Sky Puppy

[Ritz]

Sky Puppy is not about self adulation.

Wait, was that directed at me? Because, you know, those videos aren't mine.

[Delphine]

I guess we aren't supposed to make new posts that are about self adulation

Sky Puppy is not about self adulation.

RTFT

[Dash]

So like, the new demo is pretty neat. The gameplay and level design are both much tighter, and the music is classic video game goodness. However there are still those portions where I get stuck for about 60 seconds trying to fly into an arrow... is that supposed to be part of the challenge? Anyway, very cool overall.

Oh, and the art is excellent as always G.Silver;)



hope I don't get banned for the smiley face

[Frieza2000]

Sky Puppy for the iPad.

You'd probably make a killing.

Just throwing it out there.

[G.Silver]

Yeah that's a thing I think about. (Also how to solve the stuff like poor Dash there 6 years ago unable to get back onto an arrow--yeah, I got plans!) I really can't stress how poorly Sky Puppy sold, I don't know how it would stand out on that crowded app store. And obviously TinyB is the focus right now!

Actually heck why not talk about this. How would you feel if Sky Puppy was a lot easier? I mean, it really was a case of "didn't test this at all/dimissed what feedback we got/made the game for ourselves" at the time, but if we did it on iPad (which would be cool) we'd basically be making a new game and, for the casual gamer's sake, much, much easier. Maybe it would be enough to ditch the time limit, but even stuff like simple maneuvering ended up being really hard for a lot of people, the nuanced control you had over the vertical motion wasn't something people seemed to get (ie, flapping really fast vs flapping slowly to stay on an arrow). I have had a lot of thoughts about this since then, like if the goal should be to do the same thing with less time pressure and easier levels, or change the balance of the flapping (also considering what sort of "touch" people prefer to do on touch screens), or new control elements.. I have tons of ideas how to do it, really, just not sure what to do with it.

Plus the whole "standing out" thing. Sky Puppy looks like it belongs on the app store and for that very reason I'm not sure anyone would pay attention!

[Esrever]

Make it free, with a star-ranking system for the stage completion and a pay option for additional levels, and I think it could have a chance! You never really know what will click with iOS users, but there's a pretty big community of folks who will give pretty much any free game a shot. And if they do like it, it only takes a tiny fraction of the overall iOS audience to make you good money.

[Frieza2000]

What drew me in was the music and the graphics. I don't usually play arcade-style games like this, but the atmosphere was chill and refreshing. The 1-button gameplay was simple enough that I could mostly relax with it, yet it was addictive. That's what I think it has going for it. I'd want to play it as something I could just pick up and see how far I could get that day.

I have some reservations about getting rid of the timer completely. I feel like there has to be a reasonable possibility of losing, but a tight time limit works against the experience I described above. A star-ranking system is really the right way to do it I guess. Going for that 5-star run would be enough to get the blood pumping if that's the way you wanted to play it. You lose that thrill of being rewarded with a new area for doing well though, and that's part of what kept me playing. Maybe you could make some of those split paths close off if you don't get to them fast enough, or just have a "story mode" where the time limit is retained and a "time attack" mode where it's free-play. In either case, with no threat of Time Over I wouldn't say you should intentionally make the level design any easier, but this is coming from someone who only played the demo (sorry, I just don't play this kind of game much! I bought Astroman!). There are a lot of things you could add to it like powerups or bonus tokens, but its simplicity is part of its charm. If you do add to it, don't go overboard.

If casual gamers were having trouble understanding the strategy you're supposed to use, add a tutorial level (or, if you're up to it, teach the player all the tricks as they go using clever level design). As for controls, let players tap anywhere on the screen to flap. If you're afraid they won't instinctively find the most comfortable way to tap it, field test it before release and see what most people do, then add a suggestion to the control screen or something. If I were holding it I'd probably tap the bottom right corner with my thumb, and if it was resting on a table I'd tap below the avatar with my middle and index fingers.

I think it does have a good chance. The name is quirky and eye catching, and a free demo would take care of the rest. None of that "pay to make the game easier" micro-transaction BS though. Wilford deserves better than that.

(I just noticed the full version is free now! When did that happen?!)

[G.Silver]

I was just gonna say, yeah, go to town on the full version! I think we made it free when Astroman came out.

