[Final+APK+Playthrough] The Captain took your Ducky

[Nilspferd]

Since the comments on the challenge entries are disabled and I'd love to get some more feedback to our game, I am now posting the game here in addition to our challengepost page.

The Captain took your Ducky is a puzzle game in a hexagonal water world. I made this together with Floran Rappel. It was our first VR and also our first 3D game, so it was pretty tough for us, especially as we really wanted to make everything by ourselves. Also as it now turned out, many of the performance issues we were fighting might be caused by Android Lollipop. But in the end, we made it in time (though we had to skip many of our ideas) and our version runs fluent on Lollipop and should run even better on KitKat I guess (would love to get some feedback on this).

We couldn't make some great screenshots in time, so I added some better quality screenshots on a separate page.

Screenshots:
http://artwaretists.com/ducky/screenshots

Trailer:




Download:
https://vrjam-submissions.s3.amazonaws. ... Signed.apk

Challenge Post Page:
http://vrjam.challengepost.com/submissi ... your-ducky

We also recorded our development progress during the jam, in case you're interested:
Week 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmRh1dAJGFA
Week 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DUZn-ESmMI
Week 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nEIdYylIvs
Week 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COWxSrO84Zo

Post Mortem: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/NilsKuebler/ ... Mortem.php

Full Play Through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk2ChAAHM30

Let's Play by Seizer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIQQemNJWZ4

Feedback of any kind welcome, especially some feedback on how well it runs on KitKat.

[Nilspferd]

Week 4 development progress now online:

[drash]

So many great Jam entries, and this is one of them. Very polished, and I really enjoyed the gameplay although it was over sooner than I would have liked. I thoroughly enjoyed the transition between each stage! And as a developer, it's really interesting to think about the challenges you probably faced in putting this game together.

I ended up getting stuck on one of the more later levels where there's a stack of three wheels that each can be targeted and turned, but the top two wheels rotated the same stuff, which means I think one of the wheels wasn't working as intended, so was unable to complete that level. Not 100% sure on this though.

Anyway, thanks, and great job!

[dpid]

Solid game mechanic that I really enjoyed. I also like the way you went about giving instructions in a menu free/ non-text way. One thing that bugged me a lot was the level transitions. I appreciate the technical achievement, but felt it detracted from the VR experience because the locomotion induces unnecessary motion sickness. I think a much better VR experience would be fade to black, fade back in, and then sprout up the new level. On a visual note, the levels that have the saturated blue backgrounds don't visually work as well as others because it makes it hard to see the water flow. Overall, a very fun game that I felt compelled to keep playing.

[Nilspferd]

"drash" wrote:
So many great Jam entries, and this is one of them. Very polished, and I really enjoyed the gameplay although it was over sooner than I would have liked. I thoroughly enjoyed the transition between each stage! And as a developer, it's really interesting to think about the challenges you probably faced in putting this game together.

Thank you so much. The technical challenges were indeed higher than I expected (I tend to underestimate those things). However the highest challenge for me was to learn blender, the 3D modelling tool we used and that animation stuff we failed hard on (we originally planned to have the captain visible in the game, but we failed on getting him animated right in that short amount of time - this were so many lost hours)

"drash" wrote:

I ended up getting stuck on one of the more later levels where there's a stack of three wheels that each can be targeted and turned, but the top two wheels rotated the same stuff, which means I think one of the wheels wasn't working as intended, so was unable to complete that level. Not 100% sure on this though.

Oh my god! I really didn't notice that, you're right, one of the wheels is totally useless! But it is possible to finish the level.

"drash" wrote:

Anyway, thanks, and great job!

thank you for that extensive feedback!

[Nilspferd]

"dpid" wrote:
Solid game mechanic that I really enjoyed. I also like the way you went about giving instructions in a menu free/ non-text way.

Thanks! I really try to make the games as self-explanatory as possible.

"dpid" wrote:
One thing that bugged me a lot was the level transitions. I appreciate the technical achievement, but felt it detracted from the VR experience because the locomotion induces unnecessary motion sickness. I think a much better VR experience would be fade to black, fade back in, and then sprout up the new level.

Sorry. That's what I also thought when I built that in, but then I started playtesting and asked them about that every single playtester told me that this doesn't make them sick. Maybe I should have asked some of the more experienced VR users in this forum. I thought another possibility would be to just remove the camera movement, but keeping the rest of transitions in (skybox, moving platforms and so on), however that would'nt fit the story as well (which is not in the demo righ tnow).

"dpid" wrote:
On a visual note, the levels that have the saturated blue backgrounds don't visually work as well as others because it makes it hard to see the water flow.

Thanks I think we'll change the colors a bit then.

"dpid" wrote:

Overall, a very fun game that I felt compelled to keep playing.

Thank you very much for that great feedback

[Jaycee900]

As others have said, its a really fun puzzle game to play. I completed the demo, i cant say that about many of the games ive played so far so congrats on that!
I agree that the inbetween levels i like when all the pieces fall down and slot together, but dont enjoy the motion of moving forwards towards the next level!
Again i agree on one of levels thats either high up in the clouds or whatnot, its all a bit misty looking and makes it harder to concentrate on the puzzle itself. Other than that good stuff!

[Nilspferd]

"Jaycee900" wrote:
As others have said, its a really fun puzzle game to play. I completed the demo, i cant say that about many of the games ive played so far so congrats on that!
I agree that the inbetween levels i like when all the pieces fall down and slot together, but dont enjoy the motion of moving forwards towards the next level!
Again i agree on one of levels thats either high up in the clouds or whatnot, its all a bit misty looking and makes it harder to concentrate on the puzzle itself. Other than that good stuff!

Thank you very much for your feedback. Do you mean one of this levels? http://artwaretists.com/img/ducky/07.png or http://artwaretists.com/img/ducky/08.png ?

[Jaycee900]

Yeah 08 pic looks like it, of course its still perfectly playable, but i feel the background should change, night, daytime etc but the puzzle pieces should stay visable and bright enough to see all aspects of the puzzle, cogs, wheels etc

[Nilspferd]

"Jaycee900" wrote:
Yeah 08 pic looks like it, of course its still perfectly playable, but i feel the background should change, night, daytime etc but the puzzle pieces should stay visable and bright enough to see all aspects of the puzzle, cogs, wheels etc

Alright thanks again