Black Ships Fill the Sky - Flash game

[BlackShipsFillt]

Hi... I built this a few years ago in Flash... it's a pretty neat waste of time if you're looking for one...

http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/...blackship.html

There's about 20 levels... use W, A, S and D to move, Mouse to shoot and drag things around... press I for inventory, Ctrl to switch weapons if you have two and Shift to use a special power (if you have one)

Really wanted to make more of it, but found Flash too frustrating... hoping to rebuild the thing next year with a small budget.

It's unfortunately quite a difficult game, but quite unforgiving... don't complain to me about difficulty, I already know about the problems and you've been warned.

[Anteejay]

Awesome game, took well over 1 hour of my time and i am still nowhere near finishing! So definitely more than just a time waster! In fact, could easily pass for retail that! Great job!

+Respect :D

[Kensei]

Nice :D

I love the little helper spaceships ;)

[Graal]

I loved it and coming from me that's saying something.

[Afflict]

Hehe thats awesome, job well done. :)

[Tucker]

Really rad game, look and plays pretty fun...wow :)

[Agrajag]

This game is awesome. I played it through all the way to the end and then I was sad it was over.

Just one little comment, I found that sometimes things were a bit close to the edge of the level which was unmarked. So after shooting something up with my laser, I sometimes ended up on the next screen while just trying to go over and claim my loot.

[Cyberninja]

How did I miss this thread.. O.o

Awesome game, man. I'm really enjoying it. Getting blown to bits, but it's all good. :p
I love the visual style too. It looks fantastic. :P

[Higushi]

How did I miss this thread.. O.o

You're not the only one...

Sheeze! This is some seriously sweet game you've made here! Really great graphics and the game play is challenging, but enjoyable. The sounds were well placed and effective, the game really has life!

Did you do the entire thing on your own?

[Kharrak]

Okay!
Very Impressive! However, there are three things that bother me about the game.

Firstly, the instruction page. It's immensely helpful... but I completely missed it and was getting totally frustrated because I didn't know what to or where to go, and so on and so on.
Serials though. I had no bloody clue what was going on. I liked the visuals... but the confusion became an annoyance. The reason it totally went over my head was because I took no notice of the button named 'help', and went straight for the difficultly options. The reason for this, is that, while naming the button that will lead to explanations of the game "help" makes sense, it does imply instead that the button is for users that are having technical issues with the game, rather than not knowing that in the blazes is going on. Rather calling this something akin to "Instructions" would avoid this :P


Secondly, the level progression. Every time the player moves from one level to another, be it progressing upwards to an upper level, or returning down to a lower level, the screen goes black and brings up another "PLAY" screen prompt before continuing. The problem is, is that it took me an age to actually realize this. Whenever the screen went to a "PLAY" screen, I thought that the game had bugged out and had thrown me back to the same, very first "PLAY" Screen. Further confusion erupted when I continued to press play, and a different stage would pop up. Now I was thinking that the game dropped me into random levels, only to randomly throw me back to the "PLAY" screen.

Just a clearer assertion that the player is moving between levels would fix this. possibly text within the "PLAY" screen that informs/reminds the player that they are switching levels? Maybe arrows at each level border indicating the level barrier, and which level is beyond it?

Thirdly, the difficulty. Yeah, it was stated in the help file that it was difficult, but it's a but much. The player's lack of effectiveness early on could easily lead the player to start questioning if they are actually doing the right thing, if they are missing something. Aside from that, the steep difficulty does revert the gameplay somewhat into a grindtastic pasta, which breaks, or at least severely slows, the gameflow.

[BlackShipsFillt]

I agree with you Kharrack

I think if/when I build the game for real I'm going to integrate the story properly into the game (no more going back to a screen that says "Play the next level")

And have the gameplay slowly eased into. Introducing and explaining each feature as it comes up.

Personally I want the player to be ineffective early on so that later on the contrast is impressive. I'm very very tired of games where there is no power dynamic and all your enemies level up with you.

That said, it needs to be done in a way where it fits the story and is fun early on. I'm thinking that at the beginning of the game there are some very weak enemies and simple, but satisfying, tasks. By the end of the game, once you've reached almost god-like powers, the difference will be impressive.

Basically it'll be two games. The first part effectively a puzzle game like Abe's Odyssey. The second part a god-like shooter where everything in you path is vaporised.

Thanks for the feedback.

[onona]

Very cool game! I love the visual style. It's pretty late so I just played a wee bit of it, but I'm really impressed. Great work.