The weird thing with the app store is that I don't think games have demos anymore, they are either "free" or they aren't, and either case there may or may not be micro-transactions, though I don't know how they can really be called that considering the smallest amount you can buy is usually a dollar, which is probably what the game cost anyway (if it cost anything). I really dislike it as a content-barrier (ie, people buy x levels, then x more levels, then x more levels) because chances are people are just going to buy as much as they like, there's no reason to provide 30 levels that all take the same effort to produce if most people are only going to buy 15. It starts to become apparent why random content + a bunch of comparatively "worthless" stuff (like stuff you can unlock by playing, or hats and other superficial junk) is the model that works so well. We're talking about a completely different price scale, but your own purchase is still a really good example--the demo was plenty for you, even if the game were only $3 you might have still felt that way.

Something I was strongly considering was making it so the player could actually flap left and right slightly, touching near the edges of the screen rather than the middle, so people who get "stuck" can righten themselves without having to take a hit or backtrack (though that way would probably still be faster). Another option I was thinking of is a vertical flick to give him a stronger upwards push (along with a cool extra animation). It would still be designed to be completed with the one button, but there'd just be extra stuff to help people out if they wanted it. I'm also thinking the limiter would be to get through without taking too many hits (there could be health items along the way, too) but with time and pickups determining your ranking.

Is a Star Ranking system a specific thing, or different from any other in-game ranking system (ie, the rarely seen "E" grade up to rank "SSS"?)

[Segaholic2]

I think the star-ranking system Esrever is talking about is basically the rating system from Angry Birds that hundreds of other mobile games have now copied. Basically there are three stars you can earn per stage, with the first star simply clearing the level, and the second and third stars for reaching certain point/score thresholds.

[Frieza2000]

I echoed Esrever's star-ranking suggestion rather than a generic high-score table (which should obviously exist alongside the rank) because it provides players a more concrete incentive to keep playing until they can perform better. It's kind of a cheap psychological trick that gets certain people to play the game beyond the time they would otherwise have given it. That isn't necessarily as bad as it sounds; sometimes getting them to put in that extra effort results in a level of enjoyment they otherwise would not have had. I was thinking of a 5-star grading scale, but that 3-star one accomplishes the same thing.

If they don't do demos then, yeah, you can effectively make one by providing the demo content for free and offering everything else in one big dlc pack.

[Frieza2000]

(Extend edit limit!)
Health is a good idea. Not so sure about the horizontal leaning ability though. It would definitely avoid some frustration from the casual crowd so maybe you should, but it would have to be very little. Having it be controlled by a horizontal swiping motion instead of the spot you tap the screen might be better though.

[Frieza2000]

Wilfred flies so high that the world wraps around and he ends up at the bottom of the ocean.

This was a pretty terrible run, but there were no other videos of it and I thought it would be nice to give people a chance to appreciate Stearn's vibrant background art (including myself; it's kind of hard to look while playing. Yes, I'm just getting around to playing this now).

Marathon mode seems like it was an afterthought. You don't even see your high score after you win; it just shows the regular score table for that difficulty, and the 'newest record' field gets set to 000000 00:00 00/00/00, and on the stats screen there's no indication of who set the marathon record.

P.S. What heresy is this?

P.P.S. SCREW AIR GARDEN. I can't wait to see it on Hard.

[G.Silver]

You made it!

Yeah it was just a little bonus more than anything. I didn't think there'd be much competitive scoring for it and I think we'd already set up the scoreboards and stuff when I sprang that one on Daniel.

I did a couple videos myself on Normal and Easy. I was going to do one on hard as well but uhh... I kept messing up when I tried recording it! The normal difficulty video has annotations.

As for the Heresy! There was a guy working for CTXM at the time who thought Sky Puppy would be a great match on Xbox Live Arcade, so we agreed to let them make a pitch version for Xbox. Microsoft (or maybe their own people) required that it use 3D graphics or at least HD 2D assets, which we didn't have, so they went to work making the 3D version, which MS obviously passed on...

[Frieza2000]

Ha! I was going to ask if there were cheat codes. I may resort to that if Hard turns out to be too much. Nice to see the guy who designed the levels screw up that one part in Air Garden too, though you eventually got it right. I've never done the second room properly. In places like that I'll often just take a few hits to keep my momentum going and get through quickly rather than spend a long time trying to do it without getting hit and usually getting hit anyway.

I thought Blimp Yard might've been at least partially inspired by Launch Base, but it's probably just the color scheme. I was almost sure Storm Surge was a reference to those electric things in Wacky Workbench and maybe Sky Base from the first Master System game. Never played Shinobi 3.

[G.Silver]

Strongly recommend Shinobi 3! (I see what you mean about Wacky Workbench too.)