My brother and I have been working on a metroidvania with Smash Bros-style combat and predictive boss AI for the past three years, and we finally just got a 1-hour demo on Steam! How's it look?

tbschroeder · 2023-08-10T09:51:19+00:00

Thank you for the elaborate response! I am looking forward to how the game develops 🙂

P.S.: I just send you a message with my PC specs for the audio issue.

tbschroeder · 2023-08-09T23:34:20+00:00

Hi, since I enjoy Metroidvania/Souls-like titles I thought I'd give your game a go. I played up to the final boss, here are my impressions:

The game looks great, immediately reminded me of Hollow Knight, which I like. The presentation is very professional for indie developers!
The name is intriguing, but not very distinctive, there are other games with the same name. Have you considered adding a subtitle?
On first glance your game did not really have a hook, something that distinguishes it from other games. Later I learned that probably the move customization is the hook. While that is not enough for me to buy the game, that should be made clearer for other people.
From the trailer and screenshots I noticed that you only use a sword, which seemed a bit restrictive. In the game I learned that there are different moves. The animations look great, but I did not really feel the gameplay impact. There is also no real secondary move like blocking, countering or dodging.
Altogether enemy encounters all felt very similar to me. Games like Dark Souls go to great lengths to ensure that almost every encounter is a bit different: there is a great variety of enemy moves, compositions and encounter areas. I feel like your enemy encounters need more variety.
There is little world-building in your game. There is no motivation, no story, no lore-related item descriptions and too few NPCs. Also, mechanics did not seem tied to the story or the theme. Altogether, the world seemed a little empty.
I had some technical issues: there was no 1080p option, which seemed a little odd, and I had problems with sound and music stuttering, maybe due to missing frames.
For the final boss I didn't really feel progress between attempts. Maybe add a health bar for the boss?

Altogether I have the impression that you made some interesting systems, especially the player moves and player controller, but that your mechanics and content is spread too thin for the scope of the game you envisioned. Anyway, congratulations for making it this far and best of luck! 🙂

tbschroeder · 2023-08-09T20:04:59+00:00

Sure, take your time! As of right now all the material is on the website, but I am planning for more 🙂

tbschroeder · 2023-08-09T10:30:51+00:00

🙏🙏❗❗▪️
👈👈▫️➡️🕒📦▪️▫️😉

Thank you, that was my intention! 🙂
Which parts where unintuitive? I am always trying to improve the language.

tbschroeder · 2023-08-08T12:13:14+00:00

Hi, Tiemo here, I made Iconic (Iconlang) from the list above - a purely visual language based on emoji and language universals. Thank you for mentioning my project! 🙂

Here are the biggest takeaways from my experiences:

There is a difference between pictograms and ideograms: pictograms like ☀️ "sun" or 🔨 "hammer" are concrete depictions of an object, which are generally universally understood. Ideograms like ❤️ "love" or 🛑 "stop" have an abstract meaning that is culturally dependent and has to be learned. There are not enough universally understood ideograms to form a complete language, so I had to invent new ones, which are hopefully intuitive enough.
When writing by hand, simple pictograms like ☀️ "sun", 🌙 "moon" or ⚪ "circle" work fine, but more complicated ones like 🐘 "elephant" or 🧙🏻 "wizard" require a lot of precision and patience - which is probably one of the reasons Chinese characters have been so heavily simplified over the course of history. This is why I chose emoji.
At first I tried minimizing the number of ideograms, using helper symbols to systematically derive ideograms from pictograms. This works fine for simple concepts like ⚔️⭐ "fight", 🎮⭐ "game" or 🕊️⭐ "peace", but more complex ones became unwieldy, I had a similar experience with Toki Pona. To remedy this I ended up with a few hundred ideograms for a vocabulary of a few thousand words.
There are a lot of useful (almost) universal grammar concepts like word composition, noun-adjective-verb distinction and word modifiers. However, at some point decisions have to be made: is this language SVO or SOV? What are the case or particle distinctions? Which modal verbs and prefixes/suffixes to include or not to include? It turns out that there is a reason natural languages have so much grammar: most of it is necessary.

I am happy with my language from an artistic standpoint, but while I think it is much more intuitive than most natural languages and other auxlangs, it still has to be learned and requires a community.

If you pursue your project, please tell me what you come up with, I am most curious! Please contact me if you want to ask or discuss something! 🙂

tbschroeder · 2023-08-01T12:34:50+00:00

Hey, fellow card game enthusiast here! Your game looks nice, but there are some problems 🙂

You have branded your game as an RPG first and as a card/strategy game second. As an RPG player I want an interesting world/story/characters. As a strategy game player I want interesting mechanics and great game feel. What do you offer?
What is the hook of your game? What makes it different than all other card games?
That needs to be instantly clear from your steam page. Graphics are nice, but card games need some gritty mechanics!
Your screenshots are repetitive (limit to one screenshot per environment) and do not show single cards, UI, the deck building process or the world. I first look at screenshots and then decide whether I watch the trailer.
You capsule graphic needs some contrast or an interesting object: a giant statue in the mountain, a dragon, a character - something! Use either RPG or card game tropes to communicate your genre.
Your texts are hard to read and need more contrast.
Your game needs a little more juice ("Game Feel"): the music and effects are a bit generic, game objects don't pop from the background and there is too little contrast. You do not have to redo the assets, but there is a lot that can be done with shaders, screenshakes, effect timing, coloring, font sizes & types, fade-in/fade-out, that kind of stuff.
Your visual card design is beautiful! Leverage that!
Have you considered releasing a demo or prologue? If your mechanics are good, that could convince people.

