Question

I have marked this question as community wiki, so no rep points are thrown around.

I made this game, Forest Defender, a proof-of-feasibility little project, which I would like to share with you and collect your constructive comments, first impressions, etc.
It is a the first playable (and enjoyable) game I have released to the public, so I am, naturally, very eager to get some recognition by you, as my peers. I read in a StackOverflow blog, that

One of the major reasons we created Stack Overflow to give every programmer a chance to be recognized by their peers. Recognized for their knowledge, their passion, […]

It comes in the form of a Java applet, I used an animation framework called PulpCore and I must say that it’s been extremely enjoyable to work with it. I do recommend to people interested in Java game development.

Since the product is free, fun, entirely commercial-free and I am willing to share the code to it (on request), I thought it would be OK to post this as a topic here. Moderators, please feel free to move this to another place if you deem the other place more appropriate.

http://www.perhac.com/shared/forest-defender/index.html

EDIT

Did anyone else encounter a blue screen? Any errors or problems? If so, which OS and Java version were you using?

EDIT2

As many suggested some areas of the game are not very readable, I spent some time with photoshop to work on a better readable and cleaner design. The instructions section is now easier to read, the in-game information panel’s background was replaced, and, huh, the credits screen is clearer 🙂 I also wanted users to provide their name or alias, so that later a high-score table could be shown.

Answer 1

Strengths:

1. The game appears reliable and stable. No crashes after a half hour of gameplay.

2. Music is pretty good for an indy game. Most independent developers either skip music and sound all together, or use some freebie sample they found that drives me crazy by being boring, repetitive, or just downright painful to listen to.

Opportunities:

1. You lose points for an unoriginal idea. You’ve basically created a Desktop Tower Defense clone. Don’t get me wrong, you’re in good company. It’s a compelling form of gameplay, and you’re hardly the first to copy it. If you’re doing this as a way to learn a new language, or experiment with tools, then more power to you, but linking to the original creator wouldn’t hurt. It doesn’t make your game less interesting if you give credit where it’s due.

2. On the welcome menu, the foreground and background colours of the text are too similar. This makes the text difficult to read. Consider using a higher contrast pair of colours.

3. The tool tips in the Play screen can be cut off if your mouse cursor is too far to the left or right. They’re similarly difficult to read to due to the low contrast between the foreground and background. Consider altering the background layer to be less transparent.

4. During gameplay the statistics and info panel on the right side of the screen is unclear. Consider breaking it into sections:

   • This wave

   • Next wave

   • Money & lives

5. Money & lives are more important, so put them at the top. Money is also linked to purchasing, so having it nearer the tower purchase buttons would make sense.

6. I’m not really clear on what the "R" and "W" indicators with the coloured blobs are trying to show me.

7. I generally want to place several towers at the same time, especially at the start of the game. Allow me to place another tower immediately after placing the first, don’t make me go back to the right-hand panel and select which tower I want a second time.

8. You say "I am willing to share the code to it (on request)". I think keeping the code to yourself is a bad idea. Just throw the code up on Github and release it under an open source license. You stand to gain nothing by keeping it hidden.