I'm the guy who made Factions, which just launched on ArmorGames today! If you have any feedback on the game that you'd like to discuss, I'd love to hear it!
You can play Factions here: https://armorgames.com/factions-game/18973
I think the game could use more levels, I've played the game twice or thrice already and it's a bit repetitive at this point. Also consider taking inspiration from other similar games and add "fast" and "strong" minion towers for variety. Plus maybe a tower that attacks enemies on its own but doesn't generate minions for you. Also a level select please.
@Miguelinileugim I'm not planning on adding any more levels to this version. Want to tell me more about some fun units / towers you've seen in other games? I've got a growing list of ideas I'll add them to!
@Gcro thanks for that GDC talk - I haven't seen that one before! I knew colorblindness would be an issue but I'm surprised how quickly you got a bunch of upvotes pointing it out! Update coming in the next day or two
Units: Created by unit towers
- Fast: High speed low hp. could be fun against a slow but overpowered enemy, allowing players to take neutral towers faster and gain a lead.
- Normal: They get the job done.
- Slow: High hp low speed. Would recommend to make a level or two where players can choose to go for sheer speed or just to secure a few slow towers to get slow units to just destroy the enemy base before you get outmaneuvered.
- Shielded: Immune against fast enemies and offensive towers (ie towers that attack instead of producing units) but they're otherwise low hp if hit by a normal unit and get insta killed by a strong one.
- Strong: High attack low hp. Can destroy all enemies except slow ones with one shot, but they take a while to recharge. Good for hit and runs but easily destroyed if overwhelmed or by fast units.
- Splitter: Low attack but they split into two when destroyed. Useful as a meat wall, especially against strong enemies. Or simply for unlimited spam factor.
- Big: Extremely slow creation time, but these are near indestructible except via extreme spam or a moderate amount of strong units. They have a slow but insta kill attack (except against slow) and a fast normal attack.
Towers: Towers that attack instead of creating units
- Fast: Good against low hp units, bad against shielded and high hp ones.
- Normal: Does its job well enough, far better than a normal unit tower when defended at the expense of maneuverability since towers can't move of course.
- Slow: Good against high hp units, effective but not enough in its own against big enemies.
- Tesla: They hit several units at once (say up to five), insta kills splitters and fast units while being able to damage shielded enemies. However it's useless against normal enemies so it's very niche.
- Piercing: Useful against masses of units and unaffected by shielding, but their very low hp makes them incredibly underpowered unless they can reliably hit 3+ enemies in a row
- Sniper: Very large but it can reliably hit enemies anywhere on the map (or if the asteroid is huge, at least halfway through). Its damage is comparable to a normal tower as well as its fire rate, neutral towers fire only at half range.
Fields: Controlled by a nearby tower (usually but not always at the edge of the field)
- Tar field: Slows down enemies but not allies (tar would change color to indicate)
- Spike field: Damages everyone alike (higher damage towards high hp enemies) but if no enemy is present it goes down temporarily (if the tower is being controlled of course)
- Electric field: Damages everyone alike (flat damage, so low hp units get quickly destroyed) and also gets disabled temporarily if no enemies are present
- Boost tower: Really big, it boosts all of your unit producing towers by say 25% speed. Once conquered it cannot be captured again, only destroyed by enemies. This is as to ensure that it doesn't become a bonus mcguffin in the map but rather a especial one time trophy that in some maps you might choose to rush early and in others to just do something more interesting then just destroy it from enemy control once you got that over with.
So that's about it for now. Making ideas is easy, making games is quite a lot harder! Hopefully they're of some use though
@Gcro I watched the GDC talk and then spent some time playing around with different colors / palettes and running them through coblis. I never got anything I was really happy with - I'll keep working on this tomorrow. My current thought is: give players a chance to set their own colors and also allow them to put some kind of marker on top of their own pawns (maybe just a little box or triangle). How does that sound?
I think you could gain a lot of inspiration from the Civilizations Wars series. They had a number of good mechanics like sending your people at monsters to defeat them or roaming enemies that hinder everyone.
@MaxBizeGames being able to choose my own colors will be amazing. If the markers on top is too much of a trouble then I can understand if you hold back. the two major color issues are
1) figuring out which troops are mine.
2) differentiating between the enemies.
2b) Background contrast plays into both of these
Number 1 is critical, since I can't play with out it, Number 2 just requires that I have a better strategy and can overwhelm everyone.
Some other possible suggestion would be:
1) maybe put a contrasting hue around my units, even if they are not selected. this would at least address my #1 issue
2) A pattern, or crosshatch for the different teams units and towers, once again, something with contrast so I would be able to figure out without too much inspection could also adress some of the issues.
The Thermo Nuclear level is where things got really bad, I had to contentiously box drag/drop to highlight the units to try and figure out where my towers where, and once I spun the world around, I could never be sure if that was still my tower or not, couldn't chance it with out trying a quick drag/drop.
@Gcro I need another day to wrap things up. The settings menu now has options for:
* Customize color of each player. Will use https://github.com/judah4/HSV-Color-Picker-Unity so full control!
* Add a marker above my pawns. Going to be a very simple little pyramid or diamond.
* Change the saturation of the world. For people with Deuteranopia the water is way too saturated. They'll probably want that hue of blue for something that actually matters like unit colors.
I'll post another update here when it's uploaded! I'll want your feedback if it's enough or it needs some of the other suggestions layered on top. What worries me the most is that the lighting will change the colors as pawns move around the planet.
@Gcro it took longer than expected, but update 1.11 is here with colorblind options! Please let me know 1) if this is good enough for you to be able to beat the game 2) what you're still unhappy about with regards to accessibility. I've never built colorblind options before, so I don't know what's considered "amazing" vs "good enough"
@Miguelinileugim I dug through your post and there's a lot of ideas here that I think are really good! I've added them to my running list of experiments to try
