Feedback Request [Most generic thread title ever]

[gzy]

Hi!
My game is slowly (very slowly) approaching completion.

You can download a demo installer, (for the lack of a drm system it crashes after a minute) from:
http://www.sphereout.com/setup_music.exe (6m)
I also uploaded a non time limited version just for You guys:
http://www.sphereout.com/sphereout.zip (6m)
there's also an older demo, without the music, quick download (0.6m):
http://www.sphereout.com/sphereout_demo_setup.exe (6m)

I would appreciate if someone downloaded it and tried it out.

The object of the game is to form layers of blocks on a sphere-like board.
It plays best with the mouse, dragging with the left button to rotate the block, and dragging the playfield with the right button. Double click to drop a block to the surface. You can also play with a dual stick gamepad, or the keyboard with arrows rotating the board, and wsad rotating the block.


I Posted about this a few months back, but didn't really get much attention. (I hope to ride on the loops thread popularity a bit :)
The problem apart, from shitt... erm.. simple graphics, is that from what I gather this isn't Your typical casual game.
I have some friends who tried it and enjoy it, and some who don't.

The only extra feature is the ability to submit Your highscore to the games site (currently commented out)

I would beg for answers to the following question:

1. Which online publishers could be remotely interested in this game? (I was thinking reflexive?)

I know I could try to sell it from my own site, but I really don't want to get dirty coding antipiracy stuff... I was hoping to find a publisher / portal can help with that and handle all the e commerce for me.

[jcottier]

I couldn't run very far before the game crashing. Now it doesn't even want to start up again.

JC

[Talisman]

If you do end up selling from your own site, the E-commerce providers make it fairly easy to set up the payment processing and so on. Some of them also provide copy protection services. (I haven't used them, so I don't know if they are good or easy to use.)

Random game feedback:


The game ran fine for me (non time limited version, on Windows XP)
I love the music
It was fun.
I initially thought "This is far too complex for me". It wasn't; it was actually easy to get used to the controls, but the game looks hard to play.
I used WASD(+QE) and arrow keys. I found it easier than repeatedly clicking and dragging the mouse.
Could you reverse up+down on the menu, so it works like a conventional menu (when using arrow keys)?
Menu items with long names ("Resolution") are not really readable
Difficulty increased too slowly for me - I stopped playing after 12 minutes, without ever getting into trouble. Seeing an hours counter on the score board scared me a little bit. I don't want to play one round for that long.

[gzy]

thank you *very* much for Your reply.

The difficulty level doesn't increase a all yet, sorry. It's great that You managed to stick around for 12 minutes. I'm planning setting the limit for a speed up, around a 1000 points... or a certain number of cleared layers, but that might take a long time on the biggest game board...


Actually i don't think anyone would play on the big one but i love to watch the crappy AI do it... I had another idea to add in a screensaver version? Did any of You guy's tried something similiar...? Adding an option to let the game play itself as a screensaver?