Hey all. I’ll be posting Windows/Mac/Linux builds of The Ghost Game here. I’d appreciate feedback. If you don’t know what The Ghost Game is, this explains it:
And here is a zip with all the builds:
https://www.procyonic.org/exports-2023-07-15-09-13-27.zip
Thanks!
Win11
Ran fine.
Wasn’t hearing any sound, dunno if that’s normal.
Didn’t use the mic, I guess I haven’t been thrilled with sound-trigger gaming in the past.
Got tired of trying to slow-float-avoid the fast enemies so after a few minutes gave up going for the candy corn and just flew across the top of the stage.
Really didn’t get the ghost’s corn-powered floating for a while, was very confused about why Space just stopped working now and then but would then sometimes re-engage. Him turning orange briefly and that fading quickly was I guess too subtle to clue me in, just seemed like he turned orange sometimes. I suppose sound effects could help make this whole mechanic a little clearer. Still seems confusing that he’s gray on the ground but then orange as soon as he lifts off.
I don’t think people would complain if you made his float just a jump / air jump he can do every second or so and didn’t require refueling. Running out of gas over a pit and falling to my doom didn’t feel very fun.
The small heart powerups appearing are easy to miss, maybe some color on them–and of course sound–would help. And they seem to appear kind of out of the way, like below and maybe even behind you, not worth going for; for a while I thought they were just sorta detritus like the bubbles he leaves behind.
I like the ghost’s feet. The graphics are pretty neat. I thought the green mushrooms might be things to pick up at first.
Not super-keen on the default control buttons, I guess from emulators I’m used to arrow keys to move and ASDZXC as action keys. Particularly don’t like Space as an action key, feels too big and flappy–maybe that’s just a personal issue though.
Didn’t feel super-obvious that the gaps between the brick pillars were bottomless pits, maybe because there’s fog in them, just above the bottom of the screen, about the same height above it as the fog over the ground at the start point, so I guess maybe that implied to me that the bottom of the screen down there was also solid ground–and at first I thought the green-drip pipes coming out of the pillars were items I could pick up; floated down there and died.
The big empty orange shapes in the top UI are confusing and feel like they take up a lot of visible screen space.
Didn’t figure out what the percentage bar at the top of the screen is for, it’s also taking up a lot of screen space.
Didn’t figure out the top two rows of the candy corn scoring(?) readout were for. I pick up a corn and it goes from
0 0 0
- - -
0 1 3
to
0 0 1
- - -
0 1 4
to
0 0 0
- - -
0 1 4
When I get more at a time the top number goes higher but still ticks down. No idea what it means, feels useless and again taking up more screen space than a score readout should need to.
At the start position, all that top hud stuff is just barely above the ghost’s head, feels crowding; also it’s overlapping the explanation of the controls.
The ghost overlapping the gravestones is maybe a little confusing for a first view.
The bones thrown by the skeletons move way too fast to dodge. In general it feels like the enemies are moving too fast for this slow floaty ghost–cat’s light speed by comparison, up/down bat is darned fast, fireballs bob so fast it doesn’t really feel worth the effort to try dodging around them.
Since you can kinda just float over most stuff, getting to the end doesn’t feel like much of an achievement, and even getting the corn (which seems like an obvious thing to do initially) starts to feel pointless (I got 18 and didn’t feel at all tempted to try again for more)–but maybe I’m looking for too much plot motivation in a single stage test. And I suppose if they made a cool noise when you picked them up that would give you more reason to do it.
I liked it! I double tapped the jump button to send out “boo” sound waves but they didn’t seem to do anything, kind of hoping those can be used to swat away enemies. Having a total number of candies in the level as a counter would help.
Ah! I forgot to mention the BOO waves; only found those after a while simply by flailing on the spacebar, didn’t figure that part out either.
New builds:
https://www.procyonic.org/exports-2023-07-17-19-55-53.zip
Nothing gameplay wise changed but you can see the new way I am trying to communicate how much ghost thrust is left over above.
