October 23, 2010 at 3:35 pmWell I released my summer project yesterday. Here’s a link to play it!
It hasn’t gotten very good reviews on Kongregate, and Newgrounds seemed to give it less than a halfhearted interest. I’m surprised, definitely, but probably not as much as I would have been a month or two ago. The game had little to no interest from sponsors, so I was certainly prepared for it to flop. I’m still going to be stubborn and call it a great game, though, in terms of design. I really did work harder on the design than I ever have before and I’m definitely proud of it.
No, I think the real problem is I committed a series of unforgivable sins and overlooked them in my design frenzy. The first was that the game has a slow start. I made an in-depth tutorial for it hoping to cater more to a casual audience and I think I just insulted the fans of the original Ether games who probably have a more hardcore streak. The problem was that the original Ether games hardly went anywhere, and I didn’t want to repeat that with this game. That leads to the second sin: I changed the game-play completely. If this wasn’t labeled as an “Ether” game I doubt it would have garnered as much bad press. The problem, here, is that I’ve pretty much given up on space shooters as a bad job. I was hoping this could have revived the series so I could keep it going but, more likely, it just added the last nail in its coffin.
I won’t say that I’ll never make another Ether game, but I honestly doubt it. William and Sly did exponentially better than any of my games in the past have done, and I think the simple reason why is that it played to all my strengths. Also, it was simple and fun to just play around with. There were no need for instructions or tutorials, you could just play it…
In any case, I think I’m going to stop making larger games for a while and focus on simple little games. It’s not very smart to spend months working on something that could flop as hard as my latest game seems to have. It’s too unpredictable.
hang in there. nothing beats ether war. :)
Just to put my two cents in, Ether War is one of the best flash games I have ever played. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve beaten it; I signed up on Candystand solely for hard mode on Ether War. I still go back and play Ether War every couple weeks. Nothing can beat the frantic battle against the orbs.
I agree with you Ether Defense would probably have done better without the Ether label — I didn’t realize it was your game until I opened it up and recognized Particlasm, which caused a rush of excitement, and then it turned out to be TD (not a personal favorite), which was a bit of a disappointment.
I don’t know why you’ve given up on shooters — maybe you didn’t make enough for it to be worth it, or coding it was difficult, or it wasn’t fun to make — but if you continued the Ether shooters I would be ecstatic, and I don’t think I’d be alone. But, if you don’t, at least I can still keep plugging the old Brood Mother every few weeks. Thanks a lot for Ether War!
The problem with your latest game, is that it doesn’t have enough upgrades, tower types, gameplay modes, soasf.
I too, like Nathan, have played Ether War countless times (I just finished it now, and decided to actually see the developer’s website). It’s nothing compared to your latest game.
Again, just like Nathan, when I saw a new particlasm game on Kongregate’s frontpage, I was like “strap in boys, we’re gonna get some days with this game”.
Despite these issues, I still mastered it. But it’s just boring.
Ether war had the very few things that make a game, Epic:
- Base defense, with autonomous units.
- Loads of easy to use upgrades (and none were useless as in “backgrounds”)
- A fast and frantic gamepace where the player decided the outcome. Eg, if I stopped moving my little ship, the base defenders became seriously overwhelmed.
Tower defense games are one of my all time favourite, but seriously, they have to have some sort of incentive added to it.
Your Ether series lacked nothing. Graphics were great, concept was great.
Please don’t stop making evolved and thought up games. Simple games are not EPIC :)
Eh, maybe I’ll pump out another one just for kicks. Shooters are pretty easy to make, really. I can recycle most of the code and get another one done in a few weeks probably.
The main problem with shooters is that no one plays them. They just aren’t casual, at least not the way I make ‘em. I know you guys love them, and so do I, really. But, if they don’t spread there’s no reason for the sponsors to sponsor them, and thus no reason for me to make them. It sucks, but it’s true…
Ether Defense was fun, but it did seem rather casual, although I am perfectly alright with that. However: William and Sly was, and is, quite possibly the best online game I’ve ever seen. It was just amazing. I would love to see a sequel.
In my dreams the sequel would have some RPG-ish elements, upgrade points maybe, and possibly multi-level. But then again, that isn’t up to me, it’s up to the obviously extremely talented designer. :D
Keep at it, and I’m sure whatever project you work on next will not only show your talent, but will let you play to your strengths and just have fun. :D
” The first was that the game has a slow start”
It starts pretty intensely actually. You tend to die a few times, till you work out a decent routine. Then it’s pretty easy. And the enemies are mostly the same. And, you have a limited upgrade path- all you need are lasers and defence. If you look at reviews, this is what people are complaining about.
“The problem was that the original Ether games hardly went anywhere, and I didn’t want to repeat that with this game”
This one didn’t go anywhere either. You have basically two levels which matter in ether defence. Explodey ones, and shootey ones. Once you master the use of defence towers, they’re no challenge and all feel the same. All the other levels, they’re no threat whatsoever to your towers. Normal, you buy more shootey, swarm, you buy more shootey etc.
” The problem, here, is that I’ve pretty much given up on space shooters as a bad job.”
See upgrade completed, 2.8 million plays, a shooter game. And, see your own game, with a million plays. And, ether cannon was very flawed, in terms of replayability. Only one level, only two real enemies. It still got a million plays.
