Score: 7

"Very good, could've been much better"

submission: Eridani RTS

date: September 8, 2009

This game was very easy. Once you know how to play, you can beat the last level in a minute or so without much effort. You've got a good thing going here, but there's a lot missing.

I noticed the enemies never expanded to new planets. This is quite a problem. It means you need to take out a single building, and the enemies can no longer build anything. Additionally, you're at your leasure to expand outwards. The game would be several times more enjoyable and challenging if the enemy left the confines of their base.

The lower quality ships become effectively useless as soon as you can buy better ones. This is a problem because you never use them again after the first level. The ship cap is a large part of this. It would be fixed by adjusting the ship cap to include ship power, so you could for instance, have 20 regular fighters, or 2 of the orbital destroyers.

It's cool that your build speed advances as you get more power, however, the rate is a bit too extreme, especially when the AI does not take advantage of it. Getting +20 power lets you build planet destroyers in about 2 seconds. You should either tone that down a bit, or adjust the AI accordingly.

Speaking of which, the AI is in need of a lot of work. You don't need to make it terribly complicated, just adjust its behavior based on the game lay out. It should attempt to expand fairly early, build lots of power plants, and rush for resources, while attempting to distrupt yours. I generally found they would focus on a single attack structure, when attacking other things would've been very harmful for me. A better AI, with no other changes, would make this an awesome game in my opinion.
If you have trouble making the AI harder, make it cheat. Give it a higher ship cap, make it mine faster (though that was never an issue for me. The cap of ships left me with a whole lot of extra cash)

I'm alright with the bad Interplanetary missile tracking. It makes you want to control better situated planets. You should, however, make it more clear that they can't hit the far side of planets. A sentence in their description would save you a lot of complaints.

You should also allow, if enemies don't expand, for there to be multiple planets with enemies on them. It's very easy to focus your attack on a single target. Prioritizing between multiple bases would add a bit of S to the RTS.

Overall, I think this game is alright, but it has awesome potential. I can't wait to see a sequel.

Score: 9

"Quite fun, but short and shallow"

submission: Bullet Chaos

date: July 30, 2009

A very fun and pretty game. It could use some improvements. For instance, lower priced weapons are only worth buying if higher priced weapons aren't available. Each step up is strictly better. What you should have instead is some sort of trade-off. Make guns that specialize in different things, like a rapid fire, but low power gun, a high power, low fire rate gun, and things like that.

The menus feel cluttered and when buying things, I had to think to see what the gun attributes were. Buying menus should be intuitive, with relevant information clearly displayed.

The gameplay is excellent, I've played the game about 4 times, and am not bored with it.

A hint to people having problems: Wait a level to buy any upgrade, then buy the 4th gun, then save up for the 8th, and upgrade it. After that, get the max auto turret. Although upgrading those fully costs nearly the cost of two more, it is worth it since the new shots travel much faster and explode into more pieces. The display made me think it just shot twice as fast.

Score: 6

"Good idea, poor execution"

submission: Line Tower Wars

date: April 14, 2009

This game would be quite nice with a major graphics overhall. Everything looks the same. I have to look very closely to tell what is a wall and what is a turret. Walls should be very bland, just something to show a wall is there. A black square would be more effective that whatever sort of x thing you're using now is. It looks too much like the first turret. It was also not clear to me how much upgrades cost, or what would be upgraded, or what sort of things get you money. Interfaces should be intuitive and smooth. Information needs to be presented in a format that lets you see everything that is relevant. For instance, it would be a good idea if hovering over a turret gave you its stats, upgrade cost, and what the upgrade costs. An option to see the range layed out would be nice, too.

Since the game is long, you should certainly have a save feature yet. I actually haven't played long enough to find if there is one, but if there isn't, there should be one. I'm currently just really turned off by the clutter on the screen. The board tiles themselves with their 3D set up does not make sense and just obscures things.