Hi guys,
Thanks for all your encouraging and helpful comments! From what I gather a lot of people find the difficulty curve of the game too great. In the final game I plan to make stages whereby the difficulty slowly increases, and new skills become unlocked one by one (so that the player gets a chance to get used to them first), so hopefully that will help the difficulty curve. Also I did get carried away with some of the combinations for the skills, so I will be tweaking those to make them easier! Right now, I've decreased the rate at which mana beats appear - one thing I forgot to mention previously though was that it's okay to not hit these when you don't need mana (which should also make the game feel a bit easier as well).
@Venetia @Tomas I'm glad you think the game's polished. I'm still working to add a little bit more!
@anthonykojima The ladybugs look far too cute to kill don't they? Haha yes you're meant to kill them :'( I've made them more easy to kill emotionally now by adding angry expressions on their face... hope that helps ^^;
@BlueScope Thanks heaps for the advice man. I'm trying to think of a way to make things a little simpler, but it's quite difficult when I still have things I want to add that may make things more complex >_< I'm glad that you feel that the game is challenging instead of too difficult
Thanks for the reminder for the time, I'm trying to work fast! xD
@Eventing_Guy Haha, I suppose that's one way to play xD
@joannesalfa Haha thank you
@gillenew Hi gillenew, thanks for the suggestions, and taking the time to make the mock up. I considered making the arrows go down from the top of the screen but chose not to because I was afraid it would make the battle screen too crowded (the monsters would be closer at the start) but I think this is still something I should consider doing because it feels a little more intuitive. I think the suggestion for changing the color of the arrows is great, however I'm using colours to signify different kind of arrows in the game, which would make it confusing if I used both. I added lines to help align the arrows for the player now though! I also like the way you structured the arrow pad but realized it may make things a bit more difficult for the player when they may have to press the "Up" arrow to a different beat than all the other arrows, but I definitely want to test it out to see which controls are better when I have the time (don't think I'll make it before the end of this contest though!). And hey! You've got a copy of the same arrows I have! XD
I wish I could have replied to all of you separately and in more detail, for all the great comments I received over the past few days, instead of replying in one big post, but the deadline's quickly approaching and I'm still scrambling to get everything I want in the game finished.
One last thing,
I have uploaded a slightly updated version of the game now, so have a try of that and see what you think!
http://valkyriegames.net/musicfighter/game/.
You might have to clear your cache to see the updated version!
