Post by jazhikho in Bierdurst jam comments

One Game A Week Jam #3 » Entries » Bierdurst

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Art imitating life. 🤣

Feedback and critique: This is a very well thought out game. The graphics could be improved of course, but they work for the aesthetic, so I don’t really have an issue here. The gameplay makes sense, and the music and sound are absolutely wonderful.

The only beef I have with it is that there are no UI/menu system, and only a rough onboarding (the hints are all there, so this isn’t terrible, but never assume that what things are obvious - pretend that you are sitting your grandma down in front of the game, and she has no idea what is going on). Player onboarding should assume that they never read your game homepage - make everything available in game. The UI/menu system can also give the player hints and allow for pause, control of music / sound, credits, etc. None of this is present, so polish is lacking a bit. Transitions between levels are also a bit abrupt - consider tweening. I also had some weird experiences where the game would freeze briefly while loading between levels - potentially resolvable by the tweening mentioned earlier as a way to hide the game until its ready for the player.

All that said, this is well done! Pat yourselves on the back, I think this is a very strong entry. :-)

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MysteriousJuice98 days ago

There definitely could be more UI directly in the game. You can actually enter the sound menu via "M" — we only stated this on the itch page, partly because we did not want to clutter the in-game screen too much. The initial stutters and the freeze during the level switch are a problem we only encountered in the web build, and with a short black screen or something similar this could be fixed. We will keep this in mind for the next game we make. Regarding the onboarding, I think our design philosophies differ a little. Of course a commercial game cannot afford to lose inexperienced players during the first few minutes due to bad onboarding. Our audience on itch, however, are game dev enthusiasts, or at least other gamers. I think then it's fair to assume that they can work with the hints we placed. Nevertheless, guiding players into the game is something we have struggled with previously, so thanks for pointing it out again,
and thanks for taking the time to write this critique!

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jazhikho98 days ago(+1)

Re: Onboarding, With a goal of targeting gamers in mind, its definitely intuitive; it only took me a few seconds to pick up. :-)

I’d argue for a reconsideration of onboarding philosophy still a bit; think of most successful commercial games - there is some kind of explicit handholding involved, and some of these games have an implicit bias towards gamers. I recommend watching Jez’s series on his non-gamer wife playing some of his favorite games. It’s highly entertaining, and a bit illuminating on some of the assumptions we as developers take for granted about our audience.

Realizing that this is a hobby for many, I’d still recommend that even casual devs always create games with shipping in mind as the goal. Even considering the audience of people who are used to gaming norms, something that is accessible means that your end product reaches a wider audience. As a goal, this isn’t always achievable (especially in a tight timeframe like these jams) - There is definitely an art to striking the right balance here, and I myself prioritize getting my game down before thinking about the UI and general UX, so don’t take this as throwing stones, lol. I like that this is a conversation. Hopefully I changed your mind, but even if I didn’t, I’m glad that you gave me your point of view. :-) I still love this game and hope to see future entries from you.

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MysteriousJuice98 days ago(+1)

Thanks for sharing this, I think I actually watched some of those a while ago and it was a little eye opening to see this as someone who is playing videogame their whole life ^^
I think the most ideal way would be to guide players smoothly into a game but without being too intrusive. In our way some more icons on the in game screen would probably have been enough. However, in general I dislike game pauses with explanations when I want to start playing nearly as much as having to read a wall of text beforehand on the itch page. Getting this right is difficult, especially with the narrow perspective you have as the developer. We will strive to improve this in the future, possibly by trying to find some playtesters before the end of the jam that can give us another perspective. Thanks for your reply, it is good to be contradicted on those things from time to time :)

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