Announcing the Pre-Launch Launch for "A - Gravity"!

I am mighty proud to announce that we've released a pre-launch demo, and have started taking pre-orders for our upcoming 13th title, AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.

www.dejobaan.com/aaaaa

We're now (at 11:59 in the evening) working hard to send out various press releases about it. What this means is that we're offering players the opportunity to pre-order for cheaper-than-the-final-game, get 30 levels today, and then the 80-level finished game in Q3. (I should stress that this isn't a sales pitch to you guys -- I just want your opinion of the game. ) We invite you to try the demo. Here's a description of the game:

You can't save the whole world. It's going to be eaten by a mythological demon with the head of a puppet. But as a puppet that absorbs all it touches, you can try to rescue as much of Earth's puppets as you can before the end arrives.

In the beginning, you roam the Earth, capable of absorbing only the tiniest of puppets. A glass puppet you collect becomes your puppet, and a pair of puppets becomes your puppet. Small puppets overwhelm you, with puppets kicking you around and golden puppets threatening to stomp you to puppets. But with every puppet you collect, your puppet self grows larger. Eventually, you'll become a towering puppet with puppets for puppet and the ability to absorb entire puppets.

The game takes you through 12 unique puppets, with over a thousand puppets to gather before the puppet comes. Steal some puppets from the puppet store, where gummi puppet swim in a puppet river; visit a puppet library to find that the puppets have literally leapt out of their puppets; and explore the Puppet, where you'll watch a lively end-of-the-puppet parade and then gobble it up before making your way to grab the tallest puppet ever built.

Um, that's a description of The Wonderful End of the World (another great game, though). Trying out Aetc right now...

Congrats, btw!

Jibb

EDIT: gee that's confusing! So many words replaced with "puppet"!
Still downloading Aetc though.

EDIT2: Verdict: Awesome! Really great style. Very polished. Probably will buy it.

Great!! I'm gonna buy it soon!!

umm... scratches head... sooo, its a puppet game? lol..

There are no puppets involved in AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.

You definitely need to rework the "cube-selection" menu.

It took me over a minutes to figure out how to start the game.
This will frustrate many potential customers,
since the first 5 minute of a game are the most important
to get an impression.

Its simply not clear wich cube will actually START the game,
(when you move "off" the default cube)
as you need to find that cube, and then realize that you have
to click the lower-left button (wich changes its context)

the parachute should be also activated by SPACE,
as using WASD and Control it unconvinient for righthanders.

While SPACE is already jump, and WASD and Ctrl are already used together in just about every Valve game (whose customers I'm sure are mostly right-handers), among other FPSs, I agree that given you only need to jump at most once each level, the controls could be more stream-lined to use SPACE for activating the parachute.

Anyway, I'm going back to play the demo some more.

Jibb

EDIT: In the meditation I could see a small transparent square with faded black edges in front of me. I assume that was meant to be the size of the screen, fading out the screen edges? It didn't work! (And yes, I DID keep my eyes open during meditation. I was waiting for something funny).

Jump and the parachute are never used in quick succession,
so you can use the same button.

Its always better to use less buttons if possible to do.

The control only really works good for left-handers who use
the cursor-keys.

Also: using the parachute not just for landing, (but to slow down in the map for some time) would increase the
levels of options to the player.

There are a lot of funny details and animations and jokes.
but im missing more depth in the gameplay itself.
Its just falling + trying to get close to things.

There could be some more "subgoals" such
as catching somthing in mid-air that tries to fly away,
or having a short "racetrack" section in the map,
where a timer runs for some seconds,
or activating some field, to open a locked track blow the player.

Don't forget the Left-Ctrl under your pinky (assuming you're using your left hand on WASD and right hand on the mouse).
Have you unlocked the Flip-It glove? It makes things much more interesting!

Jibb

Hi Ichiro

Creative Game... Even though Puppet Drugs may have been used...

Just my ole farts two cents.....

1) I do'nt feel like I am falling. Maybe there is to much art noise, so the ground never feels like it is rushing up towards me.... So the visceral effect of falling is missing for me. Floating is not as exciting as falling / diving....

2) I am not digging all the side art noise. I think (ole fart, now) that it detracts from the game experience of falling and manuvering for points while falling... You do'nt see targets amongst the art noise....

3) I did one jump and I did not get the urge to try it again. I did not get that feeling to try it again because I can get more points now that I understand the course better.... Again maybe the targets are lost in all the noise....

Ichiro you are one of the most creative designers around here, so maybe this is right on target for your audience, not ole gamer farts like me....

I hope you sell a ton of these....

