Bubble Blitz - beta feedback please

Yup - it's another totally uninspired, unoriginal. colour matching game with no redeeming features whatsoever. That aside could you let me know what you think of Bubble Blitz please.

http://www.binarysun.co.uk/downloads/demo_bubbleblitz.exe

a picture can be found here, but screenshots don't do it justice. Go on, have a play, it'll make your day (not guaranteed).

Feel free to criticise away - I have a very thin skin but any constructive crtisism will be read, absorbed and, eventually, acted upon.

I posted this on the indie gamer forum and so far they're not liking the graphics and haven't commented on gameplay or, more importantly, wether it works or not.

Looking forward to hearing what you think...

you have to really improve on it in some magical way... specially with all the millions of color matching/gem matching etc etc endless clones of clones... of clones... i dont know, i dont see the point in making such a game, its not like its not been done 10920192091029102901 times already.

Copied and pasted from the relevant indiegamer forum post...



I have a job, I'm not in this for the money (not that it isn't nice)

There seems to be no way to quit the game using the mouse during gameplay (where is the window close button?)

The dialog during the game ("Good move!" "You rock!") covers up part of the game field and there is no option to disable this feature.

The Undo feature lets you "cheat" because the same move will yield different columns appearing on the left.

Otherwise, the game is nice. It's polished, if unoriginal. :)

Ah - now that's the sort of feedback I like. It massages my ego, AND it gives me constructive information :)

The undo 'cheat' was discovered and fixed some time ago. Looks like it was unfixed, so has been fixed yet again.

The window close buttons isn't available because I used blitz+ and it doesn't have one (at least not when you use the graphics mode). To quit using the mouse you have to pause and return to the menu. Maybe I'll add a quit game button to the pause menu...

The Announcer dialog - that's not a big problem is it? I figured it was so quick that it didn't matter that it covered some of the gameboard.

Hi,

Yep, not much new under the sun, but it is fairly nice.

One thing I didn't like was the changing 'theme' selection icons, which are a bit confusing. It seems to jump between different sets of themes although it's not.

The timer feature seems redundant, at least there's not much chance of it affecting gameplay, so why not just leave it out of the equation?

It's all nice and dandy, but a bit too mellow for my liking. One thing that might add a bit of fun was interactive music, which changed pace etc. depending on how well the player performed. Also the themes could be a bit farther apart, they're all fairly equal in terms of colors and designs.

A mini thing is that the stars that fly from the menu page dude's butt are clipped wrongly on the top and left hand side of the screen. And btw. who is that guy? He seems to add a bit of personality to things, but only pops up when commenting on gameplay. Could he perhaps be utilized better?

Well, as you are not afraid to admit, it is a bit derivative and un-new, with a bit of shabang, kabooms and twists it probably would stand out more... I think what it boils down to is that it lacks personality.

Well, that was a few quick thoughts...

I wasn't sure about that either. I wanted to let people change the bubbles but am not sure about the best way to do it. Will spend some more time thinking about this...



Not entirely sure I agree there. I've had a few games end because of the timer, and I know my testers have, although once you get into the game and know what you're doing it does become a bit pointless. Maybe I'll tweak it a bit to make it more challenging



They're not clipped, that's just when the particles die. I'll make them live longer, FWIW I've changed them to bubbles as well. The character is the person I consider to be the main character in Rocket Boards. He was added, as you say, to add some character; if you can think of a better way/ other ways to use him I'm all ears.

One of the beta testers suggested changing the music so it speeds when you get to 10 seconds left. I like that idea so might have a go at that.

Thanks for the feedback - it's appreciated.

Thought it was a remake of bubble bobble...

seems i have to wait longer for someone doing such! :)

Grisu: I thought the same.

Nice looking, pro. Poss. needs windows title bar buttons though. I am making one too for fun and as a "completable" project, and if it sells even one ... bonus!

Shame the title music doesn't "wrap".

Also when u click purchase it hijacks an open IE window instead of making a new one.

Excatly - I've sold more than one of Bubble Bomb so I am sure this will sell something.



I thought it did. It's using playmusic so is streaming so there may be a tiny pause but I certainly haven't noticed any glaring issues




Well it shouldn't, but it's just using blitzes execfile command so, as far as I know, there is no way to control what the page opens in.

Grisu - sorry about getting your hopes up :)

About the wrapping, it's like a half to 1 second pause on replaying on my P4 3.2 GHz 1GB RAM.

Anyway good luck. Keep an eye out for my fruit swapping game, when I finish it.

Instead of using execfile "http://dblah.whatever" use execfile "ieplore.exe http://dblah.whatever"... Hijacking existing IE windows is one of my pet peeves.

or you can have it be nice and run firefox.exe ;)

Isn't that a user option in IE? Options > Advanced > Reuse windows for launching shortcuts

I'm a fan of just executing the url and letting the system do what it's set up to do. Never presume you know better than the user :-)

As for the game ...

Took me a little while to work out why I was getting game over when my time wasn't running out - it's all explained in the help though so no harm done.

I was also confused as to what the theme buttons did until I read it on here. Nice idea though.

Theme music glitches here on wrap too.

Nice game - though I'm a bit crap at it :-)

Hotcakes - I'm not a fan of Internet Explorer. On my computer it opens in Firefox. I'm happy to just let it work as it is... I'll look to see if there is a way to change it to force a new window, although I guess this would be IE specific

HappyCat - I take it you were running out of possible moves? I'm not sure how I could make that clearer. I think it's explained on the gameover screen and if it isn't... I'll change it



Yeah - I'm trying to think of a better way of doing this. I really like the idea but the execution is lacking.



:(

Yeah, that's right, and it is explained in the help - I was just a chump and didn't realise to start with. Maybe something as simple as "Game Over - You ran out of moves" or "Game Over - You ran out of time" would do it?

I agree with HappyCat about the game over messages.

Ah - I know what the problem is. It already says those thing if you get a game over UNLESS you get on the hi score table. You're always going to be on the hi scores list until they're filled so you won't see the messages until you know how to play. I'll have to change that.

Well bugger me. Thank you HappyCat!