Looking for feedback on my wave based zombie game that does not include guns in it

I’ve been working on this game for about 4 months. I’ve done everything by myself except music and sounds.

In this game you have to survive zombie waves with just swords. Craft new swords on workbench and buy items from survivor. I am looking for feedback to make this game feel less boring
Controls:
G: Inventory
R: Upgradable stats
T: Player’s stats

Link:
https://www.roblox.com/games/8955031507/Rise-Of-Walkers

5 Likes

I feel like the game isn’t as smooth as it could be and it should show all the keybinds in-game so that you know what to press to open the UI.

The main issue is you don’t really know what’s going on, you just get dropped into the game with no idea what to do. When I spawned in I was knifing the zombies but I thought I was lagging since I didn’t know weapons have 1 second+ cooldown and also the zombies take a second to find a player.

The UI: For some of the UI feels weird for example the crafting station took me a while to figure out how to close it the button is in the top right of your screen nowhere near the UI itself. Also, the crafting station has weird spacing once in between each frame. As for the skills UI, it should show you how much skill points you have since I had 0 but the arrows showed up and I wasn’t able to upgrade. Also, stats like wave, money etc should show on the screen instead of having to press a key to view them.

Visibility: Now the game would be much better if I knew where I was going, I think the fog is too close to the player so it’s hard to see. Even things like the crafting table just look like part of the map and don’t look interactable, until you move right next to it for the prompt to open.

I think the game is good so far but definitely needs more improvement to make it better. The things I listed are a good start but even beyond what I have written it can be smoothed out and more user friendly for all players.

2 Likes

Thank you for all the suggestions, I’ll try to keep it all in mind and work to make it better so it can be more enjoyable

1 Like

Hello, I’ve just played your game.
First of all, I will state that this comment means no harm or discrimination against you whatsoever, it’s just my opinion and I hope you won’t be offended by it. I am also not a professional when it comes to anything really, so I hope my review will still be useful to you.

Pros:

  1. The tone/setting of the game, it’s not perfect, but the lightning is still very well executed, each room is unique to stand out as its own
  2. The zombie AI(When it works right) is great, and the script for animation works well
  3. Workbench idea & materials buying idea is fun, but maybe instead of you being able to buy it anytime, maybe there is a day and night cycle which you can only buy at day time, while you have to kill zombies at night time, and isn’t it kind of weird how the zombies don’t go for the shopkeeper?
  4. The idea of the game is simple and entertaining
  5. Great zombie choices, each wave have a different type of zombie or amount of zombie to spice up the challenge
  6. Pretty average sound effect, but the smacking sound is nice though, very satisfying to attack these zombies while hearing these sound

Cons:

  1. The speed of map choosing is too sudden, a “skip timer” button(Can be like a UI, or a brick) instead of just skipping the timer when everyone chose a map will be better since sometimes people may want to use the extra time to ready themselves and maybe even a small toilet or water break. It’s also useful if people accidentally chose the wrong map, it would be nice if the map is only chosen when the timer ends or when the timer is skipped.
  2. The game is just broken. The 2nd tool(Hand) doesn’t work, the zombies freeze up after a while, your first tool also has a long delay time before it actually does the animation, and just like what the person above has said, you are slower when the animation is played. I’ll say probably the most probable reason why it’s happening is how many items are being loaded at the same time at once. Just go to your loading screen and see, that is a lot of stuff to be loaded at once, most games on Roblox with more complex models and scripts run smoother because it doesn’t require the player to load much stuff at once. By the way, it’s just my speculations on why the game is working very slow, as if everything has a high ping, I can’t guarantee that is the problem, nor do I know why your game is running so “slowly”.
  3. Invisible walls. Just like most invisible walls in other games, I will complain about it again, the invisible walls that force the players to not go outside of the map is always not a good thing, maybe have something like toxic gas or something dangerous that surrounds the house, so the players can leave, but they will die before they can go out of bounds. Not to mention the obnoxious invisible wall at the staircase at around the middle of the map, it takes away the fun factor of the staircase, and you could just use railings to stop players from walking off, you don’t always have to stick with invisible walls.
  4. Inconsistency on collision. There are a bunch of drawers that are non-collidable inside a room. It’s in the room with a fridge*(The direction to that room, starting from spawn. Turn to the back, where the benches are, then walk into the house from that door frame, turn left into the room with 3 long chairs, then turn right into the room with 3 sofas and a television, then keep walking forward into the room with a lot of storage shelves, then turn right into the room with a lot of bookshelves, then when you reach the middle of the room, turn right and go into the room with a fridge, at the right side of this room, there should be a bunch of wooden cabinets with a marble top, but all these cabinets are not collidable).* I suggest checking on other furniture and items too, as I may also miss some too, but from what I know, only those cabinets are not collidable.
  5. Backspaces deletes your tools, and it breaks the game as you can’t use your weapons or your hands anymore. Very easy fix for this one, just turn off the option where the players can drop their tools. Go to Roblox Studio, open the Explorer tab and select the tool, then open the Properties tab, and under the “Behavior” for the tool, there should be an option called CanBeDropped, turn it off.
  6. Tutorial level is more important than having a lot of maps. Currently, just like the person above, I didn’t know where the workbench was, or how to collect materials. It’s not easy to learn when you are being chased by hungry zombies at the same time.
    7.Important, every time you die, the screen becomes frozen, I’ve legit thought my Roblox crashed
    every time because of it
1 Like

