[Feedback] Tasty Treats Adventures

[Mihai Gabriel]

Hi everybody,

We've just released our first game a few days ago and I was really curious what a first time player's impression would be of it. After working non-stop on it for about 3 months you can imagine that I can't be objective about my views of the game, so any kind of feedback is most welcome.

The game is about a young piggy called Billy Bob Bacon, who's life long dream is to be hired as the chef at his home town's most prestigious restaurant. In order to get the job, the owner asks him to go around the world and gather ingredients from the most improbable places and also find secret recipes left behind by ancient civilizations.

It's a combination between regular jump and run platformers with elements from quest and adventure games. It's full 3D, has 15 levels from 5 different themes, 15 monsters, about 60 secret areas, plenty of mechanical traps and puzzles, riddles you have to answer and 3 built in mini games :

- Challenge the champ
- The Color Maze
- Survivor

It also has a strong multiplayer component, where you can play with your friends in 4 different modes. There are a few separate multiplayer maps and allows you to play all single player maps in multiplayer mode.

Here are some screenshots from each theme :

http://www.tastytreatsadventures.com/screenshots/screen1.jpg

http://www.tastytreatsadventures.com/screenshots/screen16.jpg

http://www.tastytreatsadventures.com/screenshots/screen21.jpg

http://www.tastytreatsadventures.com/screenshots/screen32.jpg

and the download links

for Windows
http://www.box.net/shared/static/zznt544xnt.exe

and for Mac
http://www.box.net/shared/static/b8rvznidb3.zip

As for the system requirements, you'll need a 1GHz or higher CPU, 256MB RAM and a 32MB 3D graphics card.

If you'd like to test the multiplayer mode please contact me at mihai@tastytreatsadventures.com and me and my friend Cezar (he did the levels) will join in because it's a lot more fun when more players are involved.

Looking forward to your feedback.

[DadTimesTwo]

I enjoy these kinds of games, but I'm sorry, my comments might smart:

- 85 MB download? Should be smaller.

- When the menu popped up, and I moved my mouse, and the menu moved, but my cursor stayed in the middle of the screen, I had no idea what to do. I was so distracted by the menu moving all around the screen when I moved my mouse, I didn't think to move the menu so that the button I wanted to click was under the cursor. A moving menu and a stationary cursor? That's an odd, backward way of doing things. Create a stationary menu in the center of the screen and allow the cursor to move.

- Some of the story screens are so huge, you have to move them using your mouse to see everything. Break these up into a series of smaller screens.

- F1 for the menu? Esc doesn't bring up the menu? I discovered this by mashing all of the keys on my keyboard. Not good.

- No double jump?

- No key customization?

- As I was reading the story screen on the first level, my game ended in a matter of seconds because the timer was counting down. The counter should stop when you're reading a screen of some kind, especially a story screen that pops up at the start of a level.

- Are there enemy attacks? I touched a dog on the first level and promptly died. The dog didn't appear to attack me.

- The character models need refining -- smoother edges and more detail on the faces would help.

- On my computer (ATI Radeon 9550 with Windows XP Home Edition and DirectX 9.0c) the shadows look terrible -- like a group of flies buzzing around each other rather than smooth silhouettes.

- You've got a clash of visual elements. The platform-hopping, apple gathering theme is cute, like Mario, but the level textures would be more appropriate for a Quake-style shooter.

In other words, this needs work. Enjoy! :)

[DadTimesTwo]

Oh, and a tutorial level would be helpful to new gamers.

[Mihai Gabriel]

Thank you so much for all the feedback. It really helps out. We'll fix some of the things you mentioned because they are indeed issues, but some sadly there's not much i can do about.

