A couple of months ago I made a preview for the new version of my TopDown game. (You can check the old version here). Now I’d like to share this preview on the forum, to find out how I can make my game more attractive. Currently it’s more stealth, but maybe players want more action? Is it worth to add ads and publish it on a platform?
In this preview, it’s your job to use your ammo smartly. Only then you are be able to complete the mission. You can open the game instructions with the plus icon on top of the screen. Good luck!
This game is hard! The controls are non-intuitive. I mean, we all play games, so we’d expect some common ways to control a top-down character. I had to just randomly try stuff, until I was able to move. Only then I remembered how to control it (it was a long time ago since I last tried, my memory is getting shorter with age ). Mouse drag is not a common control, so most players won’t know about it, unless there is some UI tutorial or something.
The enemies are unforgiving Perhaps, lower their damage, so we could see what is further away in the level?
To move, you have to tap and hold the character and drag in the direction you want to move. I have chosen this way so the controls on desktop can be the same as on mobile.
My plan is to show a GIF instruction, but this doesn’t seem to be easy to achieve with PlayCanvas as far as I’ve seen.
The enemies are indeed unforgiving. I will see if can adjust the behavior a bit. Of course, it shouldn’t be too easy either.
You don’t need a GIF. What we do in our games is that we have 2 sprites, one for representing “finger touching a screen” and one “finger not touching a screen”. Then you can show finger not touching it, swap with the one touching, then move that sprite (representing a drag motion), then swap with not touching. This would tell player - tap the character and drag it to move. If player touches the screen, hide the tutorial, if releases - show again. This animation should repeat itself until the player moves, say 1 meter. Something similar for the first enemy encounter. You would need to adjust AI, to make him not shoot while tutorial is active.
I’m not sure how to manage items like rifles and bullets in the scene yet. Currently you only grab the bullets from a rifle if you already have a rifle and then the rifle dissapears, but I’m not realy happy with this behavior as it is not realistic. Maybe a better way is to leave an empty rifle in the world, but this is quite disappointing for someone else who finds the rifle. Please let me know if you have a better idea!
I probably will remove the inventory system I introduced in the last update. Instead, I will add different characters in the future, who can each have their own weapon (inspired by the famous PC game ‘Commandos’). In the meantime, you can only have one weapon at a time and you must grab the weapon you want to use.
The goal of my game is to make it fun to move, climb and jump through the world. The player can choose different routes through a maze full of enemies and must solve small missions along the way. The player’s goal is to get as far as possible without losing all team members.
These plans are not certain as I change my mind more often, but for now this sounds pretty good, right?
Later this week I will share a new update with an upgraded scene and the previously announced improvements.
With this update I’m especially interested in what you think of the enemy bahavior. Currently the enemy has states like patrol, alert, search, defense, attack and dead. The main goal of this project is to create a realistic AI, so please share your feedback on this. Please also report bugs. Thank you!
Good progress! Was finally able to kill the soldier (took me like 5 attempts, most of which were to get used to controls). Some suggestions:
The tutorial text is pretty dark. Perhaps disable shadows on text.
Tried to explode a barrel with a knife, but couldn’t Had to kill the soldier and grab his weapon. After exploding the barrel, the solder became a zombie and raised from the dead
The controls are non-intuitive. I mean, we all play games, so we’d expect some common ways to control a top-down character. I had to just randomly try stuff, until I was able to move. Only then I remembered how to control it (it was a long time ago since I last tried, my memory is getting shorter with age 
Perhaps, lower their damage, so we could see what is further away in the level? 
Had to kill the soldier and grab his weapon. After exploding the barrel, the solder became a zombie and raised from the dead 