Great points and the idea of day night cycle, definitely going to add it in future. I’ll also change the invisible walls and furnitures when i get time after fixing bugs. i didnt know backspaces deleted the tool so thanks for letting me know. and for 6th point, im planning on adding a map on wall in yard which can tell people the path and objectives

and 7th point, yea the code for the wave (which also includes the code that caused bug in 7th point) is 3 months old i need to rework on it

Thanks for your suggestions though, it can really help make game better

1 Like

was reading again to add stuff in my game and just noticed, in second point its not because of lag, your speed gets slowed when you attack so zombies gets chance to hit back or players can just hold S and hit and repeat so yea, and the long delay is because of cooldown skill, the more you upgrade it, the less you wait between attacks.

Im currently working to fix stuff mentioned in point 3 and 4, thanks

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I noticed there was no sound (background music, SFX, etc), and that really brings down the game because it adds to the realism and the entertainment of the game itself.

In that case, I suggest for the first attack, that delay doesn’t happen, or else it feels like delay input.

“your speed gets slowed when you attack”
I think it will be better if you make it so it detects if you actually hit a zombie, if you don’t hit a zombie, you don’t have the delay, or else your game will feel very slow.

And there is 1 core problem with the game right now:
All I need to do is hit the zombies, then just keep running back until I heal up enough to fight again:

Reasons why I think this can easily happen:

  1. Health regeneration, maybe instead of giving players the initial healing, maybe have them buy healing materials like bandages or medkits or heal by killing zombies
  2. There is no goal right now, unlike story games or other wave-based games, I can endlessly heal until I am ready to fight again, because the zombies are not a threat enough to surround me
  3. Zombies hitting delay, unlike most zombies from other games, the zombies in your game hits you after they stand next to you for like 1 second, therefore you can just run into them, then run past them without taking any damage, therefore even if they surround you, you can run out alive without taking any damage

Additional suggestions:

  1. A zombie index / a place where you can see the statistics of the zombies, like the health, the damage it does, and when it spawns, it would be cool if it’s unlocked by beating a certain amount of that type of zombie, therefore motivating people to also kill the zombies instead of just running & ignoring them.
  2. A more cramped map, right now, the map is large, therefore it’s hard to get surrounded or cornered, the zombies have barely any chance of fighting you if you keep running in a “circle”, therefore I think a more cramped map will be better, since the zombie AI wouldn’t have a harder navigating, but it can increase the human error on running away.
1 Like

Great suggestions again, I’ll remove the cooldown if weapon doesn’t hit anyone. I might also add a fixed bonus ability to karambit that it has a fixed cooldown (maybe 0.55) to make the starting of game a little bit smoother and easier

For your reasons:

  1. I had that planned for a long time but haven’t gotten time to work on it coz this is solo project (i just hired a scripter I met from this devforum post so maybe a little faster progress in future) and my final year of high school started so it will be even harder for me to work on it lol. The fridge in kitchen is meant to provide healing items (why fridge? so people will actually go in that room instead of just running around circles. gotta have some objectives in corner of map so people go deep in it) which i will work on in future

i am probably going to work on adding Loom table to add craftable armor like helmet, shoes for speed + armor (or armor + other buffs depending on shoes) and more items to shop so people can build items that gives bonus stats

  1. The developer i hired is working on a ranged zombie that spits out acid like a shotgun which will burn player overtime and maybe slow the player a little if they touch acid so maybe if its not much challenging atm, There will be more threats in future. I am also working on scripting 2 sword models which i made (they have their own abilities) to increase content in game. Theres actually 15 waves and after that you get broken trophy which in the future can be used to buy skins (planning on making it as free to play as i can while also trying to earn from skins. not focusing on this now as its small and its worthless to work on skins right now but this is for future)

Suggestions:

  1. i kinda dont get it, they have to kill zombies to pass the wave anyways soo
  2. Yep more maps will be added in future, maybe thinking that each map can have its own different type of gameplay like different map will have different zombies and maybe new buffs and debuffs for player

Thanks again for the tips, I’ll try to work on the stuff asap

2 Likes

Interesting replies

And here is what I meant for suggestion #1:
Maybe have an item like an index book that shows you the stats of the zombies once you killed enough of them.
Like:

Zombie #1: Normal Zombie
[The picture of the normal zombie]
HP: 100
Damage: 10
Speed: 15
First spawns in: Wave 1

Zombie #1: Fast Zombie
[The picture of the normal zombie]
HP: 50
Damage: 10
Speed: 18
First spawns in: Wave 3

Then for the statistics, you have to unlock it by killing zombies. So like when you first play the game, you don’t have any unlocked, but once you killed like 5 Normal Zombies, you unlock the name & picture in your “book”, then once you kill even more Normal Zombies, you can see the HP & Damage stats, etc.

.

It’s meant to be like a function where you can explain stuff to them, so it’s like the players are learning more about these “creatures” as they eliminate more of them. And act as a kind of an “achievement” so they will also feel as if they accomplished something. To be honest, this is just something I recommended just so you can connect some fun facts and story/lore to the zombies, like a “diary” that was already made, but has to be unlocked slowly.

1 Like

ohhhhhhh yes that will be great, i was planning on adding a little lore to zombies and this idea can make it easier. Thanks!

1 Like