Third Round of Critiques on Paper Prototypes

Stick Ninja

As far as I can figure, this game is a 2D platformer or side-scrolling action game. If this is the case, I don't quite understand why the paper prototype appeared specifically designed for a five on one confrontation. In a side scroller I would expect enemies to be rather sequential.
Then again, there were plenty of things that I didn't quite understand from the presentation.

Bigger text and less lines going through text would also have made the thing more readable.
Apparently there are multiple characters, but the only character property is a combat bonus, making higher bonus characters simply better. This seems like a strange use of character choice, but maybe things will be different in the final game. There also seemed to be a number of different weapons with different bonuses, and something tricky about calculating attack points that the testers had difficulty with.

In the prototype the mechanics seem to boil down to selecting the right weapon for the right enemy type and picking the order in which to attack enemies. But it seemed to me that the enemy type was always known to the player and that weapons could be switched between attacks, so I'm unsure what exactly prevents you from always selecting the best weapon. Similarly, I didn't understand why it mattered what order the enemies were attacked in. Of course I may have misunderstood the game, but it didn't seem like there were any choices of significance for the player to make.


Zodiac War

This one appears to be just a 2D fighter, little different from Street Fighter or the dozens of others out there. The well defined nature of the genre undoubtedly makes things easier as there is abundant sources of reference for what mechanics are known to work, but it would also have been nice to see a few touches of originality.

The presentation for this prototype was very light on information, and even the testing doc does not really explain exactly what mechanic was being tested. It appears they translated the fighting game into cards, representing movement and attacks, but it remains unclear how these were used. Are attacks played simultaneously to simulate the timing and moments of vulnerability that are so critical in the genre? Do some attacks overcome others? Is there a longer delay with some attacks?

In addition, the results of their testing sound rather useless, as good pace, attack variety and clear controls are absolute common sense for any fighting game.


Crack Quest

Although the gameplay is far from original and the subject matter is questionable, this game was impressively far along in the production process. This alpha version of the game (or maybe pre-alpha?) certainly allowed for more accurate testing than a paper prototype would have. It seems their testing response was pretty positive, with the only issue being the length/unskippability of the cutscenes. Given the genre and ludicrous story, I certainly wouldn't be too interested in watching them unless they were artistically mindblowing or something. I'd say if the intro cutscene is longer than about five seconds then cut it back, put in a skip button, or integrate the story into the gameplay.