I hate to make a negative review, but I definitely have a few criticisms to make. But I'll be constructive.
To start, I appreciate the thought. Not having to code every aspect of the game is honestly pretty cool. Especially if I'm just thinking of making something off the fly. You can place down rudimentary shapes, some textures, and colors. Simple, but effective. Sounds can be turned on and off if you work with proximity and variables well enough, and you can more or less change the day cycle and weather either at the start or through its block statements. At the very least, it also gives a decent spread of props and objects that I can use for everyday use. Useful, especially if I don't have any models in mind at the time. Despite all of that, I honestly can't imagine making much of anything.
The few games I could think of that are possible to make with this are: Platformers, Adventure, and Puzzle games. Supposedly there's a gun prop, but that doesn't exactly open up a lot of avenues. Maybe a shooter if you can attach the gun to your character, somehow. And honestly, even that in itself opens another can of worms.
When the store page said: "VR +" I was figuring it was saying, "Yeah, we divide our games between Keyboard/Controller and VR compatibility". But there doesn't seem to be any distinction at all. Sure, it's cool that you can play it in VR, at all. But I already find problems with this setup as it is.
One of the bothering aspects is that you can't really change the camera much, or even the character for that matter. I was trying to create a mock UI start screen, but then I realized: "Wait, how am I supposed to prevent my character from moving?...How am I supposed to have the player use their mouse without the camera moving??" I played through a lot of the examples, and it hit me: You just straight can't. You're not supposed to. But for a game that's supposed to basically be an extremely easy game engine, there's a lot of sacrifice in what you can and can't do because of this limitation. And it's shown through one of the examples (which was broken because I couldn't even get out of it) where in the puzzle game if you didn't have the currency to buy any lives, it would teleport you to the "INSUFFICIENT FUNDS" room for basically an eternity. There's a checkpoint system too, but as far as I'm concerned I don't think a lot of them use it. If at all.
And again, appreciate the thought, but the music creator is...much to be desired. It's one instrument, at one kind of beat-per-minute, for maybe a minute or so, with only quarter notes to spare, on repeat. Look, at this point, I already know how to make music, and I would not be against making a small little track to import into the project. Unfortunately, that's where there's another problem: You can't upload anything. Having these little mini-creator tools wouldn't be so much of a problem if I could just transfer files, even files I borrow like Mozart or something just so I could have some placeholder music. And I DO notice the sound player, but it still bothers me that I can't just use something of my own. But hey, if the creation tools gets better, like, a LOT better, then maybe I wouldn't need to upload anything at all. But boy that is a road of its own.
And don't get me wrong, it's impressive for what we have here already, but $13 for an incomplete game engine? At that rate, I might as well use a real game engine like Godot and just make it already. And that's completely free. I can at least create a start menu with THAT.
With that said, I do understand that this game is a work-in-progress, and I do apologize if I'm being a little harsh with this. But, maybe with what I list, you can add it to your roadmap, and just work on a single feature at time.
Suggestions to make:
- Make a labeling system for each game. If you're going to allow VR/PC compatibility to happen, I think it will greatly help to make sure that any games shared are labeled correctly for the future. This would also prevent any future problems when players complain that a game isn't VR-friendly despite what the platform is supposedly for. But I really don't think ALL games have to be PC and VR compatible simultaneously.
- Create a camera system and add it to the block statements. Regardless of what game is being made, it should be important that the camera doesn't need to be first-person all the time. Allowing it to change can allow for things like menus, cutscenes, gameplay changes, and more. It would just be a pretty crucial component to add next, in my opinion.
- Player character and controls/control remapping. As I've mentioned before, sometimes you want a 3rd-person perspective, which means that you'll be seeing your character for the first time. Other times, you might enter a vehicle, get ambushed by an enemy, or not exist at all. In all of those circumstances, it's important to either take control away from the player, change the nature/appearance of the player itself, or just change the controls of the player. This would also open up what would be possible to achieve in terms of gameplay and presentation. With this setup, you could potentially make a rhythm game on its own when you pair it up with what's already here. But that's just an example of what you could do.
- Work on the creator tools, preferably one at a time. I say this mostly towards the music creator, but also, maybe you'd want players to create their own models? If so, that's a whole other thing to work on. But since you already started with this music one, just focus on that one first until it's better, THEN switch to another tool, if you really want to add another creator tool, that is. I don't think it's wholly necessary, but it would add to this being a quick-to-use game engine. Alternatively...
- Figure out how to upload files and use them. I'm sure it was already a challenge trying to figure out how to upload models, select them, and then put them into the environment. But to be honest, that part should already cut a lot of the hard part out. But if you can work on uploading ONE kind of file type into it, then moving on to each upload file type, you can either cross out the suggestion above, ignore this one, OR...combine the two together. There's nothing wrong with having both. I just think it would be neat if one or the other was finished first. At least with this suggestion, you can basically leave a lot of the hard work up to your players. But if you don't think that's enough (or should be allowed), then maybe just focus on creator tools. Either way, it's going to take a bit to figure out, but I do think already having a menu for selecting props should already cut out some time.
- Not super important, but could be cool: Have example games that demonstrate each genre type. They don't have to be long, but playing through them gave me a pretty good idea of how much you can make with it...which is little. But as you add and improve the game, I think you'll find that having these example games will inspire players to do more. Not to mention, it can help give an idea of what players are capable of making with it.
Little word of warning though, I do think there's a possibility of copyright-infringement when being made by players haphazardly. Plus, the more freedom people have with the tools, the bigger the chance one of them might make something rather unsavory. I doubt you really want to be safeguarding all of these games. I don't think it's a worry right now, but it might be worth looking into later. Maybe Steam Support can give suggestions on what to do about that. But hey, maybe that'll only come up when people start sharing games en-masse, like the steam workshop or something.
Anyways, I hope this was helpful, and I wish you luck on this project.
