Seiken,
I played the game multi-player for the first time this weekend. It was great. We spent way too many hours trying to one up our own scores.
I have a few suggestions and wanted to know what you thought. I’m by no means a programmer, so I really have no idea of the feasibility of these ideas – but take them for what they are.
1. Have you considered letting a ship pick up multiple bombs? I think that one is at a slight disadvantage if they chose a bomb over a shield, but letting a ship have up to three of those deadly payloads on board could really prove to be something special. This would, in multi-player… give rise to different “roles” for players to fill. The extra bombs could even slow the ship down 5% for each additional payload it is carrying. Expanding on this “roles” concept - it would be neat if one ship in the group could have two shields instead of just one. Then we could have a Shielder, a Bomber, and a Magic Shooter as three almost distinct roles in the game. (Maybe you could pick up a double shield, but you would loose it if you picked up a magic shooter powerup)
2. I think that players should be able to step out of the game. If you had a 3-player game going, it would say “player 4 is on vacation”. Any if your buddy shows up late, he could hop right in and start playing with the group. Also, at any time, you should be able to take yourself out of the game (and rejoin later if you want). Because the Chaser boss (that one boss that breaks into smaller and smaller pieces - Cyan Hexagons – I believe) is easier to beat if you only have 1 player in play. So, basically, he drains all of the remaining lives from our group, then we are forced to rebuild after we defeat him. (Also, on a side note, there is no time to recover after the Chaser boss is defeated – the next group of guys comes too quickly.)
3. Another ability I thought of would be a hyperspace jump. By pressing C (or any button of the designer’s choice). Your ship would jump. Depending on what the designer wanted, it could be to a random point on the screen and the ship could be invulnerable for a moment (like when you respawan). OR, you could jump to a point where your pointer is pointing and press C again to complete the jump – maybe giving the player up to 2 seconds to choose where to jump to, or the game will force the jump.
4. Also my cousin (who has never played) and is used to commercially produced Wii games insisted that there needs to be a way to play over the internet. I am pretty sure this would be very difficult to implement and I like having everybody in the same room anyway. What fun would it be to read the thing at the end of the game when it shows the score that says something similar to “player # is a real swell guy.” If You are alone – right? You need to be in the same room to laugh at each other and coordinate who will grab the powerup. So, don’t listen to my cousin – you don’t need Internet play – it won’t enhance the experience… it would only take away form it.
5. What about giving each player a name instead of Player 1 and slightly different ship designs to choose from?
Thank you so much for making this game. It's the best one on the Wii so far.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2009 07:32PM by bagbro2.