Ok good to know that you are aware of these issues. I did find one thing though. I can confirm that too many cards in hand STILL block the "done button" despite the patchnotes saying it has been fixed.
New buyer: Thoughts and expansions? Hi, I love playing card games on my ipad and bought this a couple of days ago. In general I am impressed with the UI except that I also don't like the in-game UI panning and zooming, sorry! It's not that it's not a good UI, just that it's different to other similar games and I don't think it's necessary. It's obviously easier to say this in hindsight rather than at the design stage, but I don't see the reason for being able to zoom - in fact I bet you could turn zooming off altogether. Then you could pan with one finger (with the game auto-panning between stages so you'd never need to pan. Also set limits on the pan to stop people leaving the play area. Or refining this further, think you could remove the panning altogether... Assuming you made two screens, one for the cards and other for the tracks, you could swipe between them with one finger and the UI simpler. You could also remove several items on the card screen for more space (hive wave stacks, nortec logo for example). Also, just to echo the other thoughts here, I agree that you need to test the game more before releasing updates: An hour's testing would have shown one or two of the worst bugs in 1.05. I spend more time testing than programming, and the lack of bugs in my software shows it. Possibly you need to give your programmers a kick to get them to test their work ;-) That said, it's great to see how the developer is supporting this game. @Developer: You may wish to promote this more; I only found out about it due to a story on the boardgamesgeek iOS blog, and several other commenters on that article said they'd not heard about the game as well. I really like the game and have already bought the first expansion. I definitely recommend anyone considering this game to buy it if they like the idea of a tower-defence deck-building card game. When/if are other expansions coming?
When you have units survive a round and you've bought more units, is it possible to then discard the units already in the lane? A couple more for the UI wishlist: 1. Example: you have the command center and you can get a free item. you double click on an item to see the details but it selects it and puts it in your hand instead. It's a bit of a gotcha for new players but I don't know if there's a good solution for this one. 2. Hive units remain in the lane but no player has any units, cards or abilities remaining. It'd be nice to auto-click the 'done' button to speed the game up.
Thanks everyone for the feedback, keep it coming! We're always looking for ways to improve and your ideas are golden! This is actually not allowed in the board game itself, so I can't really help you there, I don't make the rules! We kick our programmers on a regular basis! In fact, they were too eager to fix other bugs and let this one slip when publishing a little too fast. I think we're back to our regular kicking cycle now though. Yes, definitely. Pretty much all expansions to the physical XenoShyft should make it to the digital version (excluding certain Kickstarter promos maybe). The next one (Psychogenics) will come soon-ish, we expect it around October.
This has become my favourite game for the last week. Played it lots. It's beginning to move to the backburner now, but only due to the lack of variety until the expansions come out: I'm finding that I choose more or less the same items no matter the division. For the price though this is absolutely not a criticism, and is probably a fault in my playstyle. This is a great game and I have got far more than my money's worth out of it. Having played it more, I am finding the UI issues above are unimportant because you never need to pan the view or zoom anyway; I basically just forget those options exist. @Blacklotus: If you'd like another tester I'd be happy to test your android builds, by the way. I'm a professional Windows and Android business apps developer. Edit: Great to hear the expansions are coming!
Our Android beta is actually public (if you own the app anyway, that's how Google Play betas work), every new update will be available through it, just follow the link you can find in our forums here: http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?80-Xenoshyft-APP Thanks for your interest!
""when I PLAY the game, any board manipulation that I DO is awkward and clumsy and i expressed that. whether or not you view my original comment/criticism as constructive (a relative term) the dev seems to have capitulated somewhat by saying "we'd love to hear any suggestions on how to improve board navigation". so, there seems to be an issue here, me being the first to point it out" i made that and several other critical remarks about the game's interface over a month ago and rather than accept critical review of the game, the developer berated me for not playing the game as he plays it or wants it to be played. seems what i said back then still holds true (read that as the first update did squat) only now a site that carries some clout in the mobile market (Pockettactics) 'officially' chides the game for essentially the same things i had complained about over a month ago. you can read the review here. i didn't come back to rub it in, i just came back to say i told you so
I too think the UI is clumsy to the point that I even do not finish the tutorial. I am just one step away claiming refund.
Glad to see I'm not the only one finding the UI horrible and fiddly. Well the PT review pretty much says the same I've been saying here. Its sad to see a great game like Xenoshyft being dragged down by bad design which is preventing it from being all it can be. Btw thanks for reminding me PT still existed, I legit forgot about that site. I used to go there a lot but stopped after they became like TA and started giving every crap game 5/5 and the forums became a circle jerk but unlike TA you couldn't talk to most devs there which is the main reason why I'm still on here.
Agreed he UI is clunky, pocket tactics basically have said all I want to (again!). Let's hope the devs listen to the feedback.
I too have had my enjoyment of the game marred by the poor board navigation. The pinch and zoom / two finger option at the moment is clumsy and awkward. When playing using the Command Center I keep choosing the wrong two cards that its initial power grants, because when I try to pinch and zoom my fingers inevitably touch an item card and the game thinks I've made my choice! I have a suggestion to remedy this and improve general navigation that uses an asset already in the app, namely the Switch View button. Why don't you just link more views to this button? I find the current options are no help as they are too far out, even on my iPad. I think adding the following views will help navigation a great deal: 1) View of all the troop cards. 2) View of the current row of troop cards, which varies accordingly to the game round. This view could also include the ability to swipe up and down to cycle between the other troop rows if required. 3) View of all item cards. 4) View of the top row of item cards. Like view 2 this could also include swiping to cycle between the other rows. 5) View of the Hive side of the deployment lane / lanes. 6) View of the troops side of the deployment lane / lanes. I feel that these last two might help to make deployment easier so you don't end up putting the wrong item on the wrong troop. I appreciate that not everyone will want to cycle through so many views, so in the options you could add the ability to select which of these (and the current views) you want to have linked to the Switch View button. Anyway just an idea. What do people think?
Hi, I've been playing the game for a few weeks (not lots of games however as many other commitments). If I am playing a solo game using command centre, my first action is to select an equipment card. I'm a a loss for how I would do that without either pinching (and then having to 2 finger drag because the pinch zooms from the centre rather than where you actually pinch) or knowing all the cards? I can't single or double click to get a preview, as this just selects the card. (Or am I missing something?) I'm discussing the UI for people who don't know all the cards by heart (which is unlikely I ever will probably). I think, as others have mentioned and has been reviewed elsewhere that zoom and navigate are important for lots of users who don't play as often or have as much knowledge as you. As you say, these 2 functions were added late as an afterthought and it looks like the feedback is that they respond as if they were added late as a bit of an afterthought, Although you may use the features 2% of the time, I use them much more, it sounds like others do too. I do a fair amount of user journey testing with clients to hopefully dispel some opinions that people have about the use of their systems. It looks like this is one of those occasions that you use the app differently to newer, less frequent users. I usually find that information very helpful rather than telling the users how they should be doing something. I'm enjoying playing, but any improvements here would be well received
Thanks.. Loads better for seeing individual cards Still find myself zooming to see all of them sometimes to choose sometimes...
ArtFoundry there beat me to the punch... We're going to try to implement GenreGuy's multiple-views idea soon. All in all, I really think adding the zoom/scroll feature ended up hurting more than helping. People had become used to using tap & hold before it and now the pinch/scroll just seems to confuse everyone. Also, we made a huge mistake whereas we only pulled beta testers from our pool of XenoShyft Kickstarter backers, so we ended up getting a rather biased opinion with players that already knew the game before. Either way, we're listening, thanks for all the thoughtful feedback.
