Your feedback was so much more!

I set out joining a game jam called Improve My Game Jam, which I learned about via Reddit, because it was the only jam I could find that was actually about the thing I love most: working long and hard on something in many many cycles.

My goal was to improve the interactive tutorial for the one colleague at my day job who was enthusiastic enough to actually download and install my game: they did not understand intuitively how it worked, even though I had made an interactive tutorial.

Then I asked my wife and son to try it and their critique was devastating! I knew then I was ready for feedback from the general public. And boy am I glad I tried. 

So first let me try and express my gratitude to all the #imgj34 reviewers by adding this screenshot of my credits window here:

All I asked was how to improve my tutorial...

But what you gave me was a list of fantastic suggestions so long I can't even begin to recount them all here!

But I'll try. Most if not all of it can be seen in this new youtube video:

All the feedback that I worked on is in this list:

• the web version was laggy - I hadn't optimized for it, I did not even have one before I entered the jam!
• show path of next monster wave - it was unfair that monsters suddenly chose a different path without any announcement
• show a thumbnail label to indicate monster outside viewport - same reason
• make story stage possible - it had become too hard, at first I thought it was just my son's angry tantrums, but turns out: he was right
• drop the sequence about opening a pause menu with Esc - that was just common sense, according to the reviews!
• bugfix: spawn monsters after building 1st tower (fixes sequence) - had totally missed that softlock myself
• drop the sequence which teaches you how to close menus by not giving you currency, give currency in advance - this 'feature' felt like bullying to the reviewer (and rightly so!) GvF's supposed to be cute, nice and fun!
• add dismantle + refund hint - I added this one in response to reviews complaining that they ran out of funds in the story mode
• include more audio feedback to the UI - especially when upgrading a tower, nothing really told you you succesfully upgraded
• Improvement: Fix the obscure Main Menu / Title screen: just place the modes in 1 visible box (I will never manage to make as many stages as Tikiman has beaten!)
• Reverse the order of milestones on my github readme

...things I did not get around to

Some great ideas that are really high on my wish list came out of the jam as well, but I simply have a 40hr day job as well, preventing me from investing enough time:

• Add a settings menu to control audio for sfx and music
• Redesign the missile tower to be more in-theme: homing attack-pigeons from a bird-house would be radical.
• Add sprinting! Games like this need sprinting!
• Do more with the goblin surfing mechanic - for instance, use the flying fish as a glider to get a speed boost (or maybe up to a high place, normally out of reach?)
• STORY CONTENT! The story isn't even boring.. There is no story.

Try the Endless Mode!

...you should try the endless mode, though... it's fun and satisfying mayhem... And it's about to improve: