Official Launch of Shoot the Dragons

Great looking game! I'd love to beta test if you're still looking for players.

 

I love this game.
It's like a shoot Em up auto runner!

I like that it has daily bonuses throughout the day which will keep me playing.

Also collecting currency collecting is a major plus and this game has that as well.
It's perfect difficulty curve.

It's not easy to accumulate currency but that's sometimes a good thing and in this case it's a good thing for now.

I'll leave feedback as I play more

 

I would love to test. [email protected]

 

I would love to test this. I will send you a PM.

 

Great game, not for the faint of heart. It's just crazy action non stop with some pretty creative boss battles. The game can be hard but it's worth it as you discover different enemies along the way the characters are all well done and distinctive

I wish there was a powerup that allowed you to take more than one hit

 

I agree I wish your character could take more than one hit.

 

Beta tester's feedback

Hello! Beta tester here! Just played for a little bit and here's my feedback, as detailed as can be.

... except I ended up writing 2000 words with some accompanying pictures. That might be a bit too huge to post here. It's mostly the criticism; when I point out something I don't like, I try to explain why I feel that way and suggest ways to improve it.

I put my full feedback on this pastebin for the devs and anyone interested:
http://pastebin.com/qqay4aAD

I'll put the cliffnotes here, please read the full feedback for more detail

- I like the art style and humor, enemy design and variety is great, I'm impressed with how smooth the animations are.

- Some noticeable glitches. Game cannot be put into the background once gameplay is started, upon re-entering the app it crashes. An intangible duplicate power up appears briefly when power up boxes are broken. The returning from death seems like it's missing an animation. Power ups are unable to reach the left side of the screen, they bounce off an invisible wall in the middle of the screen.

- Hitbox might need tinkering. The hitbox doesn't line up with any part of the character design so it needs to be seen. Having it only seen when you lift your finger might not be the best solution. Consider adding options to tweak hitbox visibility.

- Movement sensitivity feels wrong, leads to fingers covering the screen. X and Y axis sensitivity is different, X axis has acceleration while Y axis is mostly 1:1 with finger, it can lead to desynchronization of player position and finger movement. Examples: Deathsmiles and Vritra have 1:1 finger movement while shrinking the game to create dead space in which you can move your finger. ToonShooters has 3 sensitivity options, highest lets you move your plane without your finger going too far from the corner. Consider tweaking sensitivity and/or adding sensitivity settings in an options menu.

- Way power ups act in-game has problems stemming from what I think is a glitch. They're the focus of the progression system, yet how they appear in-game is very biased against the player in ways that feel unfair. Their appearance and movement biases the right side of the screen, and when freed from box are prevented from entering the player side of the screen by an invisible wall. Seems like a glitch, if this is by design it goes against the logic of every shmup I've played and discourages power up use, thereby discouraging your own progression system. Let the power ups enter the left side of the screen at least.

- Some enemy projectiles are hard to see. Particularly dragon confetti and gator waiter paper have inconsistent small shape and the color can blend in with either the background or player projectiles. Most shmups either standardize bullet appearance or sharply contrast the color with a very dark and muted background. Either darken/mute the background further or make enemy bullets stand out more, such as by making them glow like the musical notes/power ups do

- The blur effect on the dragon boss when it goes into the background looks terrible, get rid of it, have your artist make it look like it actually went into the background. Resize it, put a color filter on it to match the background, something.

Overall it looks great, runs smooth and has charm. I think it's got potential, just needs some tweaking and polishing. I look forward to seeing the project progress and more features added.

 

Played 3 seconds, already love it
I will play more and write a but more extensively.


Edit:
Second impressions. Character sometimes seem a bit too fragile? which can lead to short lived game experiences. Would consider idea of having 2 hearts before the continue?
Game seems opposed to a usual convention of when an enemy takes a hit, displaying a sort of flash to indicate he's been hit. (That flash could also be used when hero receives a hit)
Some of the dialog boxes might be a bit smaller than they could be, this is a big bold in your face game, not with scrimpy misfit dialog boxes. (At the continue for instance)
First boss saying 'Ops' is a bit weird, not quite sure what that's meant to say/infer.
Gold as the colour of the enemy is a strange one to get used to. Always associate it with a perk, or reward.
Possibly would be better if it was one hit to open the perk box.

What I like: Responsive and bags of character! It's like a schmup lovechild of Rayman.

*Only my opinion

 

Thanks for including me in the beta test. The game really have great potential especially the characteristic of the enemy.

 

So I took a bit of time to think about the game's design as a whole and came up with some more broad thoughts. This is all tentative since it's clear the game is in development and I don't know what features are planned but not implemented and such.

The more I think about it, Shoot the Dragons is a fairly unconventional shmup, and I don't mean in a good way.

