Screenshots below

Okay, I'm finishing up Toggles (a game I posted in the depot a few months ago) and I've made some games using Game Maker that I might package all together and send out to different forums and whatnot. You know, give them a variety of games to play?

Anyway, both of the games made in Game Maker are based off the tutorials from the Game Maker website, so there really nothing special. If you've never heard of the Game Maker, it's not a good tool to flex your programming skills, but is great to flex your design skills. With it, you can create game engines quickly and get to the fun part of making content right off the bat. Since members of the other forums probably don't care how I made the games, I figured some fun little games to add to the package would be a good idea.

Okay, now that I'm done with that, I want to see how my design skills turned out. This game is called MyMaze (although in-game it's just Maze since I ripped the title screen) and is part of the beginner tutorials. The game engine built in the tutorial sets up the framework for a Chips-like game or Adventures of Lolo (of which I ripped some music for).

How does the flow of the game feel? Mainly, my concern is the learning curve. Too steep? Too shallow? I've designed it with the intent of gradually getting harder, but every once in a while go back in difficulty somewhat (if it keeps getting too hard to finish the levels, it'll just be increasing in frustration). For example, level 30 is really hard, but level 31 is almost fool-proof.

That being said, there's currently 44 levels and I'm planning on stopping at 50. I'm not asking you to play through all 44 (because they do get pretty hard), but just enough to get some feedback from you. PM me for hints to certain levels.

And here's the binary for the game. Sorry, I have no idea about the compatibility to other OS's besides Windows with Game Maker.

MyMaze V1.0

And some screenshots!
http://comp.uark.edu/~spsilve/games/maze1.JPG
http://comp.uark.edu/~spsilve/games/maze2.JPG
http://comp.uark.edu/~spsilve/games/maze3.JPG

[edit]
And here, before people complain, on the bottom, there's a section that says what key you have. There's suppose to be yellow, green, and blue keys, but they are all labeld "G", but with the right color. Just a mistake on my part, will be fixed.

Are you sure?

Man your fast.

Ah, they work now.

So let's see...either:

1) It's a Game Maker game, so nobody want's to try it out.
2) My original post is too long.
3) The game is too difficult.
4) The game doesn't look good enough to download (although this isn't about graphics, it's about level design).
5) Nobody has the time.
6) Someone did play it, but just didn't feel like responding.

Other problems?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warnock%27s_Dilemma .

I got to level 5, and there I couldn't figure out the ghost's (or sock's ) movement pattern to bypass it. I was bored anyway, so I quit. The previous introductory levels were ok, I think.

1) I personally don't care what program was used.
2) True, I didn't read all of it, and skipped to the screenshots instead
3) It's ok I guess, but I quit quite early in the game, so I'm not sure how difficult does it get.
4) True, the walls look terrible, but I downloaded it anyway, just to try it out.
5) I do.
6) At first

Ah ha, so it's too boring/easy. Yeah, here's how it works...kinda:

Levels 1-9: Easy, introducing different concepts of the game.
Levels 10-19: Medium, some challenges.
Levels 20-30: Hard, with some very difficult puzzles.
Levels 31-39: Medium, some new concepts with some challenging levels inter-mixed.
Levels 40-End: Very Hard, puzzles that take 10-20 minutes to complete, even when you're constantly moving. There are some Medium difficult levels mixed in here...

He bounces off of walls but every once in a while changes to a random direction. Yeah, level 5 can be annoying if he happens to bounce right to you.

My apologies, I tend to ramble...

Too boring then, eh? I should give a cheat code so you can get right to the fun levels. Of course, this won't matter if you don't really like puzzle games.

Thanks.

The screenshots look promising, I'll check it out later!

Don't get me wrong, I like puzzle games. But I didn't have that much time when I played, the game didn't quite compel me with anything new, and the ghost was annoying. And it isn't that he killed me - not once. He just hanged out in the two corridors in the top right corner of the screen, where there is no way to bypass him. I waited for about one and a half minute for him to go somewhere else. Eventually, I figured that his movement is somehow related to the movement of the player, but couldn't find any corelation (now I know there isn't one). At that point I wasn't enjoying myself enough to play further.

Now that's some good feedback.

Here's what I'm going to do, I'm going to move the door down to the beginning of the long hallway that leads to the end goal. This way, the ghost can't get stuck down it unless you open the door for him.

The ghost is the only enemy that has a chance for random movement. All the other enemies (and there's a total of 7 different enemies (as of now)) have predictable movement.

The design isn't bad, but in my opinion not very good either. I don't like the random movement of the ghosts. I don't know much about level design, but I personally didn't find most of the levels much fun (I gave up at level 10, which seemed too hard compared to the levels before). I don't know if it's possible to save games (I saw the load option but no save option), but there should be automatic save points, maybe every 5 levels or so. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game, but could be better.

EDIT: I see now that F5 saves. But anyway, there should be save points that give you the initial 3 lives back. I think it would be better this way, then to be able to save at any point.

Thanks, Vasco.

So the ghost is really that annoying, eh? Fortunately, he doesn't show up in too many levels.

Yes, level 10 is the first truly challenging level in my opinion. Its caption is, "What have you learned?" It takes all the components from the previous levels and makes one puzzle.

The other night, I watched my brother play for an hour all the way to level 20. I got some good ideas at where he was having challenges and what was too easy, so I'll try to put in some more modifications.

I'm going to try and add some more depth/purpose to the game that should hopefully overcome it's lack of fun. For example, I'm thinking of starting the game in one room that has five different doors, the first one leading to level 1, the next to level 11, the next to 21, etc. When you beat level 1 through 11, you unlock the door to go to 11-20 and so on and so forth.

Also, I might add a simple little story to wrap over the game.

Thanks for the advice. I'm not going to make it the best game evar, but I will improve so people can at least make it past level 10.

Looks cool! Did "Game Maker" refer to "The Games Factory"?

Also, is Toggles currently in the depot?

Game Maker refer to Game Maker.

Oh. It looked like Games Factory, and I hadn't heard of Game Maker.

Yes, it's the only game I've submitted so far. I'm planning and hoping on releasing the newer, shiny version at the end of this weekend. All online scores are going to be reset for this new version.

As for MyMaze, I designed levels 46, 47 and 48 today. They are quite the doozies, 46 in particular. I can only imagine how difficult they are going to be (if anybody can make it to them) since I have a hard time beating them, even when I know the solution to the puzzle! I just have to design 2 more levels, but they're going to take me several hours.

Anyway, I've made several revisions to the game based on the feedback above. The new version (hopefully coming at the end of this week), will feature:

1) More tunes (you can only take that one song for so long...)
2) More sound effects. This is important especially for level 48.
3) The main room acts a lobby, with five different dungeons you can enter. Each dungeon contains 10 of the levels of the game. At the bottom of each dungeon is an artifact. In the lobby, there's an old man named Earl. Giving him the artifacts open the other dungeons, allowing you to continue your way through the mazes. All this basically adds a little more depth to the game, plus, it will save the game automagically every 10 levels.
4) The score is pointless, so instead, every 100 points you get a life!
5) There are coins that you can collect, but are usually in more difficult places to get. Getting coins unlocks secret levels and other easter eggs.

I hope some of you will like it.

Looks cool! I will download it after school.