that? It's like Wind Waker. That uh dragon boat. The sound is really odd. Something's going on with the 3D audio. Look at Listen to that. [Music] What in the world? And this is Unity, so I feel like we're we're either doing something custom or we're using some weird asset that we don't need to use. What in the world? [Music] Okay, let's let's find some good music. And by the way, this sounds like uh this sounds like um

yeah, this music isn't great. So, this game could be salvaged or I'm sorry, this game, sorry, this game is actually good. I don't mean salvaged. This game could be really really special with rock solid music. It could it could really help the game. Um, let's think here. What are some examples of great music? Well, um, even old retro games like this. Let me let me pull up a soundtrack that I really like. Um, old like uh King's Quest from Sierra. They had great music. Old King's Quest music, the 3D one. Um, actually, let's just do Night Nights Dale. Ice Windale soundtrack. Now, you're probably thinking, "Well, Thomas, this soundtrack probably costs a lot of money." You can find music like

this. It's not going to be this good. But you can find musicians out there who can write stuff like this. Okay. Um, so I'm going to open up the Icewind Dale soundtrack here. And I think it's this one here. There we go. All right. I would make that a different language so it's much more um the world building's better. Don't make that English. [Music] They would have found the last one on the list. Hey buddy. Yeah. That's great. Wiggly head. Yeah, that feels great. Good. All right. Yeah. So, some kind of

something like that. Having music subtle like actual fully orchestrated medieval music in the background could really uh light uh liven this game up. Also, the the pause menu. Developers are so afraid to do things quickly, but quickly is what players want. Do this. really fast. I don't need just All right, here we go. [Music] Yeah, we need we need new music. Oh, that's really loud. Okay, [Music] that's a very bright light. Okay, so apparently that hurts me. The sound is really strange. There's like It's super glitchy.

[Music] Nice dismemberment. I think I could do it. It might make the It might make Twisted Tower really fun. It might be really rewarding. I'm going to do it. Just going to need to spend 20 grand to do it. This is a stealth game, by the way. Okay. Well, it shouldn't just assume I know. That's hilarious. It shouldn't just assume that I know. [Music] It's like a cigar or something or like a a pipe. Whoa. Okay. Okay. So, apparently it's a stealth game.

Okay. Okay. There's a lot that's really good about this game and then there's a lot that's really really strange.
The nearby guys are already breaking into his house. Yeah, there's just a lot of weird stuff. It I think it just needs polish. It needs a significant amount of polish. But there's something here. What's this? Okay. So, that looks like it should be able to be cut. So, that's kind of odd, but it's okay. [Music] So, I wouldn't have the sword make a a clanging sound when you hit flesh. We need to have it be dynamic. So, if it

hits an enemy, it needs to make a shh sound or a sound. Some weird Z fighting there on that prefab. [Music] Guys, to avoid lines like that, see where my sword is pointing? You want to hold V in Unity and highlight the vertex and then it'll snap to other vertexes. So, press V on the keyboard, click on the point that you want to grab, and then pull it towards another point, and it'll snap and it'll get rid of this. I'm seeing a lot of that in this game. So, I want to be able to cut that. I guess I need to go in here. Whoa.

Whoa. There's so many things that are confusing me, but it's fun. There's a lot that's interesting about this. Whoa. What a strange texture. It's so bizarre. What is that? Oh, it's a sun shaft. Very interesting. Very interesting. I don't I don't I don't think you should get rid of it. I think that it's charming. There's a lot about this game that's really charming and it looks looks different than a lot of games that come out these days. THOUGH. SO, if this is a stealth game, I don't feel like it's necessary to stealth at this point. So, I should number one, I should be taught that it's a stealth game by making it necessary to

to stealth. So, it should be necessary. If you want this to be a stealth game, you need to teach it to me. And in order to teach it, it has to be necessary to do it, especially at the beginning. No, I don't think there needs to be more enemies. I think that we need to just make it so that the player really has no choice but to stealth. Especially at the beginning, they shouldn't be able to kill enemies this easily. [Music] Whoa, that's loud. So, super loud. I would make that wire um we need to think of a way to make that wire not um look cutable because it's weird that I could break that but hey pretty cool. They That's one of the better the better games I've played