Could you please provide me with comments on a Java game of mine?

Question

Hello there. I have marked this question as community wiki, so no rep points are thrown around.

I made this game, Forest Defender, a proof-of-feasibility little project, which I would like to share with you and collect your constructive comments, first impressions, etc. It is a the first playable (and enjoyable) game I have released to the public, so I am, naturally, very eager to get some recognition by you, as my peers. I read in a StackOverflow blog, that

One of the major reasons we created Stack Overflow to give every programmer a chance to be recognized by their peers. Recognized for their knowledge, their passion, [...]

It comes in the form of a Java applet, I used an animation framework called PulpCore and I must say that it's been extremely enjoyable to work with it. I do recommend to people interested in Java game development.

Since the product is free, fun, entirely commercial-free and I am willing to share the code to it (on request), I thought it would be OK to post this as a topic here. Moderators, please feel free to move this to another place if you deem the other place more appropriate.

http://www.perhac.com/shared/forest-defender/index.html

EDIT

Did anyone else encounter a blue screen? Any errors or problems? If so, which OS and Java version were you using?

EDIT2

As many suggested some areas of the game are not very readable, I spent some time with photoshop to work on a better readable and cleaner design. The instructions section is now easier to read, the in-game information panel's background was replaced, and, huh, the credits screen is clearer :-) I also wanted users to provide their name or alias, so that later a high-score table could be shown.

Answer 1

Strengths:

1. The game appears reliable and stable. No crashes after a half hour of gameplay.

2. Music is pretty good for an indy game. Most independent developers either skip music and sound all together, or use some freebie sample they found that drives me crazy by being boring, repetitive, or just downright painful to listen to.

Opportunities:

1. You lose points for an unoriginal idea. You've basically created a Desktop Tower Defense clone. Don't get me wrong, you're in good company. It's a compelling form of gameplay, and you're hardly the first to copy it. If you're doing this as a way to learn a new language, or experiment with tools, then more power to you, but linking to the original creator wouldn't hurt. It doesn't make your game less interesting if you give credit where it's due.

2. On the welcome menu, the foreground and background colours of the text are too similar. This makes the text difficult to read. Consider using a higher contrast pair of colours.

3. The tool tips in the Play screen can be cut off if your mouse cursor is too far to the left or right. They're similarly difficult to read to due to the low contrast between the foreground and background. Consider altering the background layer to be less transparent.

4. During gameplay the statistics and info panel on the right side of the screen is unclear. Consider breaking it into sections:

   • This wave

   • Next wave

   • Money & lives

5. Money & lives are more important, so put them at the top. Money is also linked to purchasing, so having it nearer the tower purchase buttons would make sense.

6. I'm not really clear on what the "R" and "W" indicators with the coloured blobs are trying to show me.

7. I generally want to place several towers at the same time, especially at the start of the game. Allow me to place another tower immediately after placing the first, don't make me go back to the right-hand panel and select which tower I want a second time.

8. You say "I am willing to share the code to it (on request)". I think keeping the code to yourself is a bad idea. Just throw the code up on Github and release it under an open source license. You stand to gain nothing by keeping it hidden.

Answer 2

I like it - nice little game

A few suggestions (purely in the spirit of improving it!):

1. When placing towers for the first time it's a bit hard to see where you can / cannot place them. Maybe show a ghost version of the tower when you are hovering over a spot?

2. Suggestion to make it really pretty - why not put a momentum / drag factor in the creeps speed? This would make it look even more fluid and dynamic, and you could create lots more interesting tower dynamics (e.g. some creeps would take a lot of time to get up to speed if you stopped them dead)

3. Suggest restructuring the user interface panel - in particular I found it a little unintuitive to have the sub-panel for the tower appear where you have to press "X" to escape back to see your money and lives etc.

Answer 3

A nice little game, and well executed. Small disclaimer: I'm not a huge fan of the tower defense clones personally. I played the original a lot, then the ants version, and then my attention turned to other games. So please don't read too much into my small enthusiasm.

Clear strengths: as others have said, the graphics are crisp, action is swift, reasonable selection of enemies and defenses, decent music.

Minor weaknesses: In addition to what Brian and Mikera have said, my only real (small) issue with the game was being able to see how much money I had left to spend. I found it by running out. Nice effect, incidentally, having the amount get larger when I run out, in case I hadn't noticed (I hadn't).

Also, a tooltip over the Resistant/Weak section would answer questions like Brian's above. I already knew, because I'd read the help and strategy, but lots of people will just jump into the game.

Well done. If this is your first attempt, I expect great things.

Answer 4

Peter, it's a fun game. Thanks. :) I'm not sure it'll displace my Angry Birds addiction, but playing through the tutorial was definitely fun.

I'm very glad I read about the "shift" speedup here, before playing, though. By the time it was mentioned in the tutorial, I would have been very tired of repeated clicking without it.

In fact, I'd suggest removing the 'shift' aspect, and make 'place the selected item again' the default behaviour, without modifiers.

Bouncing the money when it reached 0 was a giant help. Good idea there.

Thanks, and have fun. :)

Answer 5

Please give the players the option to lower and / or mute the sound!

Answer 6

Kudos on a game that runs quickly and smoothly!

1. Entrance/Exit on the maps is not always obvious. Perhaps simple arrows pointing in/out of the game play area would work.

2. Not obvious that you have to click during the tutorial tooltips.

3. Tooltip text over towers, traps, etc might look nicer if all of the stats were justified

   Fast Tower
   
   
     Cost: XXX
   Damage: XXX
    Speed: XXX
    Range: XXX
   

4. Reiterate the need to money/lives more obvious. Perhaps a persistent display that doesn't change regardless of tower placement vs. tower upgrade mode.