Recently we launched a game (Friday) and it slowly built up over time and achieved 83 concurrent players.
The issue is now we’ve stopped advertising we’re not really seeing too many players on the game. It’s currently sat on 5 players and goes up (30-40) and down during the day. Is this because its not the weekend anymore and we’ve stopped advertising, or is it our gameplay that is the issue?
Our average visit length during our rise to 83 players was about 10-15 minutes, with our players been around 5-40 its now at about 20 minutes.
If you could so kindly play the game for a bit and tell us your honest opinion and any criticism, things that may make the player not return.
After playing for a few minutes, I was able to come up with some suggestions to consider:
User Tutorial
It was quite confusing to figure out what the buttons on the screen were for. Although in modern society, we follow a standard model of icons(Gear represents Settings), a tutorial would help me figure out what the buttons are actually for instead of me figuring it out. This is mostly an aesthetic, not really necessary.
Background Music
It took me a few minutes to realise that it was very quiet. I believe music would contribute a lot to the atmosphere of the game.
Controls
It was quite frustrating that the controls are setup like “E to Build”, “1 for Hammer” etc. Based on the way the hotbar is arranged, I would tend to think that “1 to Build”, “2 to Edit” etc.
Wave Bar/Indicator
It would be nice to know when the next wave of zombies will occur with a countdown or wave bar.
General Comments
• The overall game was good and playable.
• Bugs or serious issues were not found.
• The game has working mechanics and works best with multiple players.
• The user interface is clean and easy to navigate.
• The map is colorful and makes use of creative assets, however there are lacking elements that contribute to an engaging gameplay. Perhaps add a sprint feature or modes of transportation or different game modes.
• Game mechanics are very traditional, multiple games have a similar gameplay.
• Blocks do not respect gravity(I’m a fan of physics based games)
Conclusion
I’d personally play the game after a stressful day, it’s perfect for stress relieving and chilling. It’s a good refresh of the classic build and survive games. As stated in the description, it’s not the final product, so I’m looking forward to future updates.
Thank you for your main suggestions, we’ll take them on board and start working on them.
Regarding the blocks not respecting gravity, its a bit of a risky ground to cross as some users have thanked us for allowing them to build without physics, where some have criticized it.
Thank you for your heart-warming comment about it been perfect for stress relief and chilling as that is what we were aiming to create.
Hey! I like the concept and visualization of the game. I was quite confused with the controls and a tutorial, in general, would really help. You should also remake the Thumbnails for the game because they look a bit unprofessional and not appealing.
Conclusion: Nice game, just needs tutorial and some rework of the thumbnails.
Thanks for your feedback about the controls and a tutorial, we’ll get on it. The thumbnails were a quick 5 minute job as we had none. We’ll have to find someone to do it professionally.
In regards to @serverIess, its possible but seems like a lot of extra leg work, baring in mind we’d have to do stuff to clean up blocks that have fallen off plots and whatnot. So we’ll see how it goes into the future.
Hey there! I tried out your game, and it’s overall pretty good, but there’s some things that you could of added to make the game a little bit more fun.
First Join Tutorial
Make a tutorial that plays when a player joins for the first time, but ask the player if they want to take the tutorial, just in case if they're on a different account, etc.
Loading Screen
Make a loading screen so that the player doesn't spawn in before their stats are loaded. It just feels like a good practice.
Music
Add some nice background music, Roblox has a variety of music already uploaded, so you can check it out. My idea of implementing music is you would have some nice, happy music in day time, but at night it changes to some sort of eerie music, as that's when the zombies spawn, correct?
Those are my base ideas, but there is definitely more you can expand on. @wevetments has an awesome list of what you should have in basically every game, so thanks for that!
Would you be willing to share some statistics from last week on how long certain users were playing your game for at peak times? I have a feeling that your inconsistent numbers might be down to low retention and playtime. If you’ve got really low time played on iOS and Android, you may need to work on improving your game for those devices.
