Funny Sweater

rafalXS

Hi,

I've ended some time ago my game, so I brag out here, on forum.

Game is available here, on Google Play: Funny Sweater

Story:
I decided to write a game to see if it's hard or not - as a hobby. I'm corpo-java developer, not connected in any way to the game industry.
Thanks to Unity & Adventure Creator writing the game was very easy. Of course I have to do some coding and debuging (I have some problems which I could solve only by writing some own code and I found few bugs in AC, so I have to do some workarounds).
In fact, AC is a great tool. It has few glitches, but nothing really serious.
Thanks to Cris for making such a good framework.

Anyway,
In my game I used maybe two or three paid assets. Others were free. All pictures, backgrounds etc was from my home personal album.
Intro video and outros were made by me some time ago so I used it in my game (after some processing.
From commercial products I've used only unity and AC. Others soft I used was OS mainly on linux (gimp, kdenlive, audacity)

That's all. Please try my game. I think it is quite good as for 2 weekes of development without any earlier experience.

After making my game and publishing it in Google Play I'm wondering how You all people are earning money for Your family ? ;-) It's very hard to sell something in such store even if it's free. I think that it is so hard in all such stores like steam, humble bundle, IOS etc.
I admire You, because now I see, that making independent games is currently like roulette - You never know if it will be sucess and the risk of failure and competition is enormous.

rafalXS

rafalXS

rafalXS

Those pictures above are in Polish language but the game is also available in english.

So, I will be grateful if anyone could say what he/she thinks about my game

Alverik

As incredible as it may sound, I don't have a smart phone, so I can't really test the game, do you by any chance have a video or a PC version?

From the pictures I can say that It looks technically correct, even if the English writing in some places seems a bit funky (in the screenshots). 

Now, about the other stuff, if you plan to make games for a living you should probably start planning games ahead of time, you could do at least a small design document, which details the mechanics and story and everything you want to have in the game, so that when you start development you already know what you want to get (that speed things up a lot). If possible read about story plotting and dialogue, this is specially critical for an adventure game. Also do try to learn working with the UI, I know it's just a test, but the black menu feels a little too prototype-ish.

Now, I can't much talk myself about how to make a living with games yet (cause I'm still kind of new to unity), but my best guess would be to get into crowd funding sites as soon as possible (as soon as you have something interesting to show people), or once games are done you can to use sites such as GOG to sell your stuff (by the way, some people talk about places to sell your games here http://www.adventurecreator.org/forum/discussion/412/how-to-sell-our-games) 

Anyway, for something you made in two weeks it seems nice. But as I said, I can't provide a proper review until I see a video or get a PC version...

Alverik

Got it to work with Bluestacks emulator. >-

The sounds and SFX are nice and the game's interesting, but it's still very rough. Anyway, here's a rundown of the issues I found:

1. There's a lot of Navmesh placement and navigational issues. I got stuck between the balcony and the bedroom several times. Once, I even fell through the ladder somehow (literally fell through the floor...).

2. You can't save your game, and you die a lot, this forces the player to repeat conversations many times... very annoying.

3. You forgot to disable a few hotspots after giving the "item" (cheese and pipe come to mind).

4. Wow... the scene with the statues and the knight reminds me a lot of a phrase from the book "level up!" by Scott Rogers (when Rogers is talking about people doing things to a player out of design convenience)... basically he states:

"Don't drop stones over the player's head!". (Just out of design convenience...) )

5. The location and events are creative (when you take into account the few objects and the short amount of time this was made in), but there's no real sense of story...

6. I saw a few "sorting" issues, sometimes the character is in front of objects which should be in front of him instead. I also saw him stand on air, once, when he was near the books in the bedroom.

7. Many NPCs don't have an "exit" dialogue in their initial conversation options, so once you've already heard their dialogue, if you start a conversation again and you want to exit, then you have to go through the whole conversation again to get to the "exit dialogue", which, after several times can become annoying.

8. The English translation is kinda funky... you should have someone else help you with the translation.

----

Now some advice: 

I see you are using Adventure Creator alright, but you are still not very experienced, you either forget to do things or still don't know about some features. My advice is to take a better look at all the Adventure Creator's video tutorials, and I mean all of them, not just the 2D and 2.5D ones (also check all the written tutorials). Because all of them will teach stuff you can use in all camera perspectives. Also read about plotting stories and about game design in general. And also menu design... Your menu is a little funky, specially the "Do nothing" button... just name it Resume or Continue instead...

But most importantly, take your time making your games. You can make casual games in a month (sometimes...). But making adventure games usually takes much longer than that. Two weeks isn't good enough to make a good and polished game.

Anyways, keep it up!

rafalXS

Wow, thank You for a good review. I really appreciate this.

Yes, my game isn't perfect but I will be working to make it better.

Alverik

By the way, you could start by reading this articles, not everything they teach applies perfectly to adventure games, but they're still pretty good and they should be a lot of help:

Game Design and planning:

Effectively organize your games development with a game design document.

The dynamic priority list - how I manage my gamedev projects

Bringing your game to life in 10 simple steps

GDD Templates:

Ironbelly Studios GDD Template

Unity Forums GDD Template

UI:

Game UI by example - A crash course in the good and the bad.

User interface design in video games

The ten commandments of video game menus