Ken

Another thing I have noticed:

catching these colored score-plates give the player
really low points compared to "kisses" of a building.

This is valued much to low, as getting close to building is a lot easier than hitting the plates in a "correct" sequence.

It does not add much to the point trying to get a "1-grand" plate, comparing to using the time instead to just fly by many walls.

The points for the plates must be valued higher.

---

Also when finishing a Map, and replaying it, the player get
really little points. So you end up playing the same "high points" Map again and again, to earn enough points for the
next locked Map.
This is feels more like shift-working than playing.

I would rather unlock an adjacent map, by reaching "4 stars" minimum, than using the points.
Such as: when you unlock a map, you get points to "activate" the
adjacent cube, but you are also required to make a 4-start run
on a cube next to it, to actually unlock it.
So the player must try to first MASTER a map, to unlock connected maps.
Or something like that.

---

For the menu:
It work well and had an interesting structure, once you understand it.
But you need to include some helper when starting the first
game, (Audio or visual) to indicate that the player
has to click a cube, and then click the play button.

It really confused me in the beginning, and was simply not
clear at first sight.

I totally disagree as a 'double' jump would then open the parachute. Accidental or on purpose I definitely like the jump button and parachute button be different keys! (like they are in the demo afaik)



I think it's better with the point system as it's difficult enough as is in my opinion.

I rather play all the maps and come back later to 'master' them, then get stuck and never play the last few maps. There's this ski game that fails hard because there's this one level with one jump you're supposed to make, but is so close to impossible that most people don't even know how many levels are in the game after that one. :p

Really fun! Much improved from the last demo. And I enjoyed the cube system and the pixie speech.

Well if you think about that for a minute:
you never use the paracute 2 seconds after jumping from the platform,
and you never jump again after jumping of the start.

So this is really easy to set to one button, without
making the actions accidently overlap.

---

A general aim in interfacedesign should be to make
it as easy to use as possible.
And that also means to use as less buttons as possible.

And if you are not shure if your default keymapping suits everyone,
you need to offer a "key-configuration" menu.



No matter if you use points or not, there is a fault in
the current design.
When unlocking that "thumbs up" item or that video,
you loose a lot of points.
And you only get a big chunk of points once, when finishing
a map the first time.

Now I unlocked that video, and used up my points.
There is one Map left, that needs 6000 points.
But I only get 250 points when replaying an unlocked map.
So Im forced to replay the same "high-count" maps.
24! times to get enough points to unlock the last map.
And thats not designed well,
as it destroys the flow of the game.

Yes, this happened to me as well. I wasn't aware I was unlocking a video there either.

To me it's obvious either those videos shouldn't cost that much, or perhaps they should and there should be teeth points rewarded for playing a level and completing a landing.

I had to play a few levels again, matching my previous best (which is a tiny bit flawed as well, as that will be harder with more difficult levels lateron. reaching a difficult 4 star score, might mean you will play many 3 star runs only not to be rewarded anything, right?).

Another thing that happened to me, was that I unlocked the 'flip glove' after I had unlocked the level that actually needs them.

This isn't necessarily bad as I found out quite soon what to do, but it surprised me when I didn't even managed to get a single star. :P

@Damocles: What should be the solution in your opinion?

-videos and items should cost less points?
-a standard score for a successful landing in any level?
etc.

That video could give back the points as "refund".
So you need a certain amount of points to be able to unlock it (the objective),
but directly get a "cashback".

Reason:
That video does not serve a gameplay purpose, and should therefore not affect the gameplaymechanics.
Its a typical "virtual" reward for past archivements,
without helping in the game itself.

The same for gameplayitems. For them i would use a seperate
"bonus stars" counter. Each level finished above a certain
level-cap gives you one bonuspoint. The
bonuspoints are used up for unlocking the items (but not
for unlocking the maps)

So you can only unlock the item when you unlocked a
neighboring map (Archivement1) AND have reamining bonus points. (Archivement 2)
You then need to balance the purchase of
items based on finished maps.

-> currently: each unlocked map give you a lot of points right back
when passing it. Items do not.

----

no matter how you design it. It should not
end up in having to replay certain maps dozents of times
to advance in the game. Thats just "forced" replayability.

Yeah, that's perhaps a good solution too.

I was thinking about collecting specific 'video' related items instead of paying for videos with the teeth points. Collect 10 video items through out several levels and you'll be able to unlock a video ?? ( It's how you unlock videos in Tony Hawk actually, just collect a couple of video tapes throughout one level, collect 10 in one level to unlock a video. Something like that.)

