This is the final PC version of the demo we made for Bloom. We recommend using a X-box 360 controller to play it, but it now also supports mouse and keyboard. Enjoy! Click on read more if you need the driver for the X-Box 360 controller to work in windows.
Here's a link to the driver you need in order for your X-box controller to work in windows: Microsoft.com
1. Select Controller as the product type.
2. Select Xbox 360 Controller for Windows as the product.
3. Select the version of Microsoft Windows you are using on your computer and the operating system language.
4. Click Go.
5. Click the setup link.
6. Click Run.
darn, I would have really liked to ply this, but if its not keyboard compatible I suppose I cant :(
I have a 360 controller but will the final release support mouse and keyboard control? After watching the in-game trailer I can see no reason why it shouldn't other than it being extra work. Many pcgamers don't have a gamepad at all, and even fewer a 360 controller (although it probably is the most popular).
The Xbox controller was part of the assignment and we didn't have time to put in support for mouse and keyboard. But we'll look into.
I'm in luck! I thought my 360 controller was broken but I just plugged it in with Beat Hazard and it works swimmingly. I'm downloading it now. Will get back to you on how it is but it looks brilliant.
Damn, i wonder if there is someone who can complete this demo without dying, if it had something like 3 lives it would be really hard.
Ok played it, not all the way through though but I'll get onto that in a bit.
First off I tried it on fantastic visuals and the framerate took a noticeable but not completely destructive knock, which isn't surprising because my laptop isn't exactly a power house. So I restarted and went with the default which was good. I'm not sure whether this was the game/unity detecting my hardware and recommending that setting or whether that just is the plain default, but it had my resolution right so I presumed it was the former, if not then perhaps some of my criticism is due to framerate issues and not the game as such, although the framerate seemed ok from what I could tell.
I played this on a intel core 2 duo 2.26 GHz, GeForce 9300m GS, RAM 4 GB.
Anyway, starting with the positives, the game looks really nice and the concept behind the gameplay is really pleasing, it definitely looks like it could develop into an extremely visually pleasing but also quite ethereal and charming experience.
My criticism starts with the animations and speed of the game, everything seemed too fast and janky, the character's running and turning was fairly difficult to control, far from impossible but quite often I found myself failing to make jumps and turns that seemed like they should be fairly basic and entirely natural but yet they were going completely wrong. What's more the gameplay doesn't really suit the speed of the game, when the bugs run at you they come fairly fast and in the case of the smaller ones they're a little faster than you, yet you have to throw seeds into their path, so I often found myself allowing myself to be surrounded just to get the seeds to hit. Also the jumping again just felt too fast and direct, in many third person games you have a slight hover point that matches a fluid animation, which allows you to best correct the direction and arc of your jump while it still looking visually pleasing, again I often found myself on the few short platforming sections thinking that this should be easy by it really isn't. Also the right stick while controlling the camera didn't change the direction the character was facing, combined with the speed and choppy nature of the movement I often found myself running straight off things because a small directional correction that was more intended to change the direction the character was facing than to actually move her, saw her taking a a stride forward and plummeting me off the platform onto the ground/into the water.
I realise often there is a temptation to attempt to make games fast paced and exiting, but often a slower speed just fits the mechanics and level design a lot better, and in this case I feel this is especially true.
Some more minor things were that the camera was constantly clipping through walls leaving my character on one side and me staring at the outside of the map. Holding the trigger down longer to throw my seeds longer distances really didn't seem to be working, although once or twice a lilly pad would skim across the water like it was being jet propelled, which wasn't very helpful either, and finally the character clipped through objects and especially the seeds that grow into platforms quite a lot. Obviously this is a demo and I didn't expect everything to be perfect and those were fairly minor complaints.
Lastly I only got as far as the big red beetle and didn't kill it since my attack seeds wouldn't work half the time when I chucked them onto the pile of bags he was sitting on, and I kept dying so I gave up, I'm not sure if that was the end of the demo anyway or not, but it looked like it was going to be, if not then that's as far as I got.
All in all I think this has a lot of potential, the visual style of the game and mechanics you've designed are quite exiting, but it just needs a lot of polish and refinement to better streamline the gameplay experience and enhance the effects of the mechanics that are fairly pleasing already. I hope this feedback was in some way useful too you and I wish you luck with future development, and I certainly hope to see more of this.
Sorry for the TL;DR comment btw :(
Hi Johnny! Thank you very much for taking time to test our game and give us such thorough feedback. This is especially helpful to us since we are just about to start polishing the demo, adressing a lot of the things you mentioned. We'll keep you posted once we have something to show. Best regards!
/Bloom dev team
why i cannot download the demo :(
See my comment below for alternative link
For those of you experiencing trouble with the download link: This seems to be a problem on FileFronts's servers, it worked about an hour ago but seems to be down again, will do what I can to get it fixed ASAP. In the meantime, please try downloading from one of these alternative links:
Indiedb.com
Indiedb.com
the download doesn't work
Looks cool, but none of the downloads work.
This reminds me *a lot* of another game called *Bloom* that *also* has a red haired heroine. In the other Bloom (third person camera too...) you plant seeds to grow plants and well, check it out for yourself on the Vancouver Film School website (sorry I can't post URLs as a new member)
You may want to consider changing at least the name of your game if not other similarities.