Our group, Tarantula Games, has a game called Maze Craze, which we think is almost ready for release. However, we’ve been getting mixed results on whether or not the game is engaging/fun enough.
Could you all help us out and give any feedback at all on how we could improve Maze Craze? Even if you don’t think it’s a big deal, please point it out, as it could be a bigger deal to others! On top of that, if you can, it would be helpful if you could sum it up with a 1-10 rating.
Poll:
Amazing game! Nothing needs any work! (10)
Great game, but it would benefit with(answer below) (9-8)
Nice game, but these things are lacking(answer below) (7-6)
Decent game, but it desperately needs(answer below) (5-4)
The game is decent, but I had a lot of issues with the UI
When I was on the main menu screen the sprint bar and “shift” to sprint ui was visible. Minor bug
The main menu UI felt inconsitent, “Maze Craze” was bright pink, but the buttons were 2 shade of green + grey.
The status bar at the top felt way to far down, all it did was obstruct the gameplay for no reason.
Same with the buttons and UI on the left, like the other person said, push them back.
See in the image below:
Now I’m not sure if the buttons on the left disappeared during gameplay (I cant remember) but if they don’t, make them visible when you’re in the lobby, but invisible when you’re in the actual game. When I’m in the maze, as much of the screen should be used to focus on that, the gameplay. (Again, this could already be a thing its just something I’m noticing now)
Golem AI felt glitchy, the “Golem is stuck, teleporting to nearest player now” thing happened like 3 times in one game. The solution is neat, but makes the game feel glitchy.
The game either felt incredibly easy or impossible, one game I started walking through the maze and hit the win pad before the golem had spawned, in another I just walked around aimlessly.
Finally, the running animation felt too fast for how slow my character was actually going.
Not to be too critical, there is a lot going for the game and there is a lot of stuff about it I like. There is hope!
Game has tons of potential! I believe that the tutorial needs work. Players learn better from doing so maybe take them into a new game to learn how to play. Ui is also a bit in consistent and needs some work. Other then that game seems very interesting! But right now I wouldn’t come back to play again.
The ui needs to be completely redone and when players spawn in , it should be a hands on tutorial teaching them about the game. But other than that the game is pretty fun it gives me a epic mini game vibe
i think the game has a great concept, though I wasn’t in the game for very long. I think it would benefit to add some obstacles inside the maze other than a Gollum, maybe try adding kill bricks, jumping obstacles, etc…
You can zoom out really far, to the point where you can see the entire maze, and makes it a lot easier. You may want to change this so that the player can’t zoom out so far.
EDIT: Oh wait, that was only in the tutorial… You may want it in the tutorial though! (so players don’t get used to it)
Anyways, other fixes besides the first one I mentioned.
1: You may want to make the maze bigger; I wandered around for hardly a minute and found the end.
2: Not sure if you do this already, but having a procedurally generated maze would be fun, that way you never encounter the same maze twice.
3: Like httplovelyy said, you should add more obstacles, it would make the game more fun.
4: I had no idea where the number of coins/crystals I had was, so I didn’t know if I had enough to buy anything.
Also make sure to advertise your game, this seems like a game meant to be played with multiple players.
You could add proximity chat and proximity voice chat so players can’t just ask each other the solutions (though again, I don’t know if you have this because A: I don’t have chat and B: There was no one else in the server.)
From the emotes I saw, I really wanted some of them (hover, mainly), so you are doing good in that aspect!
The game is great, it just needs a little work.
A few things I immediately noticed that definitely hurt my first impressions on the game.
The game is very colorful, and I also noticed a lot of flickering regarding parts. I don’t know if the flicking was some sort of z-fighting issue with how you built the mazes at runtime, but it was very garish.
This is a massive problem for people with light-sensitivity, such as photosensitive epilepsy. If you do not want to change this about the game, you should definitely include a photosensitivity warning when joining the game that gives the player enough chance to leave before the game loads.
The music, sounds, I’m not exactly sure what they were, but they’re very loud and off-putting. The tutorial was definitely the worst offender for noise, with a constant blaring noise throughout, luckily the tutorial does not last very long.
This can be a huge problem with people who do not like loud sounds, or are easily overwhelmed by them (an example are those with conditions that make it more difficult to process audio cues).
The golem didn’t feel very threatening, they did randomly spawn right in front of me at one point, and I still didn’t feel threatened by its presence.
I felt as though I could still freely move around the maze, mostly unencumbered.
