[BETA] Dawn of the Hulker

[Awoogamuffin]

Hey there Todorus!

Well I had another bash at it - the thing is, the tutorial for the game is broken on my machine (it just sort of gives up on me), but reading your word file helped me understand some of the mechanics more, and I upgraded my ship accordingly and was able to advance.

And now I'm really enjoying it! I think there's an initial hump that could keep a lot of potential fans away. I'm not sure what could be done to avoid that, but more and more I'm convinced that the game could do with a slightly faster pace (that said, it isn't horrifically slow paced like a lot of strategic flash games out there).

After playing for a while, here are the small things that would help if you could change them:

- Some way of dealing with the mouse leaving the stage - could it not just keep the mouse's last position before it left and act as if it were still there? That way scrolling and selecting multiple units would be much easier.

- Time and time again I frustratingly accidentally deselect all of my units, and it's quite difficult to select them all again. I would really, seriously appreciate a "select all" key. Obviously, being able to group them (like in age of empires) with the number keys would be even better!

- As I said, my poor mac sometimes gets unhappy, but in the zoomed out screen things run faster, so I spend a lot of time on that screen - it would be cool if I could get the status display (shields and whatnot) while hovering over ships on that screen.

I specifically chose points that I imagine shouldn't be too difficult to change, and are more to do with the interface than changing the game mechanics. As for other ideas that could help in a potential sequel, well I'm going to keep them to myself until I complete the game, but I've already got a few ideas.

Here are the things I like so far:

- The navigation screen: I think you've intelligently distributed the combat points to encourage exploration for the next "juicy target" before I take on more difficult planets.

- The movement: especially in the zoomed out screen, the movement of the fighters is really fluid and attractive. Mesmerising stuff!

- The gradual acquisition of new technologies / crew members: a classic way to get a player hooked, and you've pulled it off wonderfully.

So I still need to finish it before I give a final verdict, but the impression is much better now than it was last time. Unfortunately this is a problem for you - if the beginning doesn't get players hooked, you'll get far fewer repeat hits. Maybe a bit of work needs to be done to find a way around this. Here are a few ideas:

- integrate the tutorials into the first few missions - instead of a separate part of the game, have the first few levels guide the player through his actions.

- faster pace (have I mentioned this before?)

- maybe before the first planet, have somebody tell the player what he should do in the engineering screen to get the best out of the new technologies - this might put the player on the right track, and get him more excited about getting more stuff (the first time I played, I was a little confused by it all). This idea is really just an extension of the first.

I also have a few questions for you:

Is there any penalty for using more powerful guns on my ship? As far as I can tell, the blue guns are the most powerful so far, and the tripple barrel most powerful of those. Seeing as there seems to be no price / weight system, what's to stop me just putting the most powerful option in each gun slot? If there is nothing stopping me, why bother having the engineering screen at all? Do you see what I mean?

Is there any way to customise my destroyers?

I saw in your tutorial that I can move ships with the m key, but this doesn't seem to work... it would be nice if I could move my destroyers more easily, so that I can try to position them for an attack.

Is it true that my mother ship only uses its big guns if facing the enemy? If so, it would be nice if I could control the ship's rotation, because I often find it rotating so slowly that it never faces the enemy on a bombing movement path, and therefore never uses its strongest weapons...

Anyway, I'll play some more and give more feedback in the future. good job!