[update] Foxes and Shotguns beta. First game, looking for feedback

[captainherisson]

Just released my first game! Foxes and Shotguns beta is a WebGL game for both desktop and mobile, it's a runner/platformer featuring foxes, shotguns and wererabbits.

 

It's an early release still in development so I would love to hear your comments.

 

The game was originally developed for a contest during the HTML5 Game Development course from Udacity. It did won the contest and has now returned in a beta form with more content, WebGL graphics and mobile support.

It runs at 60fps on desktop and beefy android devices like the nexus 4, 7 and 10 as long as your browser supports WebGL . (well for a nexus 7 first gen it runs best in Firefox beta).

 

Here's a screenshot:

 

The game and more details over here.

 

---

Update

A lot of improvements have been made during last month, the major one is that you now have to kill a crow at the end of each night for the sun to come back. For now the only boss is a crow, more bosses are planned.

BTW, you can follow me or the game page on Google+ for news.

 

[demisephi]

really really neat! I find it rather challenging but lots of fun.

[rich]

That was great! The title reminds me of Fox Fights Back from years and years ago

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXYJxFRFJhI

[touch_the_sky]

Haha, 

 

awesome:)

 

Like the pixel art

[captainherisson]

Thanks

 

@rich wow I didn't knew that game!

[alex_h]

That game is lots of fun, one thing I'm curious about though. You described it as a game for both desktop and mobile. What control mechanism are you planning to use for touch and fire in a touchscreen environment? I guess you'll probably have to use on screen buttons?

Also is it WebGL only?

[cheapdevotion]

I really enjoyed the game. My only issue was that the double jump also works if you hold the button down, which would cause me to double jump by accident sometimes. I love the art style and the day/night cycle. Keep up the good work!

[xerver]

Same feedback as @cheapdevotion, this is definately a fun game! Keep up the good work.

[captainherisson]

Thanks for the feedback guys

 

@alex_h: touch left half of the screen to jump, touch right half to shoot. It even works on small screen with big thumbs.

 

@cheapdevotion: interesting feedback about the double jump, to me holding for double jump make it easier on touch devices, but yeah it's perhaps awkward for keyboards. I'll think about improving this point, thanks

[alex_h]

@alex_h: touch left half of the screen to jump, touch right half to shoot. It even works on small screen with big thumbs.

 

 

Ah cool, I was starting to wonder whether a simple approach like that might be the answer for this kind of thing!

[SterlingDee]

Really enjoyed it. This is a newb question (just ignore if it is too basic): but how do you plan on monetizing a game like that?

[captainherisson]

@SterlingDee: right now you can buy the beta for $0.70 which unlocks all the current and upcoming content (weapons and items for now).

 

The monetization will evolve (F&S is still an early release), but anyway you will have to pay to have more challenges, customization options and difficulty levels.

[alekseych]

Fun good looking game. Good job. Mmmm... pixel art   

[Iftah]

hi captainherisson

 

very polished game, well done!

 

btw I'm Iftah author of "cursed mines" who won "best performance" in the Udacity contest 

 

I'm happy to see you continue to develop your game!  I'm working on mine as well...

 

just wondering why you chose to go for webgl -  this very much limits the player base on browsers and mobile apps.  

I believe your game is simple enough to work at high frame rates with simple canvas.

[Vennril]

Fun game!   The day/night cycle is a nice twist. And I'm not gonna lie, the title alone made me curious, haha. 

 

Now I'd like to give you some feedback aswell:

 

1. The game needs a death-animation. Right now it looks like you're falling through the world. But I suppose you already knew that

 

2. The art is cute, but it could be slightly more consistent. Especially foreground versus background. It's not a big deal though.

 

3. Some situations feel a little unfair. Like when you overshoot a platform, and the only way you could have avoided that, would have been to NOT double-jump 2 platforms ago. But there was no way to tell. Maybe give the player more control over the jump height?

 

4. I'm always looking forward to the blood moon, but it seems to happen quite randomly. So I thought it could be nice to have a moon in the background that fills up, or moon and sun that change positions, so the player can anticipate the event.

 

Anyway, nicely done

[captainherisson]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

@Iftah, congrats about your game, do you have a devlog or something to follow your progress?

So why WebGL? For this game I really wanted to have the night lit by gunshots to reveal enemies. And I intent to improve the shaders to apply nice effects.

Also canvas performance is pretty bad, with my engine I can draw around 1000 moving sprites with dynamic lightning on an android device, so I have an engine ready for a more demanding game.

 

@Vennril, thank you for the taking time to write detailed feedback!

1: yes

2: better platform tiles are planned, with more variety

3: it's a little unfair on purpose, so chance plays a role, perhaps a little too much. I'm looking at the score distributions to balance the game, so far it looks good.

