Really fun and well polished game! Great job!

One small complaint, how do I tell if a "creature" is good or bad?

Instead of a subtitle you could just add another word(s) to the title, e.g. like 'Hydro Hydra Ultimate Edition' or 'Hydro Hydra Extreme', 'Hydro Hydra Rebirth', 'Hydro Hydra Evolution', etc.

I did get a "Do you wish to block this code" message which you have to click "no" to, maybe Apo clicked "yes".
To get rid of that message, Scarzzurs you need to sign every single jar file.

Hehe no I didn't click yes. On my desktop pc at home everything works fine. The Java version on my laptop is Java 6 Update 26.
Really nice and polished. =)
And I agree with Riven it was fun to discover what is good and what is bad.

Thanks, I'll try that. :-)

Yeh, that's what I thought before as well.
However a lot of people mention this stuff, so there might be something to it.
I'm glad to hear the opposite view too, as people don't often comment if they feel it works. :-)

At one point I thought about implementing a mode selection between "explore" and "guided".
Maybe I get around to try that... I'll do some more user tests and see what happens :-)

Hmm, I just updated to Java 7 and still don't see any errors.
So maybe it is an "old" issue...
I'll try to fix it regardless. :-)

Edit:
I've self-signed all the non-LWJGL jar files used using the same certificate.
Can you check if this changes anything? :-)

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the extra attention :-)

- Scarzzurs

I played for thirty minutes, and now I'm totally chilled.  It's a lovely, ambient, Osmos-y game.

Some random thoughts:

• First, I've got to say that even after growing seven tails, I'm still not sure I understand what's going on.  (Also, I never played the original version.)  That may explain some of the following...
• The "How to Play" screens felt like they contained too much text (and didn't make much sense at the time since I read them before playing the game).  Pruning the text, using pictures instead of words, or somehow delivering the information in-game would be good if you can do it.
• The game window felt quite small and cramped (even on the low-resolution screen of my laptop).  I could understand if the game were an Applet, but as a separate window it felt like it should be bigger.  (If there's an option to enlarge it I didn't notice.)
• The creature colours in the game are not very distinctive.  In particular, the green creatures look a lot like the background.  Fair enough, I can believe this is a deliberate design decision (to give the game a murky-depths feel), but I figured it's worth mentioning.
• I didn't feel there was quite enough feedback telling you whether you're doing something good (eating) or bad (getting hurt).  This doesn't help when (as others have said) you have to figure out by trial-and-error what the other creatures do.  In particular, it was only when I looked at the "Achievements" screen that I realized I wasn't supposed to be running away from the pink creatures.
• Similarly, I was surprised to realize that I'd lost a tail (and effectively gone back a level).  Seems like something I should've noticed (sirens, flashing red lights, etc.).
• In your description of the game above: "grow into the mightiest creature of them all!"  Well, that happens very early on!  How about having some scary-big versions of the nasties float by from time-to-time on later stages to give you a sense of how much you still have to grow.
• I didn't like the look of the cursor.  I don't know why, it just looked out-of-place somehow.
• I felt that there was a bit of tension between the relaxed, almost goal-less, drifting around, and the sudden "Achievement" and "Stage Complete" screens that pop up.  Like on the one hand the game is telling me to chill out, and then it's all: Do Stuff! Now!
• Right up until the game started I thought it was going to be a shoot-em up.  I don't know why, but for some reason the title Hydro Hydra makes me think Bullet Hell.  Not that I'm expecting you to change the title, but... well... maybe.

Simon

Oh dear.  As I was writing that message I did think maybe I was being too negative.   But overall I thought the game was of such a high quality that it was worth pointing out every tiny niggle I could find (and they are all tiny).

I'll reply to specific points later when I'm home from work. 

Simon

Throwing out some suggestions:

Audio's good.  Also maybe making the status info at the top of the screen glow (white for good, red for bad) when something happens, or possibly changing the colour of the player or the background.  Or maybe just exaggerate the existing effects -- obviously you've played the game much more than anyone else, so effects that look obvious to you are quite subtle to the rest of us.

(Has the cursor sprite changed since yesterday, or is my memory really that bad?)

The cursor seems bright and hard-edged compared to everything else.  But then if it were duller and fuzzier it would look like just another game creature.  Maybe you could use the same sort of colour scheme as in the rest of the game, but with an abstract cursor shape, like six dots spinning around in a circle, or the head of an arrow (pointing in the direction the player's moving)?

Maybe just try making the creature colours a tiny bit brighter (or the background objects a tiny bit darker).  If that doesn't look better then forget about it.

