Thursday, February 28, 2013

Morf Feedback


EDIT: Morf has moved to a new home, you can play it here.

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been taking a little break. After releasing Morf I've been pretty tired. Finishing games is hard and what's even worse is when you think it's all over, you release your game to the public and get so much feedback that there's a whole new list of things you still need to do.

Morf is 100% playable now and is pretty well balanced (I believe) but I still don't feel that I can feel comfortable in 'never' working on it again. But at the moment, I believe working on it wouldn't serve a real purpose. The impact has been made and simply modifying a few little things won't result in anything major. I will however get back to it in a few months and when I do, not only will I make the last few enhancements and fix the last few bugs, I will also add that last bit of sparkle the game needs (Think locked doors, traps and bossfights).

Humble Beginnings
Morf Today

Before I move on, I'd like to go over some of the feedback I received. Firstly, I was quite lucky to get featured on a few sites:


As for comments, I've added a list of my favourite ones to the bottom of this post. I found it quite hard trying to sift through comments without any prior knowledge about the person making them. A lot of people had issues with understanding the interface which Terri and I thought was pretty intuitive. As you'd expect when masses of people play a roguelike, there were complaints of it being too difficult.

This leaves the question. How do you establish to what extent someone's critique should be taken to heart? Many people felt that the UI was intuitive and that the game was too easy. I can simply hope that this is a skill I'll develop in time.

All in all I am very happy with how the game turned out. To think, the main game mechanic is something I stumbled upon due to a funny bug in my code. I'd like to thank Terri again for the amazing work he did on the art and also thank my fiancé who always serves as my motivator, brainstorming partner and person who doesn't get sick of me typing little words into my computer in the hope that it'll turn into something cool.

This weekend, Terri and I will be reviving an old project of mine. Check back after the weekend when there might be a few screenshots of it.

The game feels super polished and the UI is really awesome. I think I need to spend more time to figure out how the morphing things work. Great works!

Fun game! Made it down to 17 floor.
It's a fun game first time around, i like that. Usually hard to do for roguelies.

I really like your game. I've been burned by things calling themselves roguelikes in the past but this game was definitely something I could see my self diving into.

since the difficulty was lowered there are some neat things on the lower levels and things change enough to keep it interesting. still playing through and on about level 8, almost died once or twice after some blunders. I still wouldn't call it easy, which is good because a challenge is still nice. I'm curious as to what's awaiting further on.

Cool game. I love the web interface and the fact that you are trying some fresh new ideas. The morphing is a neat mechanic.

Hey! Great game i am loving it so far. If you do some final touches i would greenlight and buy it off steam :)

Hey DavianBlack this game is pretty addicting and awesome, I like the simple design.

Good stuff, interesting gameplay. Found myself planning my morphs about 3 enemies in advance trying to make sure I ended up in a Druid.

I havent played it more than 5 minutes by now, but it sure is one of the best looking roguelikes out there! Stylized graphics and a clear and intuitive interface.

The morph mechanic is really cool, good job. I really like how each "class" has a very different playstyle and you must plan your attacks to change your playstyle on the fly. e.g start as rat, see spider, 2 wanderers and a druid. Bite first wanderer, attack to death, morph, shockwave spider, kill, morph, escape using spider web, run around using web while picking off druid, morph to druid, use druid heal, kill wanderer. Actual scenario.

I found myself saying "wow, this feels as frantic as FTL...oh wait, FTL is a roguelike" lol but this is truly fun, i've played about 5 or 6 lives and have enjoyed each. i'll check back and play it some more later. great job!
edit: after googling around i found some of the classic roguelikes and yours feels a lot more accessible to someone who is unfamiliar with the genre. Win7 + Chrome btw, works great.

I'm not really into most roguelikes, but from the 5 minutes I played, I thought you did a really good job on the level generation. I also like that there are often a few more enemies on screen, in the distance, that haven't heard you yet, so you know what your next fight is going to be.

Digging it! It's a lot of fun, I sent it to a friend or two as well. Good work! It's addicting, so I guess that means you win :)

This is actually a really interesting roguelike, I like the idea of swapping between forms to survive, although it does seem to be a bit hard to actually gain back health (with being a druid, drinking from a fountain, and potions being the only way as far as I can tell) but I might just be bad at the game.

I'm really digging it, and I think that the game is pretty self-explanatory if you pay attention and experiment a little, you shouldn't have to dumb it down or clutter the UI with messages and tutorials to capture the more casual/3-second attention span players.

I found the interface pretty self explanatory.
seriously, the first thing you do when you start a game is check out the interface. Literally 10 seconds of this will show you that you have an active ability, and inventory, and inventory slots. The morphing is similarly straightforward. If a player doesn't immediately realize he morphs into what he kills, then he has bigger problems...

A very nice central game mechanic. I played for about 30 minutes.
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