I used to be an hardcore gamer but I'm fairly casual now. I cannot last more than a few seconds.

I'd say the game requires a very accurate estimation capability. The enemies are large in number since start (so I cannot even tell if they follow a pattern or not) and the size of their bullets are massive compared to player's.

Personally, I haven't noticed any strategic component at all, it's just a matter of converging functions. Each enemy appears to require a few shots to go. Your ship takes a few shots to go. There are more enemies, and their bullets are bigger so there's basically an order of magnitude divergence to overcome. I suppose letting the blast charge is key, this would require some tactics, it might be possible as the player is experienced, but with no chance at understanding the mechanics in 10-second bites, my determination rapidly declined.

The language used by the game does not say "it never ends", it says "it ends now".

I'm not sure but... do you get damage by hitting the borders of the game area?

How often are you adapting enemy ships?

The thing is, in a game like that that is fast paced the strategy is to predict and take the ships out almost as soon as they get on the screen, however this is impossible due to your weapon not having enough strength to reach that far or kill even if it does and the enemy moving and firing too fast for you to charge and realign for the next time you'll be able to shot... and even if you could do that, by the time you do that there are 2 or 3 more enemies on the screen firing at you... all while you're expected to pick up drops from the enemy

So it ends up that you have to dodge several ships, their weapons, try to hit them, all while trying to align for the drop that is also fast and is randomly dropped.

Hypothetically you could survive and kill a few, but you're not going to score high no matter what you do. Made worse by there are weapons, and hazards that you have no idea are there or you don't know are hazard, or nullify you protection.

Everything is too fast, lasts too long, or too powerful... or all of them together. Even if you can pick up on a pattern of a ship all those other things prevent it from being any use and all you've done is spot one of the patterns of several on screen at that moment.

It sounds to me that significant player learning is required every game due to the random and learning elements, but the initial difficulty level is too hard for the player to get that chance to learn. If the game is more deterministic, a player can just try again and again until they figure out the patterns and tactics. If the game has an easier learning curve, the player can learn the patterns and tactics for this specific run-through. I'd suggest starting the game *much* easier and adding the complexities one at a time. Think of it like a tutorial, because it sounds like each game really *is* different.

Ok, went through it, and it is quite hard, different difficulty-settings or game-modes(focus arcade vs. focus on strategy) are some options to consider.

Another thing to note is that you have one type of "alien," and even though i read a bit in this thread about multiple skills, i have a hard time imagining a game with only one type of opponent keeping players interested for long.

Most play testers find it very difficult to play despite adding detailed, in game hints. I need to know why my clues aren't being picked up.

First of all, let's distinguish between "in mission" hints and "out mission"(mainly the design-screen) hints.

"in mission" -short shouts (shoot this, catch that) are needed, the player is busy firing at opponents, not reading a book.

"out mission" - full explanation of what something does, here should also be explained the strategic aspect of the game,

when i started i assumed i had X lives, now there seems to be a resource-system that buys ships and other things ?

I saw a "scanner"-option the design screen, btw, and for a game like this it makes sense to having it available on default, like you proposed with the nuke.

Say the scanner needs ~40-50 seconds to make a complete scan, from then on the player can retreat and adapt his ship.(and get full info on what the aliens are currently carrying)

edit:i just finished the game, it's not that hard when using cloak so you can easily catch e-pods.

I didn't realy adapt to the aliens though, just used the best available options.

The automatic e-pod-catcher only works once, maybe make it unlimited use but have it consume 1 (earth) resource upon usage ?

Repairing-specials didn't seem to work, but maybe i pressed the wrong button ?(i ve gotten the hint to use space and the hint to use shift iirc, though i m sure usage of specials was tied to up ? anyway, players should probably get to adjust their button-settings before finishing the game)

And the shield-key seemed to give me a bug(or was it intentional?) there was a lot of space in the shield and it was hard to figure out how far off my ship was,

i kinda expected to just appear on the other side of the screen so maybe it was my fault, but a range-indicator(how far from the battle is the ship) would be desirable.

You don't explain that your shot takes time to recharge well and there is no good indicator. I saw there is one of the ship but that's meh. I can barely see it

Same with the shields. I can barely see it.

The ships fly too fast to begin with

the laser weapon limits movement, lasts too long, and is far too powerful

The shots regular shots are too fast

The shots are too slow to recharge and too weak

There is no indicator for other things that can get damaged

The "waves" mean nothing because there is nothing that acts as a wave

The AI has no pattern what-so-ever

The game's difficulty starts at the second when you find yourself about to die in most of these games...which if I had to rank it is about an 8 or 9/10 in difficulty as most games purposely do this and it's the result of you messing up somewhere.and not a result of the design of the game.

You might want to consider instead of randomizing the AI of every ship, have waves have the same AI.

You should also the from the same base and then evolve from there rather than just making it randomly constructed rather than saying "here's a random challenge" try to beat it...and oh yeah it's far too fast. Start it slow and an easy pattern then let then have the enemy have their stats slightly modified from that slow base, working to some ultimately random formulation of the enemy.

This allows a beginner or anyone for that matter to ease into the game, figure out what's going on and then crank up the challenge over time.

Another thing you might want to do is consider a reward system for collecting resources where you can have extra lives, more shields, different type of weapons, etc...

