Let's Fix Ovus Nova! - (Does my Game Suck?)

you played my game you gave me feedback on my game my mind was absolutely blown by how much awesome feedback I got from you you've wrote entire novels I want to thank everybody who played the demo of my game the prototype don't worry if you tell me my games prep because I didn't expect it to be perfect already that just never happens it's not really about getting it perfect at the very first shot it's really just about iterating and improving until it is excellent so I looked at your feedback and then the first thing I did is I wrote down all the things there are still problems that we still need to fix the mouse buttons often get confused basic features and options are still missing enemies have too much HP and quickly the difficulty curve seemed more for a lot of people the music didn't fit the game and you might be right about that but those things at the top those are the things I'm not really all that worried about what I'm worried about are these cards down here I just put them on the wall and kind of

tried to group them first one just means it's kind of hard to tell if you're doing well or poorly and you don't really know what's going well and what's going wrong you're just kind of confused what you could have done better when you lose next group is just that there's not enough strategy to it not enough depth not enough things you can do and also when you can't beat a level there are not enough things you can experiment with it's a bit repetitive and boring at times the game is too stressful you don't have enough time to think I made these green cards which are basically more or less solutions and if I found a good solution to a problem I'll just put that under the problem [Music] did you confuse the buttons and just some little icons next to it so you can tell which button does what there's still a lot of condom missing guess what we'll just keep developing then for the difficulty stuff honestly that will just take some time we'll figure that all out over time we can also add a difficulty

setting also one thing you need to keep in mind is that I didn't really try that hard this time I just released it yeah and for the music we're just gonna keep experimenting with that as well so here's the first interesting problem though please give me feedback on all of these ideas before I implement them what do you think about them do you think they will work otherwise I don't need to implement them but I think they're kind of decent let's have a look it's a first of all I want to show statistics at the end of the match so for example for your population you cannot see when your population dropped when you explode too many creatures is this way you can figure out a little more easily what went wrong and when it went wrong and maybe we could also have some sort of little AI that analyzes this graph and shows you a couple of parts where you probably messed up it could sort of that and tell you yeah you shouldn't make that many creatures explode that's really bad because then you don't have enough to make it through the rest of

the level then another one will be really easy to implement it's just every time you die you see a little tip and I also thought about a way to maybe give the player a little more immediate feedback so the way I want to do is is have a little score on the top of the screen performance car that just tells you how well you're doing at the moment so if you're hitting really good shots if you're spreading your creatures effectively if you have enough creatures and all that stuff you have a high score it just gives you some real-time feedback on how well you're doing because some people seem to have problem with figuring that out by themselves and they could definitely use some additional feedback so they can tell a lot better how well they're performing at the moment and then when this feedback score at the top goes really high or really no than we could also add some additional feedback and form of sounds or visuals that's just like super that's great or I don't want it to feel like trial and error I really want you to know how when

you're doing I think with those five changes this problem should be pretty much gone obviously you'll have to iterate on these features as well but as you reach your next problem Reno is there's not enough strategy not enough depth you don't have enough influence over the game my first really big idea whenever you get unit a unit you get a new resource so that would effectively add resource management to the game and the way I mentioned this is you still only have more or less two things you can do detonate or duplicate but then you have four additional abilities you can use every now and then and in order to use them you need a certain resource and you get that resource simply by detonating your units then you can use that resource to activate certain abilities for example an explosion that deals damage to enemies or spawning new creatures at a position where there are no creatures or maybe stunning enemies or speeding your

games up or instantly catching all of your ex tons of things you can could do well I think this opens have a lot of cool opportunities for the game and for the player I think it doesn't add too much complexity to the game and we can introduce those elements one after another so it doesn't get too overwhelming at the beginning but I feel like later in the game this could add a ton of strategical depth I think we'll look into that what about that idea tell me then here's another big one and because you don't really have enough influence over the game that's what a lot of people told me what I would really like to experiment with is that the direction you move the mouse in so it's also the direction the X face so when if you're moving your mouse ripped this way then the X will also face this way here's a little illustration we could write the same thing for the explosions whenever you make your creatures explosion explode so you actually have to aim a bit and maybe there's a little bit of decision-making in which direction you want to make them explode in which direction you want to deal damage so that could be interesting

as well then the final issue um this kind of group here is not enough things you can experiment with if you can't beat a level and actually for that we could just create a little upgrade system like this so you have different upgrades you can choose from and you do that not while playing but between the levels so before starting a level and after finishing a level you can decide between different upgrades so if you can't beat the level that gives you something you can experiment with and you can try different strategies and different playstyles this way then another thing that just should stop you from getting stuck as I also want a mechanic in the final game that allows you to skip levels if you can't be the level you have three jokers and you can skip three levels and if you beat a level that you skipped you get that chakra back something like that I really don't want players to get stuck on one level and then they'll have to quit because yeah that's what you have to do if you get stuck so next issue too repetitive and boring at times so we need to do is probably

add different music different backgrounds more content obviously in that also I don't just want to curate a lot of content I also want to create some smart content so objects that interact and interesting ways with each other so I can do more interesting level designs without needing insane amounts of content so I cannot trade 100 different enemies that's probably not possible but maybe I can create 20 or 30 that interact with each other in really interesting ways so every time you combine them differently it feels completely different and I think that's what I'm trying to go for but too repetitive and too boring part probably comes from not enough different stuff not enough content especially at the beginning there are a lot of levels that all have the same kinds of enemies so I can see why that is a problem also at times the game is the easiest thing we

can do about that is just allow the player control the game speed so you can toss the game completely if you want to think then you can have normal speed and then you can also double speed if it's going too slow for you and you're getting bored I'll just give you the full control over the game speed there I don't really see any reason to to stress you out it's supposed to be a strategy game so take all the time you want I don't really care maybe you can get an achievement if you can make it without or something like that and then those two other two really critical ones if you keep adding stuff will it still be special will the game still be special

if we add all that content here this is all stuff you've seen in different games before abilities you can use upgrade systems we have seen that in games a million times I don't think that's a big problem just because other games that doesn't mean that you cannot do it but I'm real just worrying a little bit will my game still stand out will it still wrap a tension will it still be different enough that's what I'm a little worried about and honestly I don't really know I think yes I don't think again like this exists yet it's definitely not a copycat games where you can I don't know any game like this so I think it's still gonna be unique enough and the last question if we keep adding stuff will I be able to get it all done and I think if we implement all of that we are absolutely at the limit of what I can do especially if I want to do YouTube at the same time just right here what we have on the wall is the limit if we need to add even more stuff than this

then I should probably make a different game because then it will start getting a little unrealistic this is already pretty ambitious because I want to finish this within two years or one one-and-a-half year if possible so some cool features like local multiplayer will probably just be cut out but shei I think all of this is still doable so tell me what do you think about these ideas which of them shall I try first did I forget any issues I think I pretty much covered all of the problems you have with the prototype right now so I really can't thank you enough for all of your awesome feedback make the world your playground have a nice day see you in the next one peace out