Feedback Request: Strange Attractors 1.10

[TheFakeCow]

Hello All,

I was hoping you guys could give some feedback on our game. This was originally developed for the RetroRemakes One Switch Competition, but we've been working to improve it since.

By pressing the spacebar (or left Ctrl), you activate the gravity drive of your craft and create an attractive force between yourself and the other objects in the game. Your goal is to sling and bounce yourself from the bottom of the level through the portal at the top. I have never personally seen anyone play this game and not laugh out loud.

There are couple of known bugs in the current build, one is a specific collision detection problem during the 'Challenge Levels' (level 3 is the first), the other is that I have not optimized the collision detection functions at all yet, so it can run pretty slow in some cases. Aside from these, I would be thrilled if you could help find any bugs and comment on some of the game play. There's a manual included with the game, feel free to question that as well.

The game requires directX 9.0c, and is windows only.

Strange Attractors v1.1 (http://www.ominousdev.com/SA/SA9_15_05setup.exe)

Older Screenshot (http://www.ominousdev.com/Shot2.jpg)

Thanks,

Eric Walker
Ominous Development

[TheFakeCow]

I thought we did a good job too, but i didn't think we'd leave you guys Completely speachless... :rolleyes:

At any rate, I have a new version for you. I fixed the obvious bugs and made the whole thing run a *lot* faster. You can either download it from the link above which fixes the initial 'Best Times' in all of the levels (uninstall the old one first) or just get the new executable.

New Installation (http://www.ominousdev.com/SA/SA9_15_05setup.exe)

New Executable (http://www.ominousdev.com/SA/Strange9_15_05.zip)

[Escapee]

I stopped the download when i realized that the filesize is 30 MB , i will try DL again when i feel i want try something slightly "hardcore" .

[TheFakeCow]

Here's a smaller version if you were/are turned off by the size. Its mostly music that causes the game to be large. This file just comes with one song. The links above still go to the full 30 meg version, but this one is about 16Mb.

Strange Attractors Lite (http://www.ominousdev.com/SA/SATiny.exe)

And to further try and solicit feedback, here are some screenshots.

Screenshot 1 (http://www.ominousdev.com/SA/SAPic1.jpg)
Screenshot 2 (http://www.ominousdev.com/SA/SAPic2.jpg)
Screenshot 3 (http://www.ominousdev.com/SA/SAPic3.jpg)

I'm mainly interested in these questions:

1. What level did you get to before you stopped playing?
2. As you played, did you feel like you were getting better at controlling your ship, or did it just seem random?

Thanks!

Eric Walker
Ominous Development

[codeminion]

well... that is one strange game you made there :)

I got somehow to level 9, but apart from activating the bonus bumpers in the bonus arena, the gameplay seemed to me quite monotonous. Not mentioning the fact that completing levels has much more to do with luck than skill. Maybe you could improve it by highlighting the sphere that has most influence on the player at the moment, so one could easily see in which direction he will go on pressing the space. Maybe even you could visualize the total gravity outcome vector as an arrow centered around the player...

Overall the game is quite nice, but I doubt that one could play it for a long time and stay sane... ;)

I really hope you can make some improvements to the game to make it more interesting...

[TheFakeCow]

Thanks for the feedback! I've recieved a few comments about the difficulty in knowing where your ship will be going. I assure you it gets to be somewhat intuative after a while, but I plan to add in a gravity vector arrow this weekend, at least for the easy mode ;-)

I'm not sure how much that will help, but there's only one way to find out. =)

Eric Walker
Ominous Development

[codeminion]

And one more thing :)

I managed to get stuck between two big balls. I think it was when I rushed between two big balls and then a "magnetic vortex" or whatever ;) squeezed me in and i had to quit the game.

Cheers ;)

[Kaos]

sounds fun but i am getting 404's on all links

[TheFakeCow]

They all seem to work for me right now. :confused:

Thanks for letting me know though, I'll keep an eye on the website and see if anything funny is going on.

Eric Walker
Ominous Development

[Kaos]

ok, working now, getting it down now, 195 k/s, nice speed even!

[Kaos]

interesting 1 key play, but not my type of game, good luck on this 1