Another thing you might want to consider is the idea of changing the firing mechanism from wait for it to charge to the player charging the weapon. That way they can release lots of smaller weaker shots or few large shots.

You might also want to mention that shots diminish in power further from the point of origin...which makes the charging of shops pointless as past half screen they seem to be too weak to matter...

That's all i can think of

Thanks, Durakken. You made some good observations.

I will try to make it clear how the weapon recharge works, and improve the clarity of the shot indicator.

I will consider improving the weapon recharge speed, but only after I've made changes to the aliens' traits first.

I intend to reduce the speed of all ships by 25%.

I will reduce the amount of times that aliens can fire weapons; this will include the lasers. In the case of lasers, it will reduce their duration as well.

I'm confused about your comments concerning the waves and AI. The game starts with one wave. They all share the same traits. The next invasion has two waves, and they all have the same AI. The aliens only mutate when they are taking a beating. The more ships they lose, the more they mutate.

If the player is badly beaten by an invasion, the aliens won't change, and the player will be able to change his or her design to beat them. So, in a way, it is turn based.

I will consider having plain waves at first to allow the player to get used to the game.

Your concept for charging the weapon is interesting, but I don't see the difference between waiting for it to charge and building up a charge. It amounts to the same thing, I think, and holding the fire button may be difficult on the iPhone.

You make a good point about mentioning that the player's shots lose power with time. I will make a note of that. I'm glad that you noticed, but the loss in power isn't as severe as you think (-1).

Thanks again. If you want to me to help test a project that you're involved in, just let me know: donovan@misterdonovan.com

It sounds to me that significant player learning is required every game due to the random and learning elements, but the initial difficulty level is too hard for the player to get that chance to learn. If the game is more deterministic, a player can just try again and again until they figure out the patterns and tactics. If the game has an easier learning curve, the player can learn the patterns and tactics for this specific run-through. I'd suggest starting the game *much* easier and adding the complexities one at a time. Think of it like a tutorial, because it sounds like each game really *is* different.

I will definitely reduce the difficulty. I am also considering making the initial waves of aliens plain, and allowing them to mutate from there.

Thank you for your time. If you would like feedback on a project that you're working on, just e-mail me: donovan@misterdonovan.com

Ok, went through it, and it is quite hard, different difficulty-settings or game-modes(focus arcade vs. focus on strategy) are some options to consider.

Another thing to note is that you have one type of "alien," and even though i read a bit in this thread about multiple skills, i have a hard time imagining a game with only one type of opponent keeping players interested for long.

Most play testers find it very difficult to play despite adding detailed, in game hints. I need to know why my clues aren't being picked up.

First of all, let's distinguish between "in mission" hints and "out mission"(mainly the design-screen) hints.

"in mission" -short shouts (shoot this, catch that) are needed, the player is busy firing at opponents, not reading a book.

"out mission" - full explanation of what something does, here should also be explained the strategic aspect of the game,

when i started i assumed i had X lives, now there seems to be a resource-system that buys ships and other things ?

I saw a "scanner"-option the design screen, btw, and for a game like this it makes sense to having it available on default, like you proposed with the nuke.

Say the scanner needs ~40-50 seconds to make a complete scan, from then on the player can retreat and adapt his ship.(and get full info on what the aliens are currently carrying)

edit:i just finished the game, it's not that hard when using cloak so you can easily catch e-pods.

I didn't realy adapt to the aliens though, just used the best available options.

The automatic e-pod-catcher only works once, maybe make it unlimited use but have it consume 1 (earth) resource upon usage ?

Repairing-specials didn't seem to work, but maybe i pressed the wrong button ?(i ve gotten the hint to use space and the hint to use shift iirc, though i m sure usage of specials was tied to up ? anyway, players should probably get to adjust their button-settings before finishing the game)

And the shield-key seemed to give me a bug(or was it intentional?) there was a lot of space in the shield and it was hard to figure out how far off my ship was,

i kinda expected to just appear on the other side of the screen so maybe it was my fault, but a range-indicator(how far from the battle is the ship) would be desirable.

Thanks for your feedback.

I do plan to visually differentiate the aliens in the future. They will look different based on their traits. There will also be challenge stages.

You are right that people can't read the hints during combat. I put the Intel Notes in when I discovered this. I will keep the combat notes in, just in case, and I will consider adding audio warnings in addition to the visual notes.

I need to expand on the instructions so that they span several illustrated, and easy to read pages.

I think you may be right about the scanner. I will consider making it a standard tool.

I'm glad to see that you finished the game. I may need to weaken the player's stealth option (another player mentioned the same thing), but I'm not certain. The stealth option hasn't always been the best choice for me.

The Fetcher, which catches the alien escape pods, works more than once unless it is shot down, or the ship's special slot is damaged.

A range indicator is a great idea for the shield key! I will change the size of the indicator arrow depending on your ship's distance from the edge. Originally, it was going to warp you to the other side, but I wanted the game to be somewhat realistic, so I didn't want the player to be able to warp to the opposite side.

This may be foolish, but there's a story to the game, and I've tried to make the game elements match the story.

Thanks again. Feel free to contact me if you want feedback for a project: donovan@misterdonovan.com

I would also like to express my gratitude to the gamedev.net staff. You've created a very helpful and mature community here.