Maybe a slow transition in and out of the menus would be enough to maintan the mood: the sound starts changing, the status text at the top of the screen changes, the game slows down to a stop, and finally the menu appears, with the whole transition taking maybe two seconds.

I wouldn't explicitly show any creatures on the "How To" page, except the ones that appear in the first couple of stages.  If you want to describe other creatures then maybe you could only show part of them.  The player should have to work for the full reveal!

When a new game rule is introduced at a later stage (e.g., run away from red things) could that be explained by a special help screen at the start of that level?

Actually for the larger creatures, I was thinking more along the lines of having (e.g.) a red creature that's twice as big as the player, but slow-moving and not interested in chasing the player -- at least not until the player gets bigger!

Well... I think I noticed it before I started playing, and decided not to risk it (I've had crashes running games fullscreen in the past).  Then I forgot it was there.   I tried it out just now, and it works fine, and the game looks even prettier and feels much less cramped.

I don't think it would hurt if you increased the default window size a bit though (making it wider especially).  There can't be many computer screens left that couldn't show a bigger window.

Anyway, just my thoughts.
Simon

I actually had a similar idea, which I have already implemented. Didn't quite stand out enough, at least I'd suspect and hope the player would be occupied with survival at that time rather than noticing the colour effect. Well, I'm guessing it can't hurt :-)

Yes, you are right. I tried out a new cursor, didn't seem much better though...
I will try making it blend in more for my next experiments, though I have the same concerns about it.

I tried out changing opacity and lightness of the background object. However it appears they help against sea-sickness, so they must not blend too much.
I have made minor changes to the opacity computation of the green creatures, but I don't expect it to change much. So all in all, I am still not sure what to do...

I tried out implementing something similar last night, but the menu system wasn't general enough to allow such modification. Hopefully I will be able to test it soon. I still think a more smooth transition to menus is the best way to go for now. I will see what I can do :-)

I'm glad you said this. My girlfriend also had the same comment, so I think the creatures secrets will remain safe for now :-)

Aight, I catch your drift, I'll take it into consideration for future releases.


Again, thanks a lot for your time. Glad to hear your thoughts, whether I decide to go with the suggestions or not :-)

- Scarzzurs

A very good Flow-like.

What might be nice is a degree of control over what evolution your creature undergoes.  I know you get to select what upgrades but it doesn't make too much difference and the end result is always the same.

Very well done so far.  Was it even possible to get 10 tails?  At 7 it seems currently one is 'trimmed' automatically so you go back to 6.  (Your creature bleeds until it falls off although no red creatures are in the vicinity.)

The game has been released on the Chrome Web Store. You can buy it here: Hydro Hydra - 2nd Dive



A big thanks to everyone for helping me reach my first commercial game release

I'll be very grateful for every purchase, rating, like, +1, comment and so on

- Scarzzurs

What's the difference between this version and the one you posted in the past, if any?

Mike

So, while I DID sell "one or more copies", it is not exactly because I'm proud I'm going to put this down, but:

Here are some things I have learned:

1. You don't get ANY advertisement for free:
The Chrome Web Store does not favour new games in any way, so if you're not Big Game Company(tm), you get no downloads just because you're in the store.
I can scroll the game category for minutes without finding my game. All in all the store is pretty much just a payment method (that requires a certain browser) for me right now...

2. Direct download of .jnlp is a bad idea:
The store is made for websites or things that appear that way. This means that not only does it seem weird to the user when you instead supply them with a jnlp, but there are some problems that seem to have gone unnoticed: Sometimes the jnlp download disappears after you have clicked the app in the browser, leaving only the browser unsafe download security dialog. My solution to this problem is to simple redirect the user to a download page on my website, where I can then explain what's going on to the user. It is my hope to add the game as an applet on this page directly, but I seem to have struck a lwjgl bug with this approach.

Finally the part you have all been waiting for:

Was it worth it?!:
Yes and no.
On the positive side the store serves as payment method for my game, leaving me without many worries. It was also good to experience actually selling a game for the first time, no matter how ridiculous the sales count is.
On the other hand, I have sold only 3(!) copies after two days in the store, and all was from reletives / friends. This means I have almost broken even, in terms of the one-time payment you have to make, but so far, I actually LOST money, when taxes are collected. Hopefully this will change in the future, but my expectation are lower than ever now :-(

I'm still very much considering direct payment from my own website, but that depends on the hassle I have to go through and the time I have at hand...

I hope my experience has come in handy for someone else...

- Scarzzurs

Ah thanks for the list, I'll give it a try :-)
A non browser-specific payment method would be really nice.

- Scarzzurs