renderSmith.net

Guardian (Photo:ciberia via flickr)

I’ve been a bit behind schedule on getting things working this week, but I’ve got my first playable version of my game based on the theme “Guardian” up now, ready to be downloaded below.

The thought behind this game is that the player is a guardian or defender, protecting something significant that is easily destroyed. The player is an ultimate guardian, impervious to all attacks and equipped with a projectile weapon. If the enemies are able to reach the object, it is destroyed/explodes/bad things happen, and the game is over.

While moving through a level or world, the player must push the object to move it, but must reduce their speed, as well as sacrifice their ability to defend much of the onslaught while doing so. It is up to the player to determine the best path, and the best times to push or to defend the object. The level is completed upon pushing the object into the goal space at the bottom of the level.

In this version, I focused on getting the ideas down to a playable version — the plan is to lengthen the level to twice or three times the length in the final version (due tomorrow — yikes!). Of course, the art is brutally rough as well, but hopefully should be sufficient to communicate what it needs to for tonight.

Since this is the first playable version — a few questions –

• Were you able to complete the level? If not, what was the biggest issue keeping you from it?
• Would you change the controls at all to make them more intuitive?
• Was the number of enemies adequate?
• Could the movement of the enemies (speed/jumping) be improved at all?
• Was the pushing speed tuned properly? Should it be slower/faster for better play?
• Did you ever feel the need to shoot at an angle? Was it useful if you did?
• Any glaring errors/bugs that you noticed?
• Additional thoughts?

Thanks for any feedback you might have for this version of the game — it’s definitely useful to hear from real players about their experiences!

Guardian_Game_v1