The golem is clearly too slow, I would experiment with its speed so that it is in a sweet spot where it isn’t too slow, but isn’t too fast that it makes the game unenjoyable.
The UI is very cluttered and also suffers from the over-use of color I already mentioned.
The game doesn’t seem to require the use of a custom HumanoidDescription, unless this is going to be tied to a feature that hasn’t yet released, or it’s tied to one already that I just didn’t notice (such as being able to purchase characters from the in-game store) you should use the player’s own HumanoidDescription.
I don’t think using Luckiest Guy for the UI font in places is a good idea, as I don’t believe it’s very friendly to people with reading difficulties, such as dyslexic people.
The lighting seemed to be very on-off-ish, sometimes it’d be very bright, but almost pitch-black in other places for seemingly no reason other than you not having a light-source in that place.
I know I did focus a lot on accessibility here, it just happens to me one of my interests when building software.
One thing I must credit you for, though I don’t know where they originate, is the icons used for things like spectate, options and the shop. They’re very clean-looking and do well in regards to iconism.
1: The videogames gui sucks to be fair, the tweening is nice but nothing special personally it needs more decor in the guis, like the shop menu
2: the tutorial is very buggy, baseplate flashing the ok button not teleporting, weird spawning clipping through things it feels like a indie dev game and you said theres a team so thats probably not the niche you want to go for.
3: the music cuts in far into the game it needs a loading screen
4: theres no actual style, the graphics use future, blur, bloom, ect making it look realistic yet it has a cartoony modeling style,
5: modeling looks terrible on some areas and mazes like the crystal one has a broken button unplayable and confusing
6: the golem aka the main playing point of the game to be fair sucks. hes buggy spawns in slow is weird ect
7: the shop guy doesnt work and the time frame given between rounds is not enough to actually try to buy stuff.
8: as a small game there should not be gamepasses yet.
9: there should not be settings when to be fair there is none released yet
Thank you for the feedback, but some of it isn’t too clear. What did you mean by the crystal map, what did you mean by the golem “spawns in slow”, which shop guy, and what makes the music suck?
Animations are… not good, looks like it’s supposed to be a running animation but the player moves at a walking speed.
The gui at the bottom right doesn’t fit the style of the rest of the gui at all, all f the gui has different styles andthe game really has no style either.
The hide menu gui is really small.
The golem is easy to avoid, didn’t make me feel worried at all.
The soccer ball’s physics are for some reason incredibly choppy.
It is incredibly colorful and bright, try turning down the saturation and contrast a little.
The tutorial slideshow thing’s text is incredibly hard to read as it’s essentially the same color as the background.
The game is either INCREDIBLY bright and vibrant and hard on the eyes or pitch black with barely any inbetween.
Player’s who have problems with bright colors and lights could be triggered by this.
Some maps have coins, others don’t.
On one jungle looking map, the spawn is right next to the exit.
The ‘Maze Door’ serves no purpose whatsoever
There’s a comma between the player’s name and won in the winning text after a round.
Using a blocky avatar with r15 typically isn’t a good idea, it looks wrong.
The game is way too colorful and vibrant. I got so confused about the tutorial. the intro text buttons were difficult to read due to the background color.
Personally, I have to agree on this one. I very easily got disorientated while playing and it’s hard to actually see the map in full.
The pictures on the loading screens for each map are VERY poor resolution. I’d strongly encourage either getting different pictures or editing them in a manner that they don’t appear so pixelated.
This bugged me severely. I strongly encourage picking either realistic or cartoony and sticking with it as a theme.
The tutorial place takes WAY too long to teleport you back after you hit “OK” upon reaching the end. I was beginning to think it was broken before it finally teleported me back to the main game.
I would recommend making the acid on the “Acid Sewers” map do small increments of damage each second, incentivizing staying on the, what appears to be, parkour course parts. Golem also spawns directly on top of a (I’m testing solo, so I’m assuming) random player in this map.
All in all, establish a theme and stick with it, revise your UI, make it cleaner and easier on the eyes, and fix the lighting.The concept of the game is great and I believe I would actually enjoy (relatively) playing it, however I could see it easily becoming boring after a very short period of time due to a lack of content in terms of random events, competition (there is no leaderboards or anything), and low prices in the shops, and a lack of items on sale to begin with.
I wish you the best of luck nonetheless and plan to check back frequently on this project and see how it’s going. I’m interested to see how this turns out.
