[Phaser] Shards - the brickbreaker

[Tom Atom]

Hi, in past days we finished our game Shards - the brickbreaker. Game was originally for Android / iOS, but with help of Phaser box2D plugin we made web version, so everyone can play in browser.

Shards features are:

• 80 levels,
• each level has its own original stunning fractal background,
• glassy bricks are of arbitrary sizes and rotate to bring you interesting patterns to destroy,
• ten power-ups will help you to clean the board,
• two types of glassy enemies,
• listen to an original soundtrack,
• play through three difficulty levels

You can play the game here: https://play.famobi.com/shards/

[htmlhigh5]

Wow that's really pretty. My biggest problem was that I didn't really know which powerups were good and which were bad... other than that the game is beautiful and really fun!

[ecv]

-Hey let's make a cool brick breaker

-Is that even possible?

IT IS. It's called Shards.

Quite obviously a professional game. I'm not very sure how useful it is to give feedback about a professional game, specially when it wasn't explicitly requested, but for some reason I feel compelled to do so, perhaps because it's a wonderful game, maybe because I've spent over 3hrs playing it (ads time excluded), or maybe because I feel that if I was in the shoes of the makers I'd like to hear what I've got to say.

As I said, I've spent well over 3 hours playing it... until I beat the game. So since I already gave you literally my 2 cents, I might as well just give them figuratively:

I'm far from a good gamer, even further from a brick breaker fan; yet I played all levels in a row. This, at the very least means the game is good; turns out it's great. I decided to give it a go before dinner (BAD. DON'T DO THIS!), which I missed so far, along with the sleep schedule. By level 20 I was tired, but why not keep playing since I'm doing great? By level 70 I was exhausted, but I HAD to finish the game; it was a matter of honor now. Man I got some wrist pain. By the end of the game I was a SHARDS zombie.

The backgrounds are BEAUTIFUL. BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL. They are eye-pleasing.

The levels are nice. I like how blocks can be of any size, rotated in any way, and how they're arranged to create beautiful and interesting levels.

The music is great. I might find myself listening to similar music on occasion. The different tracks are refreshing and the style fits perfectly with the game.

All power-ups are listed in the help section. Of course I didn't try to memorize them; you just learn them as you go in the game, when you've spent enough time playing.

I like how balls collide with each other, making things more interesting. I like how when you haven't hit a block for a while, a new ball will pop in. Smart move, not only in regards of preventing player's frustration, but also in terms of speeding up the game. I like the laser cannon and how the stick ball leaves snots everywhere it bumps. I like how you could get an extra life in most if not all levels.

Needless to say, the game play is great. The shard effects and all.

Now there are a few "problems" I'd like to comment:

Firstly, I was impressed with the game localization/translation. But since you're at it, it'd be nice if you minded regions. While essentially, peninsular Spanish and Latin American Spanish are understandable for speakers of each other side, just as, I presume, happens with British and American English, there are linguistic formalisms and spare words which simply put, sound odd. Such is the case of "puntaje" or "felicitaciones". The former sharing the root "punt" with its Peninsular counterpart "puntuación", aside from that and while its suffix makes sense in Peninsular Spanish, its usage in this case doesn't. Similarly the later would mean a pluralization of congratulating in Peninsular Spanish, instead of simply "congratulations". Also maybe "level" is quite common a word among the general public over Latin America but it certainly isn't in Spain, unless you're a declared gamer or can speak some English, and I'd say it should be translated.

The bombs are not only hateful because you get killed if you mistakenly get in their way, but for a couple more reasons: if the ball and the bomb share a similar trajectory and position, you're doomed; if you don't hit the ball you die, if you hit the bomb you die. You see a powerball (BTW it looks like a black hand?) and go get it, uh oh, there was a bomb underneath: ka-boom. I'd propose replacing the bomb with a glue blob that will temporarily disable the platform,racket,pad (whatever the player character is called) from moving; it's not as drastic a punishment as losing a life. Also, it might be a good idea to make the power-ups collide just between themselves (and walls I guess), so they can be spread out and offer a greater chance of avoiding the bad ones while getting the good ones, and overall make it all less confusing.

The UK flag. Okay, that's nice for a change from the usual US flag embedded virtually in every culture worldwide. But man, I learnt, and I did so strongly about the British Empire endurance! This is by far the level I spent most time on, with nearly 8 minutes, as bricks just didn't seem to want to break as easily.

I don't suppose you can do much about this one: I occasionally found my platform wasn't responding. "Hey, what's going on?" Then I raised my eyes just to find the mouse cursor hovering off the game screen, around the browser title bar, etc. I guess web browsers won't allow JS to take control of the mouse cursor as this could be considered a security feature...

The cuts to ads are abrupt. I understand you wouldn't want your player to waste extra time, but maybe you could use a second to fade out music and screen. I don't think a fade in is needed after the ads.

I'd like some trail effect on my platform. Although I guess this might no be too visible on touchscreen devices.

And finally, I'd go as far as calling this one a bug: When the crystal balls are too tight, and collide endlessly, they will introduce considerable lag. This is specially noticeable at level 78 (rocket), where the game turned hardly playable, until I got to destroy that pesky ball.