At first it was how the enemy projectiles were varied but don't stand out enough from some background elements, which is really a problem with the paper attacks because of just how small those objects are (and how they can end up coming from behind the player which you would think is a no-no for a game that demands your finger covering part of the screen). This is definitely affected by your choice in color palette as thumbs07 noted above:

When designing the visuals of your game (ESPECIALLY A SHMUP) you have to think really carefully about what sorts of colors and shapes you use for background and foreground elements. You have to think about whether small faded grey projectiles get lost amongst the faded grey background, whether golden enemies mix with the player's orange shots and the gold coins you collect. This is why most other serious shmups will standardize some elements of the visual design, like enemy bullets or the background.

Look at this image. It's a complete mess, yes, bullet hell games tend to be like that.
But it's immediately obvious what the dangerous projectiles are because they're white with bright purple/pink outlines, and some even have a blue glow behind them to make them stand out more. A game like Deathsmiles is hard, but trying to figure out what is and isn't an enemy bullet is never part of the difficulty.
Catgirl Without Salad takes a different approach by making every background very dark and every background object is under that same dark color filter, while all foreground elements are very bright and stand out. This is what allows Catgirl Without Salad to get away with having all sorts of weird and varied enemy projectiles.

Secondly, the progression and power up system in your game is very unlike other shmups (not bullet hell shmups, shmups in general). I notice among other testers there's a lot of feedback like this:

Now I know the devs might just say "oh well it's a hard game git gud". Remember, hard games are fun if they are also fair. In every shmup I've played, you never get ONE life by default. Additionally, you don't get "power ups" at all, you get shot upgrades with no time limit that last until you lose one life. This is why people are finding your game too hard, it's entirely unreasonable to have a shmup that only has one life. "But you can pay coins to continue, and they're cheap", I bet is what they thought, but there's a problem in how they implemented that. Having to go through a very long death animation, wait for the black screen, select continue and then WAIT 3 MORE SECONDS is far far too long of a wait just to respawn and it completely breaks the flow of gameplay. It doesn't feel like I lost a life, it feels like I have to use a continue. This makes me not want to play the game at all after long enough because of how tedious it is.

Here's my recommendation: you get multiple lives. Don't play the death animation when you get hit, just have the guy explode and then come back right away. Only play the long "I'm falling!" death animation when you lose three lives, then charge a larger amount of coins for a pack of more lives. This way player deaths don't break up the flow of gameplay nearly as much. You can try it with 2 sets of 4 lives or 3 sets of 3 lives (the point at which it stops offering you to buy more lives).
Alternatively, give the player a health meter that takes several hits to deplete and you lose any held power ups upon taking damage, this achieves the same result and is the system other shmups use when they have a health bar.

Now when you offer multiple lives, get rid of the power up timer. That's not how most shmups work, you should have the power up for as long as you don't die. In other shmups, the power ups are given to every player, but the reward for skillful play (not dying) is getting to keep that power up, and power ups shoot different patterns to encourage players to use different tactics when approaching enemies. The way your game does it with temporary power ups actually discourages using them at all (they last a short time and because they only exist on the right side of the screen, are very risky to get), and it's a very bad thing if you game is discouraging its own progression system. You might need to rebalance your power ups to make them more like shot upgrades, but I feel that's a necessary sacrifice because what your system currently is doesn't work.

Again, my criticism is this detailed and this harsh because I ultimately like the project and want to see it succeed. I just really want to stress that elements of game design are very important and need to be thought about. Think about every part of the game, how players will see them. Don't just break convention just so you can pretend to be different, if other games do it differently why do they do it differently and what does that achieve?

---

 

Thanks, I got the PM too.

Since the game is still in development, I expect things to go through changes. So stuff I suggested like control sensitivity and giving the player lives, those things might take a while of tweaking to find what works best. I post my feedback here because I want other testers to see what I'm saying and can agree or disagree, and so I can see other feedback and think about it too. I'm really happy with the communication you have with users here, and I'm glad that I could help with such a nice project.

As you move forward you'll eventually need to think about the very broad things. Things like "What makes this game stand out? Why would people want to play this and not other similar games?" and "How are we going to monetize the game? What will work and be profitable? What would not work and turn off players?". I don't have the answers to these questions and at this stage I can't even make any suggestions (though I will say the humor, enemy/boss variety and smooth beautiful animation are the current game's strong points). I just bring it up because I feel that these are things to keep in the back of your mind throughout the project. I've witnessed other games come out perfectly adequate in every area but not stand out enough to interest people. I've seen games come out that should be fine, but upset players because of how they chose to monetize the game (recently dog adventure game Get 'Em suffered this with its questionable decision to be a premium game that also has wait timers).

Thanks again, and I look forward to the next version!

---