When looking for high view counts, an absolutely core concept is replayability. You want people to challenge each other to play it again and again, and you want to draw people to play that game again and again. The defence game lacked that, your cannon games had it a little. William and sly, well… “wander around in the forest finding shit, and play it 5 times with saves so you get everything, because if you find everything that makes your epenis larger.” Is my concept of the game, and obviously that got a lot of views and people liked it a lot.
“Also, it was simple and fun to just play around with. There were no need for instructions or tutorials, you could just play it…”
Yeah. In ether defence, if you die, it’s over. If an enemy smashes a defence tower with an explodey, it’s over. And people can’t be bothered to play it again, so they just rage quit. That’s why the top game on kongregate, cursed treasure, gives you points even if you die- you can just try again with more firepower. A save mechanic is also immensely helpful for a game. You are essentially doubling your view count if you make everyone return to play that game again.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BreakableWeapons
It’s a horrible game mechanic, which you put in there. Who actually thinks “Damn, I really love the fact that my carefully crafted weapon which I have invested my love and blood into breaks after 3 hits”.
“It’s too unpredictable.”
Here’s what the concept of the game is- I’m going to design a defence game, where you have repeating waves of 3 types of (or 4, if you include swarms) fuzzy things which slowly coil round a central space station, and a small number of towers with linear upgrade paths shoot them down, or protect other towers. If the protection towers break, the player will have to restart the game.
After completing a half hour to hour long level, the player will be able to change the colour of the background or spaceship or purchase an upgrade for a tower type, only one, the bounce laser, being of any practical use. They can then restart the game and play it again.
Or they can make it harder.
I could have predicted that would flop. If you had told me the concept for ether cannon, or william and sly, I could have told you they were awesome.
When I said space shooters don’t go anywhere, I meant considering the internet as a whole, not just Kongregate. Ether war barely broke 4 million plays on the entire internet. That just isn’t worth the money I was paid for it. (For comparison, 10 million would have been fair.) Sponsors know this (or they’ve caught on recently anyway), and thus don’t sponsor space shooters.
I’ll acknowledge both Ether Cannon and War did very well on Newgrounds (Ether Cannon did even worse than E:SD on Kong), and probably will continue to do well there due to the core audience. However, the internet as a whole is not made up of 13-year-olds with ADD, and that was (god’s honest truth) the target audience for those games. They really only make up a percentage of a minority, as most of their kind are off playing Xbox.
As for the difficulty/design of E:SD, casual mode was meant to be, well, casual. I didn’t expect anyone to try beating it more than once because they’d have moved on to hardcore mode. In any case, I wanted to make it so many different strategies would work to complete the game. Maybe that’s not a smart thing to do, and I should have designed levels instead. Actually, make that a probably, haha.
I’m the first to admit I’m not a great designer, and design is the main thing that carries a TD. I couldn’t rely on “the spectacle” like I usually do here, and all my weaknesses as a developer were put on display. The saddest part of this whole thing, for me anyway, was that I tried so hard to be a good designer and failed rather completely. Pretty much all of the games I’ve made, even beyond flash, have been proven genre games where the design work was mostly done for you. They could be compared to a Madlibs: I just plugged in a few adjectives to make them different and wrapped the whole thing in a glittery packaging. This time around I wanted it to be different, a game full of good ideas layered together. In the end, my ideas were just average and I wasn’t able to connect them together half as well as I thought I had.
I still have fun playing the game, though. It feels a lot more sophisticated than any of my other work, and there’s a lot more of me actually in it than there is in Ether War, which is just a small variation on what made Geometry Wars successful. It’s more sophisticated than William and Sly, too, but I don’t think the comparison is completely fair there; I knew what WaS was when I released it.
I think I’ve grown as a designer, but I’m still nowhere near where I wish I was. I’ll probably go back to proven genres, at least on any bigger games I do, and hope I can improve in the meanwhile…
The upgrades need a mouseover window explaining what they are. I’ve also no clue when the choices (planet, nebula) mean in the game screen. A screen with basic instructions would be good. Apparently you need to sell a base before it is destroyed if you want to recover any ether from it…and that’s not mentioned anywhere. The game needs more user information.
Opps, my comment above is for Ether War.
Dear lord ignore me…! All the ether names have me confused. Yes. The comments are directed towards Ether: Space Defence.
I think this one was fun, it just needed a little more. William and Sly is by far my favorite game. It was simple, fun, and had some adventure to it. If you could do a game similar to that one, and maybe add more to it (maybe a sequel?) I bet it would get a lot of good reviews and snowball in popularity. Bear in mind that I know basically nothing about coding, aside from the stuff I used to do with my TI-85 graphing calculator way back in the day, when I was in high school.
As a musician I run into the same sort of problem. My best hit was a piece I just made up off the top of my head to show my cousin how I make music on my computer. I haven’t written anything like it since. Maybe in time.
Getting back to the topic, I have suggestions for Ether SD. How about a reverse Tower Defense (tower attack?), where instead of defending, you send units to attack? Maybe you have to buy more of each type of unit at the end of each round, and get upgrades as you advance? Or maybe it could be both a TD and reverse TD somehow. That would be quite original I think.