A final note: I understand games aren't made with the move of a magic wand. Often, my comments might look as if more emphasis was put in the bad points than in the good ones, given the amount of text that goes with each. I guess this could be kind of upsetting, given the time and effort that was put into making a game. I'd like to make clear that when it comes to the good points, there's hardly anything else I can say other than praising them, whereas for the bad ones, I feel compelled to sustain them with details and reason to provide as much food for thought to work with as possible. The amount of text I put emphasizing each point doesn't amount to the quality of such point. Simple as that. Moreover, if I spend a considerable amount of time playing your game (quite obviously for me) it means I like it, even if having only stressed the negative points of it! I might need to make this my signature just so that some game developers know what I'm getting at with my comments!

I might have missed a few points, since my mind was already in a broken state after so much playing . I'll correct tomorrow if such is the case.

 

Edited July 10, 2016 by ecv
added more info and elegance :P

[Tom Atom]

@ecv Wow! I am really impressed with your review and thanks very much for time you spent on it and on game itself!

 I do not know, whether I am professional or not. It is just two years since I decided to leave my non-IT job and start making games as freelancer (while game programming was always my hobby since Atari times). But what I know is, that other two guys who worked on game are trueprofessionals. Music is by Ján Dušek, who made for example this music ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M72mO8YTt5g ) - I know him from past when he was making songs for smaller games. And while it is modern, I still feel in his songs something from good old times when music had melody. Graphics is by Petr "Jupiter" Víšek, who was making textures and models for ARMA games in past and now works on truck games. We met deep in past in gameboy times ( http://sbcgamesdev.blogspot.cz/2012/10/projects-history-part-ii-gameboy.html ) and our first game, we made together was Tom Atom

 Backgrounds for game was made in Apophysis ( http://www.apophysis.org/index.html ) and adjusted in Photoshop. Apophysis is program for fractal generation and you can spend ages in it!

 Regarding localization - it is out of our controll. Usually sponsors are asking to put translations they deliver into game or just asking you to make game "translation ready". In fact, even if we did it by ourselves, I can not say it would end better. It is quite an effort consuming task, especially for small team. You can get crappy translations with Google translator or good ones if you find (native) speakers. We did this with our older native games, but then every small change requires check with all translators again.

 Bombs - yes, they can sometimes make you really angry You are right, that spreading would help and bonus - bonus collision should do the trick.

 UK flag - I did not want to have any flags in it, but most of the levels were designed by Jupiter and he said, that UK flag is part of 80's culture and as our game is Arkanoid/Breakout clone, that reffers to that time, we should have it there. My personal symbol of 80's is Atari logo, but using others logos in your game may be problematic. I believe, that UK flag is royalty free! And enfurance... it often depends on bonuses you get - flag is not protected with any barrier, so if you get laser, it can be destroyed quite quickly. This was little problem when testing and balancing levels. Some were so hard, that friend of mine told me: "ball got stuck in upper area, so I took a shower and when returned, ball was still there". I do not say all levels are balanced well, but at least are possible to finish.

 Trails, bug, effects - game was made with box2d Phaser plugin. Both box2D and Phaser are great. But I still feel little, that HTML5 world (browsers, mobiles) is not yet prepared for gfx/cpu intensive games. In the end we had to add another set of graphic assets for low-end devices, that is only 40% of original size (0.4 * 0.4 = 16% area), we had to switch off all trail particles and reduce shrads particles. Also only one in-game music instead of 4 is played if low-end device is detected. And it is not still enough on some mobiles... Shards was originally native game and we were using box2d there too. It runs without any problems on very old devices. For example on old Galaxy Tab it runs most of the time with all efects on 50-60 FPS. HTML5 version hardly runs at all on this device, even with all effects off.

 Once more, thanks for your feedback!

[BdR]

Wow, I found this game on Famobi before I saw your post here  It's a very good game, the breaking glass effect looks really cool, both on the title screen and in-game, and the entire game just feels extremely polished.

The only downside is the full screen ads after each level. But I guess that's just how these gaming portals operate..

On 10-7-2016 at 4:40 PM, Tom Atom said:

You can get crappy translations with Google translator or good ones if you find (native) speakers. We did this with our older native games, but then every small change requires check with all translators again.

I ran into the same issue when working on some game. I waited until the game was finished before letting tranlators localisae all texts. But shortly after release, one extra feature was added to the game (a hints screen) which needed a couple more texts. I ended up using Google Translate, but I still checked them against google search to see if they were commonly used phrases.

[Tom Atom]

@BdR thanks!

Good thing for sponsored HTML5 games is, that translation is usually done by sponsor. For our native games, I do not translate it into other languages anymore. I just prepare it for future translation. I will wait first, whether the game is popular in some region and has reasonable number of downloads. Then I will consider translation. It has no sense to make it if number of downloads is less than 1000 across world for some. I also found, that for games where most of the texts is "Level" and "Game Over" it is not necessary

[rgk]

Honestly great game, love breakout and this was awesome from the visuals to the gameplay.

[Tom Atom]

@rgk thanks! I am glad you liked it. It is surprising, there are brakouts with rotated bricks, but I have seen only few with scaled ones. From gameplay point of view we wanted to keep pace. For this reason, there is last brick countdown and additional balls if you can not hit something for a long time.