Garlicoin Kitchen - Very First Game!

dreph

  • Posts: 142
Greetings Everyone!  I am pleased to introduce our first game and fun little prototype, Garlicoin Kitchen.  In the future we may change up the way the game is played, but the overall concept is here.

www.stencyl.com/game/play/38250

The game was thrown together by two people.  I did the logic and behaviors, and my good pal Kinexus did the graphical design and sprite animations.  We will be sharing this on Newgrounds and Kongregate soon enough.

This is our first game as coinmachinegames.com, and we hope to bring you many many more free games in the near future.

We look forward to suggestions for this game, and future games in regards to fun and playability.  We are huge gamers and will be putting out tons of different style games in the style of simplistic and fun pixel art.

Thanks for playing!

NickamonPoppytail

  • Posts: 1141
Just started playing and managed the get the ingredients into the bowls. However, I accidentally picked up things from both bowls in my left hand and a few seconds later the character froze.

Also, I cannot seem to place the dough in the oven for some reason.

« Last Edit: February 04, 2018, 10:40:13 pm by NickamonPoppytail »
Upcoming Projects
Poppytail 5 and Pixeltail: Fifth and sixth main instalments in Poppytail series. A Game About Trimming Hedges: Final Version: An updated version of the original AGATH. One Million: Last-one-standing style small project. The Poppytales: Platformer boss rush with character collecting. Skies n' Fall: Boss rush shooter prequel to Rise n' Brawl. Precious: Weird platformer. Christmas Time 2: Sequel to Christmas Time 1.

dreph

  • Posts: 142
Just started playing and managed the get the ingredients into the bowls. However, I accidentally picked up things from both bowls in my left hand and a few seconds later the character froze.

Also, I cannot seem to place the dough in the oven for some reason.

Thanks for that, I noticed that you can clear the doughball's ingredients with a hand full of dough.  I'll look into that.  Thanks!

dreph

  • Posts: 142
Also, I cannot seem to place the dough in the oven for some reason.

Dough goes onto the pans.  Three doughballs on a pan, and then you can put it in the oven. Hope this helps.  I will make sure to clear that up in future releases.

dreph

  • Posts: 142
I have uploaded the revision in which the doughballs may not be picked up while holding another item in that hand.

ViniciusAlves

  • Posts: 45
Hey, I just played the game and I believe the core idea is good and has potential. So here's some feedback that I hope is useful for you:

- The main thing needing improvement is readability. It is hard to identify the ingredients by their current graphical form, especially the garlic.
- The recipe box is too small, making it hard to read. Also, you can only access it by getting closer to the bowl, which is bad because it makes you lose some time just going back to the bowl to check missing ingredients.  Maybe having the recipes always available somewhere on the screen;
- The area for the red bowl seems too big. Oftentimes I picked it up by accident when trying to reach the blue bowl.  There is plenty of counter space to spread ingredients around;
- Why having a different button for the register when everything else is done with two buttons? I found it a little bit counter-intuitive;
- I loved the music!

Keep up the good work! :)

dreph

  • Posts: 142
Hey, I just played the game and I believe the core idea is good and has potential. So here's some feedback that I hope is useful for you:

- The main thing needing improvement is readability. It is hard to identify the ingredients by their current graphical form, especially the garlic.
- The recipe box is too small, making it hard to read. Also, you can only access it by getting closer to the bowl, which is bad because it makes you lose some time just going back to the bowl to check missing ingredients.  Maybe having the recipes always available somewhere on the screen;
- The area for the red bowl seems too big. Oftentimes I picked it up by accident when trying to reach the blue bowl.  There is plenty of counter space to spread ingredients around;
- Why having a different button for the register when everything else is done with two buttons? I found it a little bit counter-intuitive;
- I loved the music!

Keep up the good work! :)

First of all, thank you for playing and for your notes. I'll tell you right now some of the following have already been brought up and I love that you called it out!

