Godliest 2010-03-11 14:39:29

What you want is a game that never gets truly impossible but rather just gets to fucking hard it is for 99,9% of the people impossible yet you can see how someone extremely skilled can beat it. Think if Tetris got impossible after a few "levels", it would've made the game so much worse, now it just gets to a point where most people can't get past but through practicing you can. That's what makes making these "simple" mini-games hard: they have to have a simple way to play them, present the player with an increasing challenge and make the player able to improve and get further through practicing.

Just watch that guy who plays Tetris at fastest speed (you can't even see the fucking blocks until they hit the ground) with them being invisible. It's not impossible, just extremely hard. That's a well-designed simple mini-game.

Tigg-Dude 2010-03-11 14:40:27

I quite like to play this sort of mini game for about 20 minuets in one go. But, that doesn't mean i wont revisit the game and play for another 20 min at a later date. Let me know how things turn out because i think game play time is a big issue for these 'mini' games.

cakeman16 2010-03-11 14:45:08

I would of made a save game option to push it the extra mile and lowered difficulty. That was you do get the sense of a good game and you arnt playing for 5 hours Straight

I-smel 2010-03-11 15:26:22

This game felt really slow, so I played about 3 levels and stopped.
A more up-tempo minigame though, like Gravity Hook or Super Briefcase or something I could play for like half an hour.
Then maybe another ten minutes a couple days later.

JACK-IN-THE-DARK 2010-03-11 16:01:52

Well, i found that buying more than 2 extra kegs was useless, since its impossible to move your mouse to where doug is and then click, the only way to do it was to wait to him to drink a keg and smash him in the remain one, this also gave me enough money so i could continue playing the game until i got bored (dunno what stage that was).
Also i never knew if a was winning or losing, i always made money to buy 3 kegs for the next day, but hardly a power-up, maybe a minimum income for each day could work?

Regularjoe 2010-03-11 18:33:21

One good way to get people keep playing a minigame is to allow them to take it at their own pace. Consider the infectionator game. If you want to get a record time, you need to be very precise. However, you can just grind for money on lower levels if you get stuck, so everybody with patience can get to the finale.

Personally, when I played the Doug game I got bored after around 7 levels, when I realized that I wasn't really doing anything each level except playing whack-a-mole with Doug. I would not replay this game, because it is so repetitive. It was nice at first though.

Balvuc 2010-03-11 20:10:09

'Hate to burst your bubble' n whatever, just had to say it.
Also, I think when you use PS many times, you should repeat the P instead of the S,
as I guess it means Post Scriptum.
What.

Forget it I need some sleep.

Gianni 2010-03-11 21:47:03

I think the way the game is currently is fine for the general public, who usually have a short attention span such as myself and won't play it for more than a few levels if it's slightly interesting, and a few more levels if it's really interesting.

Then you get those mysteriously hardcore minigame fanatic types, who feel this urge to push themselves as far as is humanly conceivable on these minigames, and when it comes to them, they won't admit it sometimes, but they like it rough.

The game started easy, gradually got more difficult and required focus to manage, and then became just too much for me to do without repeated attempts in the time limit I would usually spend playing a minigame on here.

FrozenFire 2010-03-12 00:36:16

Looked great but yeah it's just not that much fun. It's like making a game about cleaning your room, not a very interesting concept. It's a great minigame but that's probably why it wasn't so well recieved, it's a minigame and gets about 5 minutes of people's time and then they get bored and move on.

That's the trouble with flash games, you gotta get them hooked or else they just move on with no real setback. They don't have any obligation to play your game when they can just click a few buttons and find another free game to occupy their time.

Froodjakle 2010-03-12 02:02:45

Frankly, the biggest problem with your logic of making it impossible after level 10-15ish, is that it breaks the entire game. By level 10-15, you won't have earned enough money to experience the game, you'll still have only upgraded a few things, and Doug moving faster to an literally unbeatable speed makes the extra barrels and extra damage worthless.

What I see here is that you altered part of the game to make it more of a quick-session type of game, but forgot to edit everything else to take that into consideration. You have Doug moving fast to prevent you from playing for very long, but in order to experience the game and upgrade your weapons, barrels, and ale quality, you have to be able to repel Doug efficiently, or your game is officially broken.

Froodjakle 2010-03-13 00:44:59

I agree completely. Making upgrades too easy to earn can ruin a game just as badly as making them too hard to earn, but that's just the point, you have to find the right balance. Unfortunately, Doug-Out lacked that, with Ale being the only really useful upgrade past level 5 or so, and hardly being able to access your other upgrades until that point.

Again, It's all about balance. You have to make sure every upgrade has a value equal to it's price; Not worth less, not worth more, but equal.

The upgrades for ale are cheap, very cheap, and yet they make you rake in the cash MUCH faster with even one or two upgrades. They're extremely cheap compared to how valuable they are.
However, buying extra barrels, while not horribly expensive, is practically useless due to the short days that only require 1 refill at most, and Doug tearing through your extra barrels in no time.
Likewise, buying weapon upgrades is quickly made useless because of, like I said before, Doug moving too fast to even get a hit in.

Another thing you have to take into account is that you and Jazza planned the game to be a quick, 5-10 minute minigame, and that's perfectly fine, but listen to the community; It's pretty clear that they want a game with more length to it, 5-10 minutes worth doesn't seem to satisfy them, or let them experience the game like they want to.
Having a plan for your game is commendable, but remember: Plans have to change sometimes to accommodate the needs of the player, if you want a game to be successful.