That doesn't work for me.It's not worth it unless you are a completely desperate gamer.
Reviews for "Jewel Mining"
Boring, very boring. Not to discourage you from doing more work, but I found the gameplay dull and repetitive. the engine is interesting, but nothing that creative. Reminds me of that old cannon shooting game that came with Windows 95 or something. Also, wouldn't the cannon balls destroy the jewels?
Fun game, but it can use some work, or it melts in the generic gaming pot. For one, add a distance meter, or arching would be pointless, as it seems the ball shoots out at the same exact speed each time, and there's no way to make that "drop shot" (where it shoots high, then come down in a hill like fashion on top of the target) that can save lives on certain levels.
Two, I do like to not have a challenge, especially when playing games like this, but I don't think many people would appreciate the game not caring how many balls you shoot; I see it counting at the bottom, but it didn't seem to take away from my score, or not in a noticeable way for anyone to care. You might want to stay in the box, there, and keep it where only a certain amount of shots can be fire, until you have to restart. Also with this, I notice the game isn't over until all the gems are "mined", that's a cute twist, but once again, it takes out the challenge, I'm guessing the counter for how many balls are used is for the player to personally try and limit, well, the gems should be what the players personally want to collect; try adding a set score, and other gems collected is extra, or "perfect", and let the player pass to the next stage, even if they couldn't collect everything.
I don't know how difficult it is to make a physics game, but every stage should be beatable with a perfect score, and for those who just don't know how to get perfect, there should be an "average" score that's mandatory to pass (meaning if the person can't beat that, then they just shouldn't play). I saw that the points increased with each gem hit, but it still fall flat when you have infinite numbers of shots.
All in all, it's a good, safe, thought for a game, but if you're going for something typical, you have to add in the important things that makes games like this fun and challenging (honestly I did not care to play through all 20 stages, even though I very well could, since there is no "lives" to hold me back). The only unique thing I see on here is that the points go up with the combo hit, but that was lost for the lack of the other things I mentioned.
One last thing, though not as important, the music is too short, and becomes repetitive, so it makes for an awful loop, especially for 20 whole stages (Godspeed to those who made it through without mute). I'm not saying the music is bad, for it's a neutral tune that can be ignored, it's just the fade out, pop in that is very distracting, and for it to do that every time for 54 seconds makes for an annoying sound (no matter what music). Try choosing a song that never stops, and loops smoothly, I always thought looping tunes with an song that can begin and (most importantly) end was always in poor choice.
stian7 responds:
Thank you so much for the constructive feedback!! It really do help alot when people take the time to tell what they think work, what don't and why.
I will take it with me and see what I can do with, I will try to do something with the music rather quickly :)
Amazing. I had a lot of fun playing this arcade game, I'm glad you uploaded it.
I finished with 227,784 points!
5/5
stian7 responds:
Thank you :)
It's functional - I'll give you that. It has a jazz background. I happen to love jazz, but in this case, it's not appropriate background ambience. There is no background story. That's a minus, because you need some kind of emotional motivation to drag someone into the game. There is no ongoing goal, there is no player progression ("power-ups", if you will), and there is no real incentive to keep playing.
In effect, I'd say that this is the lazy attempt of a single game-maker to produce a simple physics engine, with some music and mediocre artistry thrown in for flavor. You really need more peripherals to the whole thing, if you're going to be considered a serious game designer.
I'd advise you to get together with a few peers, and discuss what makes a good game, before you submit this for review.
Now... I'm not the end-all, but I consider myself a fair critic. If you have any questions, comments, or rebuttals, I'd be happy to accept them.