So, this is a 10 month project (We are 7 months into it). We released a demo but there were a lot of negative responses about the game being too confusing or too difficult. The demo is simple, only having 3 levels that cover different types of gameplay found in the game. And there are a few things that will be changed in the final version such as better voice acting, and smoother gameplay, more levels, etc.

The demo can be found here:

(It's an indigogo campaign page, but just ignore all that and click "PUBLIC DEMO [rar]". We gave up trying to reach our goal and are more worried about making the game better)

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/spheroid?c=gallery

But what I really would like to know is what makes the game confusing, and what could I do to make it more enjoyable? We really want to know what would make the game more fun. There are of course things that are too late to change such as the graphics and the overall engine, but that aside I'd really like to hear some opinions.

If you have too much trouble figuring out how to play the game, there is a youtube "let's play" video up which you can watch to see how we originally meant for the game to be played when we designed it here:

Thank you for all your time,

-Shade-

Hi !

At first it looks stylish and all, but I fear it is indeed the way people described it. Here is my experience:

- why is there a robot swinging a sword at the start? Is that a loading screen? A benchmark?

- what is "From Soy Sauce"? The studio? If it's the name of the studio then why didn't they write "presented by FSS" instead, or "FSS studio" or "FSS interactive" or something in that vein

- Why isn't the game fullscreen?

- the menu doesn't appear and when I click somewhere it just launches a game

- the game starts really fast, no intro, nothing to prepare you for what's coming

- I hear people talking and calling me "commander"? wtf

- things are shooting at what looks like a robot that i'm supposed to control

- i move and swing my sword around with left-click (also I have to shift+alt in order to switch my keyboard to a US layout because my keyboard has a different layout)

- I can't hit anything with the sword, right-click fires missiles that are way too slow

- suddenly, a hint appears telling me to press left-click and right-click at the same time for some reason

- I do it, big explosions, a robot in front of me doesn't die, yeah whatev

- I die

This all took 30 seconds, not counting the loading times (freezes?), so yeah, your game is like, wtf man

Lol Hey there man. Just let me say thank you for bothering to try it out. The responses below are just to answer your questions. They are "not" legitimizations as to why the game plays the way it does.

The robot sword swinging animation is...there because that portion is supposed to be replaced by an opening cut scene, but we just had that as a place holder.

From Soy Sauce is the name of our group who made the game. The name is a spin off of PlayStation's "FromSoftware". We all liked soy sauce so it became our name.

There is full screen if you read the text document then it tells you how to do it. We just thought some people might not want it in full screen initially.

The menu is not really finished, so we just made the 3 missions accessible and playable right from the main menu.

And we have decided that there will be a simple, almost tutorial level, at the beginning of the game to slowly get you accustomed to how to play it.

In that mission you are a commander-

We thought that people would read the controls in the main menu, and learn how to control the game from there. We made the controls as simple as we could. But we also realized, again, people don't read controls, and we again just need to ease them in with that tutorial level.

The sword is one weapon, if you scroll up and down on the mouse you can change to a different weapon that has range.

You probably missed the enemy in front of you if he didn't die.

Alright, so do you have any specific recommendations then?
Thanks again for your time man-

-Shade-

Stumbled across this thread thanks to this one. Bumping for ya, I haven't played your game, but the fact you are using pure polygons and generating those effects is very impressive -- that's my understanding from your LP video, anyway. Is there a Linux version? If so, I'll give it a shot when I have time.

Keep up the great work! :D