Feedback Request: Thomas and the Magical Words

[chanon]

We've just finished our first game "Thomas and the Magical Words" and want some general feedback on it.

Direct Download Link:
http://www.viquagames.com/games/thomas/download/

Screenshots:
http://www.viquagames.com/screenshots/thomas0.jpg
http://www.viquagames.com/screenshots/thomas1.jpg
http://www.viquagames.com/screenshots/thomas2.jpg
http://www.viquagames.com/screenshots/thomas3.jpg
http://www.viquagames.com/screenshots/thomas4.jpg

System Requirements:
Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Pentium500 or better
DirectX 5 or better
128MB of RAM

We will be trying to get some feedback to adjust the game for at least a few weeks or a month before doing real promotion of it or trying to get it on portals.

This is intended to be a quiet feedback gathering release, so please don't post on news sites yet.

Our website (first version) is at http://www.viquagames.com (http://www.viquagames.com/) and feedback on it would be appreciated too.

The website and game buying systems are ready so if anyone wants to buy it go ahead :D

Now for some more about us and the game.

We are a privately owned company based in Bangkok, Thailand and we are all Thais. We are probably the first company here to enter this market (other than svero whose company is actualy based in Canada if I understand correctly). This is our first game and it took us a lot longer than we initially planned. I know it might not be an ultra-casual word game, but I think we've succeeded in creating a very unique and original word game that will appeal to a certain (hopefully broad??) market. So try it out and tell us what you think. What things do you think we should adjust?

As for myself, I'm the owner of the company. We've got two employees here a programmer and a graphics artist. I've posted here from time to time but never really introduced myself, so I thought this would be a good opportunity. I'd like to thank all of you here. This forum (and the old one) has helped me immensely.

WOW we've finished this game!!!! (still can't believe it!)

[Leper]

Whoa...

its like... scrabble.. but its levels..

I think the graphics look awesome!! I'm not much of a "word gamer" but this definately looks like a PROFESSIONAL game that you would see on Real Arcade, Yahoo, Popcap, etc.

Great Job!!

[Emmanuel]

Hi Chanon,

Very nice game. I've only played it for a few minutes, but you may want to consider the following:

- I had to hunt for the buttons to move on to the next screen/action, specifically "close" on the story screen, "play" on the map and "submit" while playing. They don't stand out, and (maybe it's just me) but I have a tendancy to look for those buttons either close to what I'm reading, or at the bottom left corner.

- The game seems to reject quite a few words. "Rib" didn't work while "Rob" did, for instance

- I may be no good at that kind of games, but it seemed insanely difficult. I did three letter words for the most part, which didn't make me feel too good about my English ;)

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[Nikolai]

I'm agree with Leper, the graphics and sound look awesome! It has extremely high production value - better than most games on big portals. I think the game is not too difficult, English is not native for me, but I've passed several stages in 30 min.

* It seems there are only one disappointing thing - you can't submit a word while other tiles are on the game field.

[Hiro_Antagonist]

Hey there. Nice looking game (from the screenshots)... I'll prolly try to download and try soon.

I did want to let you know that I remembered hearing about a lawsuit or cease&desist from Hasbro over the Scrabble tile layout, with the letter and the number on it. Someone else was using it in their game and I remember Hasbro wasn't happy.

Then again IANAL and I couldn't find any reference to that on the web. But maybe it was another casual game like bookworm or something? I wish I could remember the specifics...

-Hiro_Antagonist

[chanon]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

@Leper
Thanks! All credit to Nameg, our graphics artist.

@Emannuel
Great feedback thanks. We'll try to look into those. As for "rib" it's actually in the game (just tried).

@Nikolai
Thanks! You know, it's a great feeling to read comments like this after finishing our first game! Good to hear you don't find it too hard. On the "can't submit while other tiles (that don't form words) are on the game field" issue, it was a conscious design decision, but we may change that if lots of people don't like it.

@Hiro
Hmm this seems to be true.The screenshots of BookWorm at bigfishgames have letter tiles with numbers. But if you download the game you will see that they've changed the letter tiles to use dots instead of numbers. So now we're currently in the process of changing our letter tile graphics too. Thanks a lot for the heads up.

[chanon]

This is the game I was talking about in this thread:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=3720

Hoping to get some more feedback ... thanks!