Wanted to throw these two images up, just to show some folks how blind you can get when you've been staring at your game for too long. One of the biggest, most common (and most obviously *correct*) pieces of feedback we've gotten is that the game, when you start it, is a confusing numbersplosion. Look at that! What is all that??? Obviously, to us it "made sense", but to a new player there's no way it could *possibly* make sense. TOO MANY NUMBERS. But wait. It's not *just* that. Too many *kinds* of numbers. But people are used to dealing with numbers for health. So let's say that even though we've got 3x numbers for health of most games, that's probably still not a massive difference. Then we've got Range. And the Number Cards show your options for how you can play vs. that range. But what's the +10? D->CH? That doesn't even make any sense. ATT+? Probably attack something? I think that's a source of significant confusion. Not only do these not make sense, they almost *can't* make sense unless you happen to know that: 1.) The "short description" of the cards could only be 5 characters long 2.) D = Damage, CH = Core Health 3.) What all the icons mean So it's insane. We're putting shorthand you don't understand for cards you don't understand on top of icons you don't understand, and then expecting you to poke them without the world exploding. So the second mockup, we just retooled the short descriptions. They were what they were for almost totally arbitrary reasons - just one of those seemingly little decisions you make at some point along the way. So now, much smaller font. Two lines of text. Icons aren't overlaid by anything except a number, and *only* in the rare instance that the Power Card needs the number, which is about 1/10th of them. It's significantly more legible. Not gonna solve all the confusion problems, but just the first step in the right direction.
Hey I got my stickers today! They are awesome! Also I'm liking the game. Starting to get the hang of it.
Yeah from portrait to landscape. Nothing major.....yet hehe. It seems like some things are playing better when rotated now, but I'll keep an eye on things and let you know if I see anything major.
Ended up disabling Landscape for now - it was actually an accident that it was possible at all, but we don't have the resources to do it correctly *yet*, so locking to portrait & upside-down portrait, and hopefully one day we'll have the time to do a proper landscape mode.
Release notes from the latest build. ---- Hey, beta peeps. Thanks so much for giving the game a shot over the last few days. We've learned a TON, and have been hard at work fixing stuff. A REQUEST: If you can take a moment and drop us a line at [email protected] with your impressions of the game so far, we would REALLY appreciate it. Even if your experience with the game was overwhelming confusion, we'd love to talk to you about it, and it'd be a massive help as we go forward. New stuff, some of which you've probably seen already: 1.) Decrease Numbersplosion: Used to be that Power Cards had a "Short Description" that was an arcane sigil (D->CH, J+10) that would bind its dark magic to Baal. We decided that putting Power Card names in English would make more sense and be more legible. Sanity +2. 2.) Improve formatting in Zero-G (new with this build): For people playing the game on the International Space Station on iPads, the game would unintentionally switch into landscape mode if you were spinning about in space. The game is now locked in portrait mode (or ǝpoɯ ʇiɐɹʇɹod) only. This problem may have occurred on Earth as well. 3.) More Englishy: Where some card descriptions used to use terminology like "If Target <5, rotate the primary dinglearm," we've changed most of those to "If the starting Range is 4 or less, rotate the primary dinglearm." There are lots of text changes to make terminology more consistent (it's not "Target" it's "Range") and easier to understand. --- Over the next few days, we're going to be rolling out some pretty significant UI changes when you play cards that should hopefully make things much clearer. If you were *super* confused when you first opened the game, please understand that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. When you work on a game for a while it's very hard to see it "with fresh eyes". I have no idea why I thought that the Power Card "short names" would make any sense to anyone, but immediately after getting feedback, it was clear it was wrong. So if you were confused, if you can give it another shot, we'd appreciate it! If you're still confused, give it a few days & things will become a lot clearer (we hope)! Thanks again for taking the time to participate in our beta! If you have any feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected] and we'll get back to you usually in minutes!
We're trying a UI tweak to make the game easier to understand. And it's a very weird tweak because it's what most people would think is super obvious, but ... wasn't. We're putting all the information about health, shield & evade on the health bars, which show... health, shield, and evade. We got this idea that we should keep as much of the information as possible in the most visible area of the screen - the middle, where the characters are. But in practice, you always have to scan the health bars *anyway*, so now you've got to scan a health bar, look at the icons that tell you how they're changing, and then scan back to the health bar and extrapolate how it'll change. Now, you'll just have that information on the bar itself, since you're looking there anyway. Sometimes the most obvious solutions are weirdly hard to find.
Hey, SF - did you get the e-mails we've sent? Oh - maybe not. Had to refactor the match data for performance reasons, so all matches were wiped. Gave everyone 1k bonus fuel. Sorry!!