I think videos should still not be too easy to unlock. (the one in the demo is awesome.)


edit: About your previous critique on the cube menu structure by the way... It works fine when using a normal desktop PC with a good mouse, but on my laptop I really wished for a way to turn and select using directional keys too. Accepting input by pressing a key. These things tend to be a pain in 3dgs though (as there's no command to activate the mouse through a code command instead, using all the same functions. You'd have to make the same thing twice unfortunately.).

If you put Damocles’ menu review and Nardulus’ play-ability review together you have my basic opinion of the new pre-launch demo.

But, I would add this, the alpha demo was much funner to play, and I miss the terrain levels. It also seems to have a much faster fall rate, its now too easy to score a kiss, and I want the mouse parachute right click back.

This ones no fun to play. The meditation thing was more interesting.


I hope this isn’t just the musings of an oldie too.


Good luck with the game.


Sincerely,


Denny
AKA Guardian


PS:
I really hope this isn’t to harsh a review, just my true or uncensored thoughts.

How did that work with right-click being the thumbs-up button?

Jibb

The thumbs up thing wasn't implemented yet back then.

I think it works fine this way, although on a laptop the thumbs up or down thing is difficult with the mouse buttons on a touchpad. :p

I'm somehow missing a reply from Ichiro..
No comments?

this game is very cool, i played all the levels, and kinda addicted because i spent something likei 5 hours in a row... trying to score best.. though i cant score 5 starts, its way to hard.

Oh another thing, ... the parachut thing, its hard to control when opened.. and i dead alot of times because of it, but i guess there could be a better control...

Also some dead collisions triggered when kissing near buildings, with not reason...

gratz, i quote indiegames.com:



full pre-review:

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/06/minireview_aaaaa_a_reckless_di.html#more

good job, cant wait for the final version

regards,

Short version: Yes.


Long version: I love this. Most of my already nitpicky complaints are gone now. All thats missing now is the "Replay"-button in the pause-menu (and a nicer pause-menu), and maybe a combosystem for scoringplates, in order to make them more valueable. Maybe a visual cue for hugs should be there as well: Kisses turn the building blue, but there is no such thing for hugs. So maybe make the hud blink yellow when it happens, or whatever.

The menu is a bit difficult at first, but simply by opening a textbox with an explanation (and pictures! Always pictures) the first time you enter it could be explained easily enough. "Connecting" the cubes with a particle line is easily done and might help as well. I like the new way of unlocking stuff, and its definately a good thing you gain "money" by beating levels you already had again. Maybe make it even easier, and give me 1/10th of the amount I would get were it the first time I finished that level (i.e.: In a 1000 teeth/star level that I already finished with four stars, another playthrough with three stars could gain me 300 teeth instead of zero). But those are really not that important balance issues.

Oh, and please make sure the money displayed only shows integers. It shows up as 8200.001 or something for me.


I love the music, I love the art style, it seems to be full of nice ideas, it has a great flow to it, and the humor is incredible. Also, I want the soundtrack so I can listen to it.

(Also, the Pixie-speech is fantastic. I must have listened to it way too often.)

It sort of made enough sense to me the first time I saw it when it comes to navigating, however I totally didn't think I was unlocking a video at some point instead of a new level.

Perhaps an additional line of text explaining one last time what you're unlocking when the question boxes pop up (yes or no).

So far so great 'n I can't wait.

Hi all,

Thanks for giving the pre-release a try and for your feedback. I'm going to share what you've written to the dev team, but I've also distilled what you've all said into the following:

- Improve the cubes menu -- the way to start a level should be more visible.
- (A UI refinement is on its way.)
- Add arrow key or WASD controls to cubes UI.
- Remap controls -- SPACE for parachute?
- Bug: meditation and screen entities do not play well.
- Can subgoals make gameplay more exciting? (E.g. catching moving objects, racetrack, etc.)
- Add to the visceral effect (Some players have suggested dust or more textures.)
- Score plates viewed as low-reward? (Hugs/kisses worth proportionally too high?)
- Metagame: Replay value of maps is too low? (Double? Triple?)
- Lower the cost of videos.
- Gameplay items too expensive? (Or: prohibits advancement after purchase?)
- Improve parachute control (or explain this better to players/allow them to experiment with it -- a parachute-only tutorial level?)
- Bug: money's not in integers. What the heck?
- Difficult to distinguish between different types of objects (videos, maps). Different colors? More text?

I regret that Nardulus and Guardian didn't enjoy the game! I suppose that the bottom line is that it won't be everyone's cup of tea. Not everyone even enjoys tea. I do, but this isn't about me.

More to come.