Intricacy

ZED

Member

Getting new players

We need more players. How do we get more players?

If my admittedly ill-thought through theories on scaling are correct, then we
can't have too many players. But we can have too few. I think about 5-6 active
players is probably the minimum to keep the game spinning properly.

I've been trying to make the game more easily learnable and generally less
off-putting for new players, but probably there's more that could be done on
that. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Other than that, I'm not sure what to do.

NOI

Member

Re: Getting new players

I haven't used linux in a while but don't they usually have some repositories for games and other software? Would it be possible to get intricacy on some of them?

Not sure how hard to do it would be but android version could be nice, I imagine touch controls could be pretty decent for the game.

Also I did mention the game on another forum I regularly visit and some guy didn't really like the tutorials he said "They introduce to many mechanics at once with little to no explanation on what each one does.
Took me five minutes just to figure out how to move things in the first level. The left-side yellow piece in the second level is unnecessary. In order to get that far I've already figured out how the ball works, level done." about it.

I'm not sure but maybe after the tutorial levels it should explain the metagame and the main screen a bit. Tooltips do explain most of it but a screen showing most of them near the relevant parts might make it faster for people to familiarize with.

You could also try making the graphics "prettier" and more thematic or something. Though I'm not sure if better graphics would really be worth doing but I imagine some people would be more likely to give the game a shot if the locks actually looked like locks or something. For example having some steampunk gears background for the lock area might make it a bit prettier or it could just look absolutely horrible.

Last edited by NOI (2015-06-24 19:56:52)

ZED

Member

Re: Getting new players

Thanks NOI, your support is very much appreciated!

> I haven't used linux in a while but don't they usually have some
> repositories for games and other software? Would it be possible to get
> intricacy on some of them?

I think generally only games which are already popular get in the major repos.
The main exception to that I know of is the Arch User Repository. I did leave
a test PKGBUILD on the website in the hope that a friendly Arch user might
come along and test it and put it up if it works, but no luck so far.

> Not sure how hard to do it would be but android version could be nice, I
> imagine touch controls could be pretty decent for the game.

I did think about Android. In principle I think it should work. But Android
support in Haskell seems pretty new and unstable, and it would require redoing
all the graphics to use SDL2. So I expect it would be a big job, and not one I
fancy taking on right now.

> Also I did [25]mention the game on another forum I regularly visit and some
> guy didn't really like the tutorials

Actually I saw that, and I made some changes to the tutorials in response. The
tools now have hover text in the tutorials, telling you how to move them, and
I added a new tutorial level dedicated to springs to teach how they can be
stretched as well as compressed, rather than having that introduced by-the-by
in the second level.

> I'm not sure but maybe after the tutorial levels it should explain the
> metagame and the main screen a bit.
> Tooltips do explain most of it but a screen showing most of them near the
> relevant parts might make it faster for people to familiarize with.

It does now give the second help screen textdump when you complete the
tutorials. I guess I could add a third help screen (also shown on completion
of tutorials), showing a sample metagame screen with labels as you suggest.
But wouldn't it be too cluttered to be absorbable? I feel that having players
learn the interface by playing with it is generally more effective than an
infodump.

> You could also try making the graphics "prettier" and more thematic or
> something.

Meh. I actually really like the graphics as they are, even though I generally
dislike graphics. I'm willing to make some compromises in order to appeal to
enough people to get a playerbase (having graphics at all was such a
compromise, in fact... this was originally going to be a text-only game), but
I have my limits!