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Tried it on my iPad just now. No sound. Really that kills it right there. Radar is super tiny and hidden beneath my right hand, I could not see it, and I sure

Tried it on my iPad just now. No sound. Really that kills it right there. Radar is super tiny and hidden beneath my right hand, I could not see it, and I sure couldn't see any dots on it. Upgrade UI is way too tiny to use. And hidden beneath my left hand. I tried stabbing at it a couple of times and I ended up upgrading the option above what I actually wanted. Game Over is really unceremonious. It doesn't tell me that if I get back in it'll keep my upgrades. I buzzed around for a few minutes and have no desire to go back in. Focusing the controls on cardinal directions and diagonals felt really really limiting when I have a virtual thumb stick to use. I never felt like I was aiming in the direction I wanted to, or moving. I have also played a LOT of twin stick shooters, I dunno if this is trying to be one or not. No sound. No world. I mean how about trees I can lurk under? Just an endless plain full of boxes and tanks. I guess that's more than Slither.io has, that just has player snakes, but... No real distinction between tank levels, and what about all that tank type selection mentioned in part 3? I never saw that. I just had a tank. A tank with weird sluggish controls. And no sound. Seriously sound does more for games than art, get some sounds in there. Or just take that super solid net code and prototype four completely new games on top of it in a week apiece. Programmer art and stub sounds.

egypturnash 9y ago
Maybe go look at actual successful twin stick shooters. For instance playing that made me want to cleanse my palate so I pulled up Assault Android Cactus, which is everything this is not: it's a super cute game with local co-op, multiple characters with very different play styles, and a nice little selection of power ups. Make some bots that run around in obviously non-tank skins. Weak but numerous, clearly different. Throw in some bosses that require multiple players to destroy. Those two things would make it more amusing when it's empty, AND have a reason to bring friends in. (Name the bosses, keep them down to only a few on the map at a time, if even more than one, keep track of who kills them, hand out medals for doing so) Right now it's way too slow for this but some kind of Chain Combo mechanism always helps shooters have depth - once you have the basics down you can start chasing high chain, maybe have score multipliers, maybe start showing a visual effect for people with a chain going and offer bonuses for taking them down. (In it's simplest form, a chain combo usually starts happening when you quickly kill several enemies without taking damage; every time you kill an enemy start a timer counting down for a second or three, and if it hits zero then you lose your combo. Play a sad noise when this happens.)
- egypturnash 9y ago
  Also stop making your designer draw tanks. Pay her to draw whatever the hell she thinks would be cool on top of the movement patterns you come up with for bots and for the players. Roll with whatever it is. Tanks are boring to draw and full of lots of stupid fiddly details. If you end up with a game about cute bugs and unicorns and squid running around throwing hearts at each other? GREAT. It's got something to stand out. I mean right now this thing doesn't even have a NAME that means anything, much less any kind of visual appeal.

egypturnash 9y ago

Maybe go look at actual successful twin stick shooters. For instance playing that made me want to cleanse my palate so I pulled up Assault Android Cactus, which is everything this is not: it's a super cute game with local co-op, multiple characters with very different play styles, and a nice little selection of power ups. Make some bots that run around in obviously non-tank skins. Weak but numerous, clearly different. Throw in some bosses that require multiple players to destroy. Those two things would make it more amusing when it's empty, AND have a reason to bring friends in. (Name the bosses, keep them down to only a few on the map at a time, if even more than one, keep track of who kills them, hand out medals for doing so) Right now it's way too slow for this but some kind of Chain Combo mechanism always helps shooters have depth - once you have the basics down you can start chasing high chain, maybe have score multipliers, maybe start showing a visual effect for people with a chain going and offer bonuses for taking them down. (In it's simplest form, a chain combo usually starts happening when you quickly kill several enemies without taking damage; every time you kill an enemy start a timer counting down for a second or three, and if it hits zero then you lose your combo. Play a sad noise when this happens.)

egypturnash 9y ago
Also stop making your designer draw tanks. Pay her to draw whatever the hell she thinks would be cool on top of the movement patterns you come up with for bots and for the players. Roll with whatever it is. Tanks are boring to draw and full of lots of stupid fiddly details. If you end up with a game about cute bugs and unicorns and squid running around throwing hearts at each other? GREAT. It's got something to stand out. I mean right now this thing doesn't even have a NAME that means anything, much less any kind of visual appeal.