My brother and I released our game in beta at the start of this month. Here is a trailer for our game (Jump Scare Warning):
This was our first game, and it was fun to learn more about Roblox as a platform as we developed it. I’ve certainly learned many things since we started nearly 7 months ago that would have made things a lot easier had I known them before. We are just thrilled to have people play it and enjoy what we’ve made. Our timing was unfortunate, as Among Us gained popularity shortly before we deemed our game ready to release. Trust me when I say it isn’t an Among Us knock-off, but was actually based on games like Mafia and Ultimate Werewolf. Any feedback is appreciated, as we are constantly looking for ways to improve our first game.
So the blood is actually just in the trailer, not the game. If we do end up adding it to the game, we’ll take your suggestion to heart, though! Thanks for the feedback!
Haha, thanks! We released it on the first of this month, and after a couple of popular YouTubers found it (still not sure how they did), people started trickling in. It’s been pretty exciting!
Here are some thoughts I had whilst playing your game (note: I’m going to be comparing your game to “Among Us,” because that game does a good job at this style of game):
The jump scare in the main menu is scarier than the actual gameplay;
Players’ usernames don’t appear over their heads, but you can determine their username by using the chat log. You don’t know what peoples’ roles are, but when the judge calls a meeting it displays the name of the judge. What are you trying to do here?
In the game “Among Us,” each player is a disctinct, different color, with their username displayed. However, it is impossible to determine with complete certainty what anyone else’s role is. There were a couple times where we knew who the maniac was, but we voted the wrong person because there were a handful of people wearing the same outfit.
While we’re talking about roles:
Once the judge calls a single meeting, and if the murderer is not jailed, the murderer then knows who the judge is, and can simply kill him / her. Once the judge is dead, the entire innocent team is rendered helpless. (I noticed that sometimes items would drop after players were killed, but once the maniac starts swingin’, there is so much chaos, and the maps are so small, that it’s unlikely for players to stay out of the maniac’s sight long enough to use them);
While this may sound bad, I still feel like the game places the innocent players in favor of winning almost every time. Unless the judge is killed, players will almost certainly try to stay together. This is not easy to work around, and usually ends up with the maniac mass-murdering everyone in the hopes of stopping the judge from calling a meeting.
In the game “Among Us,” there is a unique game mechanic that essentially forces players to spilt up: they have to go do different tasks around a space station.
All I’m saying is, I don’t think every single round should end with the maniac going berserk and ignoring any stealth whatsoever;
I noticed that, when lightning flashed, players’ eyes would glow red. This, to me, seems like an unnecessary feature that causes beginners (such as myself) to think that this designates those players as murderers. In addition, the flashes of lightning further annihilate any stealth mechanics that could be implemented in the rounds, because now there’s no way to completely obscure yourself in the darkness.
All in all, I must say you and your brother have done an excellent job, making this game all on your own-somes. I’ve tested a lot of games shared on the DevForum, and this has been the first one I’ve truly enjoyed in a while.
I hope this feedback helps. Keep up the good work!
The gameplay wasn’t meant to be all that scary. We were going for more unsettling, though I feel the ambience needs to change to further go after that goal. I agree, we should add in usernames to help out. We were toying with adding pets, too, to help differentiate even further.
As for the judge’s name being shown, that was intentional. We do want the murderer to know who the judge is. We want them to have a target painted on them so they won’t be so inclined to call court without having some hard evidence or a witness to a murderer. The big issue is that people stand around in a group in most matches I’ve joined. This makes it difficult for the murderer to do pretty much anything effectively. Lots of people ask for kill cooldown, but when I join the matches and see a murderer go on a spree in a large group, I see that the issue isn’t the need for a cooldown, but for people to be forced to spread out. When we added in randomly spawning coins, we had hoped people would stop standing in a group, but that doesn’t seem to have helped much. So yes, we do need to adopt some sort of game mechanic to force people to split up, and we do have some ideas in mind. The one we are currently leaning toward would add a bit of horror to the game, too.
I have seen a lot of people get confused about the red eyes. In fact, some fairly popular YouTubers found the game somehow in its early stages, and it was hilarious to watch the reaction of everybody seeing the red eyes for the first time. While it is a funny easter egg, I do agree that it is confusing for beginners, and needs to be tweaked in some way. We’re still toying with ideas in that regard.
Thank you again for your feedback! More is always welcome, and we hope to be able to continue to learn and grow as we improve our current game and move on to make others.