Ahoy! Still cranking away on improvements. Yesterday, we radically reduced the initial loading time, and you might have already seen the new health bar stuff. This week, we're basically revamping how the "field" works, and doing some perspective changing when you select different actions to make it more clear. We're also doing a pretty radical revision of the animations. Most of what we did originally was to make sure the structure of the animation system would work & make sense. Now, it's time to start making the stuff look the way we have it in our minds: https://vimeo.com/161239277 We're likely to be submitting to Apple in the next day or two, but the interesting thing for us is that this doesn't mean that the game is "frozen" or anything of the sort. We've got so much more in store for this, launching it is just the barest hint of the beginning.
Also attached this, just for kicks. As far as I know this is the most damaging attack anyone's played in the game so far. There are plenty of ways to beat it, though, so if you can top 40 damage, let me know!
A sneak peek at the updates that are coming over the course of this week. 1.) New perspective! Wanted to get the "camera" closer in to your character - this totally changes how the game feels, which is pretty great. 2.) New Range indicator - since the perspective's changed, drawing the range on the ground was tricky at certain distances. 3.) New "meters" that show the quality of a card for a specific action. You'll know if you've got a good attack lined up, or if this card is better used to Evade. Thoughts?
I also just wanted to say, to everyone who's been playing and sending us feedback, we really can't thank you enough. We've learned a TON from the last two weeks - including how far we had to go to clarify some of the mechanics to new players. We've already made a bunch of changes and have a handful more to go, but the difference in the game now vs. two weeks ago is huge, and that's all been possible because you've taken the time to let us know what you liked and what you didn't. So thank you. We're super grateful.
This looks rather interesting. In a abstract way, reminds me of Lost Worlds (old flip book game series from primarily 80s-90s) that I always thought would make for a great digital adaptation.
I'm pretty much a visual person so the meter would be awesome and maybe it'll be less confusing to newer players.
Huh. Looked up Lost Worlds, and that's a neat concept. I'd never heard of it before. Right now, our characters are pretty vanilla. Everyone's the same - the only difference between players is their master card stack. But after we get the kinks worked out of the base game, and make sure it's balanced & fun (which is feeling pretty good at this point), one of the next things we'll be doing is XP + character profile + leveling up + stats, where stats can influence damage, max attack, etc., and then somewhere after that come Factions, where you'll be able to choose 1 of three "Factions" (the 1st one is "Solar", which is what's available now) each of which will play slightly differently. The Nukes will hit harder but move less, and the Windwalkers will move a lot but have relatively weaker attacks. Then within each of those factions, you'll be able to customize the behavior a bit by customizing your character's gear. Woo!
I meant more the perspective and such made me think of it. Mechanically it is quite different. At any rate, good luck with it.
Submitted to Apple! Let's see how this goes. Historically, I think we've always gotten our first submission rejected for something silly, so we'll see if we can keep the streak going!
One thing that's been an itch in the back of my mind for a while... We designed this game in part because some of us have small kids, and we no longer have the time to play a lot of the kinds of long-form games that we used to love. Hell, I can't even regularly play Hearthstone, because one of my kids is a really fitful sleeper. And so I'd thought of this as a "Game for Busy People" - as a result, our tagline is "Wonderspark: Games for Busy People". But at the same time, a lot of people who are too busy to play games sort of "lapsed" out of being gamers. They believe they've "grown out" of it, and it's something they have to put behind them. So one concern I had was, "How do we reach those people?" if they believe they no longer have time to play games? We've built a game for an audience that believes they can't play anymore. Which is super difficult, if not impossible. But what I was thinking is that *gamers* - engaged, "non-lapsed" gamers - we all have friends who are at different stages of life, right? When some of my friends first started having kids, they dropped off the face of the Earth for a bit, since raising a newborn is a pretty massive commitment of time & energy. But almost universally, and I found this to be true as well - the early days can be pretty lonely. You're up at night, often by yourself while your partner's still asleep, rocking or feeding the kid, or whatever. Maybe it's a totally different situation - you've got a new job and you're swamped with work, or your time just doesn't match up with your buddies' free time the way it used to. But these kinds of games are a bridge between who they *were* and who they *are*. We're building multiplayer, social games because it gives friends something to do together - some way to make new memories together. A way for you to reach out to someone who thinks they're too busy for games, and give them a game that fits their busy life, and provides a lifeline to the outside world. So if you know of someone in that situation, or you're someone in that situation... if you'd be kind enough to e-mail me at [email protected] I'd *love* to talk to you about whether this is the kind of situation you've been in, or the kind of situation your friends might be in, and what you'd be looking for in something that would help you stay in touch & keep playing with your friends.
New meters are in! There are still UI changes to be made to polish things up, but the meters were a big shift from "tons of numbers everywhere" to trying to make things easier to parse visually. If you've got the beta, if you could check it out & let us know what you think, we'd really appreciate it! Thanks!