- Not much I can do about the download size except get rid of much of the soundtrack (since we have 4 different songs per theme)
- I didn't imagine the menu thing would be much of an issue. I thought it would be pretty instinctive to move the mouse and guide yourself by the response on the screen.
- Good point on the story screens. We'll take care of that.
- The F1 key for the menu might be somewhat unusual indeed. We'll take care of that.
- Nope, no double jump. Instead you have ultra fast, ultra jump, force field and bullet time, 4 powerups that you can gather as you walk through the levels.
- Didn't think there would be a need for key customization since all the standard control modes are there : you can use W,A,S,D + mouse to move and look around, you can use only the mouse to move and look around using left click and right click, or you can use only the arrow keys to move and look around. I thought all instinctive control modes were covered. It is a nice option to be able to customize your keys, that's true, but most casual players rarely use it.
- Good point about pausing the game when a screen pops up. We'll take care of that.
- An attack animation would be nice indeed. We'll take care of that.
- We tried to keep the poly count low because as you move forward in your levels you'll notice that the monsters start getting more and more and lower video cards would not have been able to handle that.
- We've noticed that on some ATI cards that bug appears but couldn't find the reason. There are two solutions to your problem : either choose low detail effects from the launcher, or enable at least 2X antialiasing from your video card's settings.
- There is a tutorial level. You start in it. As you talk to the owner inside he'll tell you that if you take the teleport right in front of the waterfall, the one in the middle, you can sample what awaits you. Every aspect of the game is covered in that area.

Again, thank you so much for your feedback, it really helps out.

[Mihai Gabriel]

If you'd like to try out the multiplayer mode please let me know and we'll join and make it more fun : mihai@tastytreatsadventures.com

[barrygamer]

Forgot to post my feedback yesterday. Most of it is the same as DadTimesTwo though! Note, I don't usually play this type of game (3d platformer). You certainly got a lot done in 3 months.

In no particular order:

Tested on Mac Mini Intel 10.4.8. I only had time to play for a short while. With default options, plays very smooth (these macs have crappy Intel GMA950 graphics... ). I tried with the shader options turned on, and it was a little less smooth but still OK.

There was quite a bit of flickering on the main character, possibly due to shadow effects, not sure? There are also quite a lot of clipping problems, can be rather distracting.

Too much text in dialog boxes. I'd rather it were introduced gradually. I think 3 lines of text is the max my brain lets me read :)

Inconsistent environment, as mentioned by previous poster.

Perhaps the level design is a little too abstract? More streets/shops perhaps?

ESC key / main menu etc.

I didn't realise initially the dog was an enemy, I went to 'talk' with it.

I found it easier to play with the view pulled-back slightly from the default.

The 3d dialog boxes were VERY confusing for me.

(No quit button on nag screen?)

Nice music.

Nice grass graphics.

The 3d models need some refining. e.g. the face of the pig (eyes?). I think the shape looks quite cute from the back view, if a little 'stiff' looking. Arms/legs perhaps a bit too low poly?

later,
b.

[Mihai Gabriel]

Thank you barrygamer for taking the time to check out our game and post this feedback. It is quite helpfull indeed. We've updated the download on our site by taking into consideration your (read : DadTimesTwo and barrygamer) very interesting opinions and by doing what could actually be done in this time frame. If you have the time please take a look. If not, here is a list of the things we fixed (also posted it on our site) :
- Made the dialogs a bit smaller so that even the biggest pieces of story can be easily read.
- You can now use Escape to bring up the main menu
- The game is paused every time a dialog appears and unpaused when they are closed
- When a dialog pops up the camera is set to a default angle to make reading easier.
- Some other minor bug fixes

Also, even though i mentioned this twice it seems it's not tempting enough. The game has a VERY STRONG multiplayer component which is quite different from the single player part, and can be quite a lot of fun. Please let us know if you'd like to test it out so we can join in. You're free to try it out with your friends if you don't want us to impose. Just create a server from the launcher and then start the game and join. Detailed instructions about the multiplayer mode can be found here :
http://www.tastytreatsadventures.com/online.htm

Thank you so much for everything !