(CLOSED) Feedback on Game

[Aesthetical_Human (Aes)]

Hi! My name is Sepro1144, and I have been developing on Roblox for just over a year. I joined roblox to take on game development, and would like some feedback on my game, Morphy. It is an adventure-type game that is currently in Pre-Alpha. I want feedback on how to make it better, what I should do to the starting areas, etc.

The game -
https://www.roblox.com/games/862935918/Morphy-PRE-ALPHA

[Lugical]

Feedback

First Impressions: Honestly, the game doesn’t look that well, looking at the thumbnails.

From what we see, they don’t look aesthetically pleasing, and this is the player’s first impression of the game. You need to try to draw themselves in with the thumbnails.

Start: The game’s loading screen seems to be something that’s frequently seen in some games. While this isn’t inherently bad, I’d consider doing something else to show something unique. Also, as there is very minimal UI or assets that’d need to load in, you could likely scrap the loading screen.

Starting Place: I’m a bit puzzled on what’s happening here. Right away, based on how the game looks, you shouldn’t try to sell the game at 25 R$. There’s much work to be done still, and we’re here to help.

The starting place is quite bland, and this isn’t wanted to attract players. There’s very little instruction on what to do, so in the first 5 minutes, I was left wondering what to do. Additionally, on top of that:

Considering this thing was going to be paid, a donation box as the biggest asset wouldn’t be in your best interest. It gives off the assumption that you’re kind of “money hungry”, that you’re trying to get as much R$ as you can. Additionally, the Noob morph is clearly free-modeled. As morphs are essential to your game, it’s best that you put good focus onto them, rather than having free-modeled ones. Then, you can go for originality. My suggestions are also to cover up more space in the starting area, as it’s looking bleak in the meantime.

Teleported Place

Right off the bat the map’s terrain isn’t looking so well. It seems like many parts are unnatural as for example, in many areas, there’s vertical cliffs going just straight down. This is also a gigantic map, and without any instruction or clue of what to do, there’s nothing I can do, really. I left pretty quickly, which isn’t a good thing. A goal to have good player retention.

Miscellaneous
I ran into someone named @PandaPb, who said he was partly working on this. He said that the plan was to hire other developers to help do the buildings. If you do, I’d advise you to make sure you have the appropriate funds.

TL;DR
The game needs a lot of work, and wouldn’t perform well even if it stays free. However, there’s still many things you can do and fix and turn it the right direction! Perhaps remove the Donation box, as it’s too clunky, cover up more space in the areas, try to make custom morphs, not free models, and to work on the terrain. Also, add some UI interaction and instruction to help out the player. Perhaps remove the loading screen, work on the thumbnails, and work on the game’s quality. Good luck on Morphy!

[Aesthetical_Human (Aes)]

Thank you for the feedback! I will do as much as I can to make the game easier to understand, more appealing, and less overwhelming. I think that your idea to scrap the loading screen, donation chest, and free model is a great idea and will take it into great consideration. Yes, I am hiring a development team, and I have hired a GFX designer to work on the thumbnails. Thanks!!!

[Hiroraa (Hirora)]

Following on from what @Lugical said about thumbnails, a player’s first impression of the game is definitely what will set the tone for the rest of the game. It’s always said that you should never judge a book by a cover, but when it comes to games, I myself, and I can assure everyone, judges books by their covers.

Visual Content
Your thumbnail should include an example of content you might see in the game and the enjoyment you might get from such. By this I don’t mean a layed out array of assets, nor a screenshot ripped straight from a play session- it should convey what I should expect when I join, like perhaps a well-crafted composition of two players morping on top of, perhaps a mountain somewhere on a desolate, vibrant alien planet? From the current screenshots, they don’t convey anything other than your own player character and some sort of galaxy background, which conveys connotations of exploration, mystery, curiosity, ect; hopefully you get the jist of what I mean from that.

Styling
Furtherly, the thumbnails should follow a consistent, high quality styling. At the moment, the first galaxy thumbnail looks decent in quality, but your roblox character definitely does not suit the composition/theme you were going for, nor the colour palette. The second thumbnail- well… I’m not sure what you were going for- it’s just text, which can be good for some things, but a snippet of what the player should expect, not so much. Not only is text unappealing on its own, but it’s also bold, neon green cartoon text on a neon blue background and also has not much sense of compositional thought. A thumbnail itself shouldn’t be spent on update logs as wordy as this- some games like Jailbreak do update-log thumbnails, but they’re more visual than text-based; you can always save the update log for the description of the game, or hey, if you ever make it big, you might even have your own fancy bulletin here on the forums!

Summary
To overall improve on this, I would, myself, stick to the style and theming of the first thumbnail (galaxy background) as I like the thoughts and connotations it gives off- it plays well on the themes of curiosity and exploration and I feel like this definitely fits your game’s theme. Obviously the map doesn’t reflect this, but a fun space map would seem great fit for this theme.

Closing Thoughts
It is obvious that you are new to development, but never the less, I appreciate your courage to post your game out there and take criticism from us all- that definitely sets you apart from other learning developers. I hope your take our critiques well and I am certain that the future of this game will definitely be a learning curve for you, so I hope all the best with your future as a Roblox Developer.

EDIT 1: Minor styling improvements- all in favour of not ripping out eyeballs via large macbeth plays

[Aesthetical_Human (Aes)]

Thanks! I will take your advice and change the thumbnail to a galaxy theme, and implement a map in the game specifically for space. I will also take your idea of making the thumbnails more appealing, and save the update log for just the game description.

Thanks!

[Hiroraa (Hirora)]

I myself am appreciative that such a reply didn’t go to waste, but I’m also more joyous that you’re taking steps to even implement my ideas! Your open-mindedness is very much impressive.
All the best!

[Aesthetical_Human (Aes)]

Also, you seem to give great suggestions, so how would this game icon be without the PandaPb watermark that one of my devs made?

[Hiroraa (Hirora)]

Did you mean to attach another image there or were you talking about your current thumbnails- I don’t seem to see any images with PandaPb’s watermark

[Aesthetical_Human (Aes)]

Yeah I took it down. PandaPb decided he wanted to change it