Some random unstructured comments about the Android version of the game because I don't really feel like going deep into game design analysis. For a note, I got as far as fifth level:
1. Kudos for having a much better art than in the old WQ, it's much more pleasant to look at.
2. With that being said it's a real strain on eyes when playing on a phone because the tiles are so small.
3. Also this makes the controls unwieldy.
4. Going through arrows is a big pain. I know making the player pathfind through an arrow maze would trivialize arrow mazes but I'll be honest - arrow mazes were never a good type of puzzle, even back in AE times.
5. At the very least please make the AI smart enough that you can pathfind OFF and ONTO the arrows, not through them - if I have a single-tile wide corridor with an arrow, make it so that I can click on the arrow and then click on space after the arrow. Currently I need to click behind the arrow, on the arrow, tile after the arrow and only then I can move on.
6. The first level is completely unnecessary. You make the player go through a level with nothing interesting before they encounter their first enemy which is the actual meat of the game. It's especially important for mobile games, where you can't expect the player to have much patience, you need to get them hooked as soon as possible.
7. Speaking of which, there is a lot of going back and forth between places which doesn't really seem to accomplish anything (which is majority for level 1, Level 2 before you get the attack ability, the two arrow "
mazes"
to the east and west at the very beginning of Level #3).
8. Let's get back to monster. The player deals 5 damage with each arrow, the enemies have 50 HP. Which means for each monster you want to kill you need to wait 10 turns. Is there any reason why can't they have 10 HP and deal more damage to the player so that we can avoid waiting 10 turns just to kill an enemy?
9. There is some really weird bug with rotation, and I think it's related to the alternate rotation controls. In Level #4, in the bottom-right corner area whenever I tried to move between the rocks the character first rotated, then moved, unless I was standing next to an arrow which I could step on. This only happened while I was surrounded by rocks and not for every move, so it basically took me about 50 tries before I stumbled upon a solution which didn't get me squished.
10. I really think it would be nice if, at least on mobile with touch controls, the game either disallowed you to make moves which kill you or at least gave you one move undo.
11. It's also pretty confusing that when you die the room immediately resets so you might not be sure what got you.
12. By the way, it'd be nice if it was possible to easily exit the middle area in this level after solving it, because going back the same way felt like a waste of time.
13. Can I please ask for a control scheme where the screen is divided into 12 rectangles, each corresponding to one of the actions (move, rotate, wait)?
14. When you get the ability which tells you your attack starts to work differently the first area you encounter contains monsters which instakill you and give you no room to experiment. Similarly the next one. I was very confused here as to what I am expected to do before I accidentally figured it out.
15. Some puzzles require you to understand the horizontal/vertical preference in Level 5 but they're never explained.
16. Some help messages tell me things like "
Hold shift to... On mobile: Do something else"
it gives the game a very unpolished/I-don't-care feel
17. Is there any reason why we don't see the whole level from the very beginning? The only thing it seems to accomplish is to make the movement irritating on mobile when your sight range is small (because instead of tapping at the edge of the screen you need to tap tile by tile).
18. When you step on a scroll it displays n the middle of the screen and the only way to hide it is to step off it. Except many times you have no idea where you're moving because the message obstructs the view. I'd prefer if the first tap hid the message.
19. So, level 5. I can see what you were aiming for, I really can, but everything in me screams "
nope"
when I go through it. At this point it's probably too late to change anything because what I am going to point out touches the very core of the game but I am not buying it, at least not using controls which don't allow me to quickly brute-force-test many combinations:
- My issue begins when I get a shield. The game tells me that it reduces the damage only from the front, but it seems it also slightly affects the damage from the two tiles next to the front tile - it reduces the damage only by half of the shield's value. Which created fractional damage - I am hit for 12.5 instead of 15.
- Then I get the stars which, unlike other skills, are permanent and do not reset between levels. I really hope that this game does not expect me to revisit older levels to do previously-impossible areas to get stars to make later areas possible.
- Then I encounter level 2 roaches. I am really unsure about this part, because I can't seem to be able to reliably inspect monster's stats, so I won't ever know what damage they deal and how much defense they have and while I probably can easily remember the stats for 10-20 different monster types, I won't be able to remember stats for 3 different levels of 3 different monsters.
- Basically the game seems to get very number heavy here.
- I just got through level 5 and yea, the part where you're collecting stars was not fun to me. But the puzzles after that were pretty good, felt very much like something from DROD.
20. I think the "
read scrolls"
and "
display save points"
skills should be permanent, because they're utility things that don't impact the gameplay in any way and then you force the player to recollect them over and over again.
21. Also about 5th level, it is lacking focus and consistency in the way the mechanics are introduced and explored. The first level introduced arrows (but see point #6), okay. The second level was about using the bow, fine. The third level explored the two mechanics, nice. The fourth level covers rocks, awesome. Then the fifth level starts with a shield, then suddenly adds melee, increasing bow range, attacking while moving and stars. These mechanics are barely touched when they are introduced and the final section of the level basically says "
nah, let's just cover a single mechanic now"
. I took a quick peek at level 6 and it seems to focus on orbs. It would be really good if the introduced elements were explored before new ones got into the spotlight which would make it easier for the player to memorize and learn them well.
22. One other thing I remembered - the pathfinding does not take into consideration my abilites. In the first section of level 4, when I told the character to go to the top-right corner he tried to go through the center area which requires diagonal movement through narrow passages but I didn't have it yet.
Alright, that would be it. The things I didn't complain about I liked
. In short, most of the puzzles were pretty good, but the controls on mobile are really unwieldy (I'd love pinch to zoom and more traditional DROD movement scheme, screen divided into 12 sectors). The level design suffers from pacing issues and has a lot of pointless moving around which is not fun for experienced players and will detract new players so you might think about doing something about it. And the music and sound effect are 'swell
.
Edit:
23. The player happily pathfinds through unsolved areas even when a way around is open.
24.
Is level 6 possible? I solved the SE chamber, got the shield from NE chamber and scout from SW chamber. Now I can't do NW because I don't have arrow movement. Can't do N because I can't strike orbs. Can't do NE because I can neither strike orbs or attack. Can't do SW because I can't attack and can't make the roach to stay in place. Can't do S because I can't strike the orb nor use my body to squash the roach against the rock nor have anything else to squash it against. Can't do E because I can't attack. A hint? Nevermind, I completely missed the orb hitter skill. I think it failed to render and only shown after I put my phone to sleep and back, but I am not 100% sure (I had a rendering bug in S chamber, two tiles of the area-clear-gate won't display).
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[Last edited by skell at 03-17-2016 08:29 PM]
