My game “The Whisper” has recently been getting more dislikes than I thought. During March, there was a huge bug where you couldn’t click the play button and that piled up to around 12 dislikes (it was soon fixed). It’s now April and I currently have 21 dislikes. It used to be at a solid 90% - 96%, but it dropped to a 72%.
I’ve also included a bug report system that I check daily. This will help me fix bugs faster without someone contacting me.
Some people are even saying my game is bad, and the whole game is a bug.
I’m really looking on how to improve the game because I can’t really see the bad side of my game. I’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback through my community server. People say they don’t like my game, but don’t provide a valid reason.
I joined the game and was surprised by the quality of the main menu. I pressed the chapter button and was greeted with a very dim lobby. I had to try and increase the brightness of my laptop to see some things.
Then I pressed the side buttons to see what each of them do, and was greeted with microtransactions to increase the light, which put a sour feeling within me. I press the run button, not knowing if that would make me run or if it was a microtransaction, having to click a couple of times for it to work.
After, I looked around to find the lobby and thought that I needed people to play the game, but I found out I didn’t when I came back to the house.
It could be possible that the players dislike it because of those potential issues, or they just dislike horror games.
The side buttons are for the actual game (when you teleport). I’m not too convinced that the lobby and its elements are really pushing the dislikes further as I’ve kept it ever since the game released.
Lobby seemed ok, I would tone down on the black fog ambient a bit, hard to see when in 3rd person
When being spawned in chapter 1 within 1 minute I got lost and have been colliding into map barriers and then left the game, really like the atmosphere and general look of the game though.
I think you could add a little more to the main menu screen though! try to eliminate the abundance of empty space in view but this is low priority
Alright you should pay a YouTuber or community to play and rate your game, fix it before it’s too late. Usually player tend to upvote games with a higher rating, and down vote a game with lower rating, I usually do that, it’s like a mental reaction :]
I think it’s a great game in general in terms of the UI and the details. It might just be a matter of advertising to get your game on the run. Don’t be put down by the dislikes. If the average player playtime is down, you should check and see what is making players not stay in the game for longer.
Thanks for making me play a horror game at 5:00 A.M lol
Overall I didn’t play due to the time, BUT what I did play was incredibly high-detailed.
Main Menu 11/10
Gameplay 10/10
Graphics 10/10
Mechanics 10/10
Everything else 10/10
I honestly don’t know why people dislike it. Its actually better than the other horror games in my opinion, because I was honestly scared of the main menu lol. Good job bro! And the people who dislike it have nothing else to do but complain so keep your good work up!
Maybe try adding a tutorial and try making arrows going to the keys or something because I didn’t seem to find it or its just me being bad at games. But overall it is super cool.
As i stated in your other post similar to this one… 300 favorites on 5k visits is actually really good ratio, be proud of that.
My experience is if people like a game, they will favorite it… if people just experience something momentary that they didn’t like, or they were having a bad moment, they leave thumbs down.
If a YouTuber puts a bad impression on my game, their following may do the same. I’m basically paying to have a better ratio at that point. But I appreciate it.
Just played your game and got some suggestions as a horror game dev myself.
Positive thoughts:
The lobby UIs are neat as well as the custom toolbar in game. The little intro of your studio presenting the game when you load in is a nice touch too.
Bit “more brutal” thoughts:
If I were to be brutally honest though, I may know part of the reasons why your game may be getting some dislikes. Mainly because your game looks too similar to The Mimic… a little too much. I can tell you used some leaked Mimic assets found in the toolbox such as their new proximity prompt, side to side head bobble camera effect, the footsteps and the sprint bar as I’ve seen them before. The typical Roblox horror game player may see your game as a “Mimic ripoff” though I’m sure it’s not 100% be the case.
There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by it, but you kinda have to put yourself in the shoes of a potential player with the thoughts of “Why play this game very similar to The Mimic when I can just play the real thing which has even more content?”. You need to offer something different to the table if you want your game to succeed.
My overall suggestions:
(Revamp the game a little)
If you’d like to keep the sprint bar, I’d say to make it some other color besides green and rotate/position the sprint UI somewhere else on the screen since as you know, The Mimic popularized that style now and you should make things look a little more unique from that.
Make the instructions more clear, I loaded in and walked around aimlessly for 2-3 minutes with no clear instruction of what I’m supposed to be doing, thus feeling a bit frustrating and left.
Make the proximity prompt the default looking one or maybe try customizing it if possible to something else besides The Mimic’s Book 2.
Your game has potential with the idea you’re heading with, just use my suggestions to help staying away from looking “unoriginal” and to give your game a better image we can say. I liked the atmosphere though, was interesting. Can’t wait to see what you do with the game from here!! Good luck
If you’d like to keep the sprint bar, I’d say to make it some other color besides green and rotate/position the sprint UI somewhere else on the screen since as you know, The Mimic popularized that style now and you should make things look a little more unique from that.
Yeah, I’ll probably change it to blue as that’s the most neutral sprinting bar color I can think of.
Make the instructions more clear, I loaded in and walked around aimlessly for 2-3 minutes with no clear instruction of what I’m supposed to be doing, thus feeling a bit frustrating and left.
Someone gave me the idea of having a keybind setup to where it would show the objective again. This was also suggested by a different person as well.
Make the proximity prompt the default looking one or maybe try customizing it if possible to something else besides The Mimic’s Book 2.