1) I agree, the items need to be more clearly defined visibly.  Playing through the prototype as the designer makes things much easier than someone who has never seen the bits and pieces themselves.

2) This was intentional as part of a memorization of what is in each bowl.  You can check running up to the bowl and touching it, or hoping to remember.  That makes it so the waste basket gets used more often and you lose a bonus. However, the size of it was mostly due to quick prototyping.  Will likely make an easier to read progress box for each in a more finalized version of the game.  Hope to add up to ten levels with different kitchen layouts in the future.

3) OH MY GOSH, I KNOW!  The area isn't necessarily too large, the problem is that the player overlaps in the red bowl when in a certain part of the Blue bowl area.  The logic seems to currently favor the red bowl over blue bowl if both are activated probably due to order of logic.  It was the reason I couldn't get my new top score yesterday :)  I will probably either shrink this region, or keep a note to not have them overlap in a later revision.

4) I believe it was more of a prototyping choice for this issue.  I wanted an individual action button for each hand, and I didn't want to rework logic, but I probably should have.  It's something I could change relatively quickly, and then I'd just change the instructions for play on the buttons actions.  I agree, it could be more intuitive.  I've had a few people not know about the space bar while playing it.

5) Thanks! I had been literally beatboxing this song in my head during the entire time I was putting the logic together last week, and I finally had a chance to put it to the game yesterday.  My favorite part is music and sound FX.

dreph

  • Posts: 142
So I just went ahead and did a few changes:

1) Removed the Spacebar as an action.  Left or Right hand actions work for turning on the oven as well as selling at the register.

2) Enlarged the Recipe box by 33%

3) Shrank the width of the ingredient regions to reduce overlapping of ingredients

4) Added a garlic in the garlic basket

Thanks again for the input, and thanks for playing!

dreph

  • Posts: 142
Up on Kongregate! We appreciate some comments and ratings if you have the time.

https://www.kongregate.com/games/CoinMachineGames/garlicoin-bakery

Trying to get it uploaded to Newgrounds but are having issues with JavaScript errors during upload.  Hope to get that figured out soon.

NickamonPoppytail

  • Posts: 1141
For some reason, I now can't turn the ovens on or off with Q or E. Is this just me?
Upcoming Projects
Poppytail 5 and Pixeltail: Fifth and sixth main instalments in Poppytail series. A Game About Trimming Hedges: Final Version: An updated version of the original AGATH. One Million: Last-one-standing style small project. The Poppytales: Platformer boss rush with character collecting. Skies n' Fall: Boss rush shooter prequel to Rise n' Brawl. Precious: Weird platformer. Christmas Time 2: Sequel to Christmas Time 1.

dreph

  • Posts: 142
I'm not sure, but I've had about 8 testers and none of them have had that issue.  I will do some testing to see if I can replicate.

dreph

  • Posts: 142
Hey! So we have found a few little bugs, polished it a little more, and it is now up for approval on NewGrounds.  Would love some votes to help if you have the time!

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/706319

dreph

  • Posts: 142
For some reason, I now can't turn the ovens on or off with Q or E. Is this just me?

You were right! My designer found the same bug.  The problem was that the check was on our oven collision, rather than a global event check.  Resolved the issue.  Thanks again for finding that, Mr. Poppytail

merrak

  • *
  • Posts: 2738
The updated Newgrounds version is a lot better. I didn't have any problems with the collision box for the bowls.

It's a pretty good first game. I was hoping there'd be a bit more challenge to it, though... like having to dodge mice in the kitchen or manage multiple simultaneous tasks.

dreph

  • Posts: 142
The updated Newgrounds version is a lot better. I didn't have any problems with the collision box for the bowls.

It's a pretty good first game. I was hoping there'd be a bit more challenge to it, though... like having to dodge mice in the kitchen or manage multiple simultaneous tasks.

Thank you for your note! Means a lot from an expert ;)

We have already gotten a lot of input on how to improve on a finalized version, and the mice is another addition I'd like to add in a future release.