This is my First Ludum Dare game jam. I really like how the system works here and compels us to rate and give valuable feedback to other games in order to get rating and valuable feedback for your game.

My game is a Manual Tower Defense Game where the player have to flip all the levers and defend them from the bots by clicking on them (yeah, no towers). Each lever will empower the player: New Visuals, New Area, New Ability.

Play my game. Rate my game. Link here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/leverage-1

During this post-jam period, I enjoyed playing awesome games made by others. Some of those games made me think, "I wish I had that idea", while few of the games made me realize that my own game isn't that bad.

I did my best to give an honest and valuable feedback to those games. And in return, I received the same.

Here is the list of things that I received via feedback. I have added my perspective to the points as well. I think it would also help you to make better games in the future by considering these points and comparing them to the gameplay of my current game.

-> Very slow gameplay in the beginning. - by @tero-pulkkinen and @storrs-steelers

-> Abilities menu seems very optional i.e a part of the screen should be dedicated to them instead of right-clicking to display it. Player can play the entire game without ever noticing the abilities menu. - by @orpartlu, @danie, @landosystems and @zachary-shah

-> During clicking the bots to destroy them, you can always click the lever by mistake which can be very frustrating. Although I have considered it as a part of the challenge, having a seperate easy mode without this frustrating feature would make the game more accessible. - by @keithdae

-> Bots immediately flip the lever OFF when reaching the lever. It is not a bad thing but having a small delay with a visual indicator would give the player real survival feeling upon destroying that bot (you know the feeling, 'oh that was real close!'). - by @oneki

-> Player can play the game forever without ever reaching the win screen/completing the goal. In order to activate the challenge, the player needs to flip ON all the 10 levers. But there is no indicator to tell the player that a lever is not flipped ON (or a lever is flipped OFF). - by @humphreysmedia and @barracudadisaster

-> The arrows that lead to different areas, are not aligned. They are not in the same place which tends to create friction between player actions. Going from area 1 to area 3 isn't as simple as double clicking. I tried aligning it but there is this bug that, if the player wants to go from area 1 to area 2 and clicked just once, there is a probability that player will reach area 3 instead of area 2 which is even more annoying. I introduced a smaller problem in order to get rid of a bigger problem haha. - by @humphrysmedia, @danie, @storrs-stealers, @nisovin, @sorlok and @honey-pony

-> Taking the same area arrows into consideration, it would have been much better to have the keyboard up and down arrows used for changing the area or even better, using the scroll wheel for this purpose. - by @nisovin and @amerigo-gazaway

-> A scrolling camera would have made the game much better as compare to the area-to-area camera. The player would have a better sense of space with a scrolling camera and he/she would be more able to differentiate between different areas. - by @honey-pony

-> Even though the abilities are self-explanatory (for me only, duh), having tooltips for them or some kind of basic tutorial would have made the game more accessible. - by @storrs-steelers

-> Upon hovering over the minimap, it shifts to the other place on the screen. I did this to make sure that player can see bots or walls that are obscured by the minimap. But this can create confusion. Having a fixed minimap will do the job. A better solution would be to make the minimap more transparent upon hovering. - by @kuviman (during his Twitch stream)

-> Minimap should indicate which area the player is currently looking at. An outline rectangle on the minimap covering the area that is rendered by the camera. - by @oune

-> There is a lot of shadows in the areas which makes it hard to differentiate between roof and the paths. Having more atmospheric lights (and just better lighting) would make it clearer. Or a simple solution would be to increase the contrast between the roof and the floor. - by @psiv

-> The bots' pathfinding is buggy. They all tend to go towards some of the levers (distance doesn't matter) instead of going towards the nearest ones. - by @kuviman (during his Twitch stream)

-> The challenge/win condition is very rigid. Having all the 10 levers flipped ON in order to have a countdown means that you already have all the powers (visuals, areas, abilities). Now, all you have to do, is to stop the bots from reaching any of the levers for a certain time. Now, here's the problem: (1) any mistake would be unforgivable i.e if any bot reaches any lever or if you clicked any lever by mistake, you have to do the challenge again, from the start which can be very frustrating. (2) value/essence of all the abilities is the same i.e it doesn't matter if player prefers a particular ability more than other abilities. Having 7 to 8 levers flipped ON instead of 10 levers for the challenge/win condition would make the game much more flexible and the player can have much more interesting decisions. - by @yaen

-> There is no feeling of progression. Player can immediately flip all the 10 levers ON. These should be some delay between flipping the levers. That way, not only player will feel the progress but the player will also notice the change due to flipping the lever ON, test that change and try to use that change to his/her advantage. I wanted to implement it but I didn't have enough time to do so. - by @yaen

<<< THANK YOU FOR THE AWESOME FEEDBACK AND FOR RATING MY GAME! >>>