4. 7 animals needs to be slain to summon the red moon

[Travis]

Hi! I enjoyed the game.

 

Something to consider... I found the beginning of the game actually easier that the middle  / end of the game because at slow speeds it is hard to make the platform jumps.

 

Awesome game, though

[dev]

Plays really well. Did have some screen shaking at times after death, I think the view keeps overshooting its resetted position and eventually settles.

 

Very curious to hear your story on monetization success along the way. It's pretty challenging. For one it feels like a desktop-oriented game given mobile WebGL isn't really reliable. But even on desktop, IE hasn't been kind to WebGL in the past years and there's lots of competition from a decade of flash IP. Interesting stuff.

 

Good luck with the beta!

[captainherisson]

@all Your feedback is very valuable, I'm pondering it all for the future updates.

 

@Developoid about the monetization, I don't know where I'm going (It's part of the release early - figure it out later), the goal is to learn by experimenting.

It's my first game, I don't expect financial success so it enables me to try stuff and play with what I believe is the future of gaming:

Click a link, be able to play in seconds on any device and from the moment you have played the game be able to take it offline.

 

yes, offline support for Foxes and Shotguns is on the way

[dev]

Sounds like a great mindset

 

(While I think this is a great name for a game, have you considered changing it given the paid version of the game is actually all about unlocking non-shotgun weapons at the moment.)

[Phoenix Labs]

I got 4750 then I noticed the screenshot 12660 how'd you get that 

 

Edit: 5960

 

Edit Edit: 6960

 

This game is so addictive! I'm still amazed you got 12660 though.

 

Edit Edit Edit: 8140 Damn So hard!

[Zaidar]

This game is really sweet !

 

Do you have a dev blog or something where you explains the dev, or the asset creation ?

 

Anyway, congratulation, it looks very nice even if still in beta.

[benny!]

Indeed. Really cool game. Like it a lot.

 

Did you use a framework like PIXI for handling the basic WebGL stuff - or did you do it from scratch by your own?

 

Best,

benny!

[captainherisson]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

@Phoenix Labs Last time I've checked the Highscore was around 40,000!!! Some people are trying really hard

 

@Zaidar You can follow me on G+ I also had a devlog for the original prototype over here. I haven't found the time to continue posting. But I'm looking at publishing technical articles real soon.

 

@benny! It's an engine built from scratch, it uses dynamic lightmaps (for gunshots at night). The renderer performs quite well and now reach 60fps displaying 1000 animated sprites on a nexus 10 (with dynamic lightning). I plan to squeeze more perf, but right now I'm focusing back on the content for a while, since the game never display more than a few hundreds elements at any given time.

[skiffcz]

Im in my "constructive over polite" mood, so let me skip to the important stuff (imo).

 

1, I love the style. The day/night contrast is the awesomest. I would totally overexploit this, like shooting bunnies in day would make them burst in feathers and/or hearts (etc... picture every disgustingly sweet detail of care bears and ponies) while night would be even more nitty gritty ninja-vampire-goresqe in every way possible.

 

2, On my upcoming (also first html5) game Im using tap left side/right side instead of buttons, and according some early playtesting this works neatly. THE pain in the ass Im having is that on android stock browser, after changing orientation the doubletap still randomly causes zoom, no matter what Im doing. But seeing you are already going with "screw masses, lets make the game my way even if it excludes some players", this may not be such an issue for you.

 

3, I have experienced the same thing with sometimes jumping into my death without any way of knowing that beforehand. In Diablo 2, we called that a stairtrap, and it sucks. It so happens that gamasutra has currently an article touching this on the main page. It gets interesting chiefly in the comment section - http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FerdinandJosephFernandez/20131105/204079/Design_Proposal_To_Prevent_Savescumming.php

Myself, I actually started to enjoy the need to remember the pitfall sections and constantly polish my playthrough (and got over 9000 easily before posting this), but as a former avid DeFRaG jumper and competitive Q3A player Im (probably) not a particularly descriptive sample of your intended audience. I assure you, you gonna loose 95% of your players over this issue. For normal people, its simply not cool to die just because the game decided, #dealwithit. Those who stay though, would be the hardest of core. As they say, the price of faring with sheep is boredom. The price of faring with wolves is loneliness. Choose wisely - or better, award both types of players. Give the casuals split second chance to save themselves and grinders some "flawless game" badge after each episode.

 

4, Speaking of which - need mor bonuz! Melee! for short distance kill. Unorthodox Fox! for kills while doublejumping. Cmon. Everyone loves this stuff. Flak Monkey! Big Billy's circus! Bonus for artistic impression! (and bonus points for anyone knowing where these three came from)

 

 

5, Kudos for shooting for a game you like and not turning to the dark side. I can only hope one day to be as uncompromising as you, cleric