Lazy Robots - Alpha test

August 13, 2012

Today I feel like some sort of cool, accomplished person. Because today I have made something that I believe people can actually play and enjoy.

It's certainly not perfect. It's still a ways off from complete. But the core of the game is solid and it is ready for feedback.

So the deal is, if you want to play the game, please e-mail me. If I think you are a cool person who is not going to, like, steal my intellectual property or something, I will send you a .SWF file that you should be able to open with Flash Player.

If you want to dally around with it for a bit and then forget about, that's totally cool, but giving me some feedback after the dallying is high encouraged.

Things that I want feedback on:
Any bugs you encounter, no matter how small and insignificant.
Any typos in the text.
Commentary on the text and loose plot elements. The goal of the dialogue is simply to entertain, so please let me know if something did or didn't particularly entertainment. Bonus points for advice on how to make it better.
Other problems with the aesthetics of the game - colors were too bland, graphic elements were too small, stuff like that.
Any problems with the user interface, like if you couldn't figure out how to get something to work, or if getting something to work was just counter-intuitive.
Game balance suggestions. First off this means if you have any well thought out arguments for changing the energy costs of the robots' powers (i.e. if you think Eugene's teleport should be more expensive), as I haven't spent a whole lot of time play-testing the balance. Second of all, let me know if you think the levels are too hard, too easy or are in the wrong order to properly express a reasonable ramp in difficulty. Obviously, the current version only has 12 levels when the final will have much more, so I intend on adding a lot of levels in between he levels featured, but how to do that exactly is still up in the air.
And finally, LEVELS. Coming up with ideas for compelling levels turned out to be harder than I thought. I spent a lot of time making sure the level editor was easy to use, so please play with it to come up with your own creative level designs. Then just send me the 1033-character string in an e-mail when you're done if you want, and I'll take a look at it. And don't worry about putting in an energy quota if you're not sure about the best way to solve your devious creation. I'll play it and figure something out. And if your level makes it into the final game, I'll be sure to credit you where appropriate.
Oh, and one last thing concerning energy quotas: let me know if you find a solution to a level that uses less energy than the "A" requirement, as that is supposed to be the minimum possible energy. It might be a little difficult to communicate about how to arrive at the new lower number, but we'll figure something out. Send me a video or something.

Things that I don't need feedback on:
Any bugs that have already been reported (please check the list on the patch notes page).
There is no sound in the game at this point.
There are only 12 levels, despite being many more on the level select screen.
The game has no intro animations and just abruptly drops you on the level select screen.
The buttons on the right side of the UI in the level editor don't do anything. Pay no attention to them.
Hmm, I thought there were more things to work on, but I guess not. Cool.

So, once you have e-mailed me asking to participate in the alpha, I will keep sending you new versions of the game as I fix bugs, add more levels and implement new features. That is, until you tell me to stop, which you should feel free to do if it just isn't your thing.

I'm excited. Are you excited? Make sure to e-mail me if you're excited: Cephalofair at GMail.


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