I’m not a big believer in broad “like it, didn’t like it” feedback. I target specific problem areas, because that’s what I want other reviewers to do, and if I was a developer, I would want to know exactly what people didn’t like about my game.

Thank you for your response. Remember, Second Chance with the Chick is there for every game I review. Make sure when the time is right to use it.

We _did_ spend a lot of time trying to balance the game. (My wife is reading the review as I type. “I told you phase bombs were too powerful,” she just said.) We listened to her, and thought we had fixed this, but an eleventh hour adjustment probably unbalanced the phase bombs.

We do have a lot of fun with the multiplayer game. Justin will use (abuse?) the phase bombs, and when he starts, three of us will gang up on him to punish that behavior. Then he calms down with them. 🙂 Somehow, we didn’t recognize that they were still too powerful. Developers can get too close to their games… Anyway, we’ll revisit this.

Kairi makes several more points which we need to look at. …and will.

If you’ve bought the game (and many of you already have – thank you!) please respond here as to what you do/don’t like and what you do and don’t want us to change, because we make improvements based on customer feedback.

Justin did a fine job on the art, and I’m very proud of that for him; I really like working with this guy. On the other hand, I was proud of my AI, which was way too perfect at first. We made it a lot less perfect. 🙂 It’s still pretty accurate, isn’t it? *grin*

The first AI was an epic fail. I had programmed in all sorts of Newtonian physics, predictive algorithms, transfer orbits, etc., and ended up throwing it all away because despite all the “smarts” it had, it acted really stupid. So we were really happy with the current behavior; I used steering behaviors extensively and thought it worked really well. (For the record, the current AI doesn’t cheat at all. I made it reactive just like a player. …but it’s a computer, so maybe it reacts too well. *grin* )

The coolest thing is that Kairi says that “this could be a leaderboard game… ….with some small fixes.” So we’ll certainly look at that. If you’ve bought the game, expect improvements. Indie gamers, if you want specific improvements, reply here. We’re paying attention.

Thanks in advance for your support,

Ken Cone
http://www.Coneware.com
@ConewareGames