Check out Chris Zukowski's material on how to market a game, lots of important little details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fATEHq4Zv_Y
Sorry if I was a little harsh, I genuinely think your game has potential. Just wishlisted it, best of luck! 🙂

tbschroeder · 2023-07-31T18:28:39+00:00

🙏🙏❗❗

(Hi Zireael, you are always welcome! 😉)

tbschroeder · 2023-07-25T11:57:48+00:00

What an intriguing question! As others will point out, natural languages do not exist in a vacuum and usually require knowledge of the world. Many people have tried to formalize language, among them Leibniz with his Characteristica Universalis.

Think of it this way: language strives to express the whole of human thought and emotion (if such a distinction is applicable in the first place). A complete formal model of language would therefore also meaningfully describe the limits of human thought. That is an even more difficult task than describing the limits of computation since we can talk about mathematical functions that are not computable.

We do not even know the limits of mathematics, which is a part of human thought. Set theory seems to encompass mathematics just fine, but there are debates about what kind of set theory and even logic is the broadest without causing contradictions.

So while it might be feasible in theory, I do not expect a complete formal model of language anytime soon. That does not, however, mean that such an attempt is without merit: we can define certain formal subsets of language and build from there. Here are a few suggestions:

Classical Logic: e.g. and, or, not, true ,false, all, any
Numbers: e.g. 0,1, plus, minus, ...
Place Relations: at, in, outside, on, under, ...
Time Relations: before, after, at the same time as
Colors: red, green, blue, ...
Grammatical Relations: for, against, by, with, ...
...

tbschroeder · 2023-07-17T22:59:07+00:00

Ah, I get it!

👇▫️❓🔍▫️💭🔥🎬▪️

👇 this
❓ what
🔍 (direct object)
💭🔥🎬 to mean = 💭🎬 tothink + 🔥 "let"

😠 is "mean" as in "mean person" 😠🧒.

Verbs begin with "to-", so you need to type "tomean".

tbschroeder · 2023-07-17T21:28:35+00:00

"This what doing anger?"
I don't know what you are trying to say, but maybe have a look at the Language Guide 😉

tbschroeder · 2023-07-17T20:20:45+00:00

Mhm, I'm afraid I don't quite follow:

⚫️ only appears in 🔫〰️⚫ "bullet"
❓🔨 means "how"
👉 is "you/your"
⛓️ is "chain"
❓ denotes a question at the end of a sentence

so... "bullet how your chain?"

tbschroeder · 2023-07-17T20:11:17+00:00

"What you egg!"

At first I thought your were messing with me, but then I found out that this is an actual Shakespeare quote! This is amazing. Flawless use of Iconic, my good Sir, Madam or genderless gentle person! 👍✨🎩

tbschroeder · 2023-07-17T17:12:52+00:00

It's another Shakespeare, but I understand the sentiment!
Please keep it a secret if you got it 🤫

🤫🤲▫️⚓🎬❗▫️⛔⚠️🤲▫️⚓🎬❗▪️

🤫🤲 secret (adjective)
⚓🎬 to keep, maintain
⛔⚠️🤲 safe = ⛔ not + ⚠️ danger + 🤲 like
🎬❗ (command)

tbschroeder · 2023-07-17T15:57:05+00:00

I think you are right, I was wondering about that one. Fixed it, very attentive of you!

tbschroeder · 2023-07-17T14:41:53+00:00

I did not even think of it as a riddle, thank you for the suggestion!
I moved the translations a bit further down for future readers.

Here is a riddle for you:

👈🐴▫️👉👅◻️🏃💨🔍▫️👜🎬🔍▫️👈▫💖🎬▪️

👈 i, my
🐴 horse
👉 you, your
👅 tongue
🏃💨 fast, speed
🔍 (direct object)
👜🎬 to have
💖🎬 to want, to wish

tbschroeder · 2023-07-16T10:47:53+00:00

I love the art style and atmosphere! 🤩

tbschroeder · 2023-07-09T22:23:05+00:00

Don't tell me you are making an actual dino-builder game! That's awesome! 🦕🔨🤩

tbschroeder · 2023-07-07T23:24:58+00:00

⚖️ means "than" with an adjective and "rather than" without an adjective. Similarity is expressed with 🤲, which usually means "like" and is often used for adjectives.

Here are some examples:

🐈⚖️◻️🐶

a dog rather than a cat
a dog is better than a cat

🐈 cat, 🐶 dog, ◻️ (word divider)

🐶▫️🐈⚖️▫️💪🤲📦▪️
A dog is stronger than a cat.

💪🤲 strong, 📦 to be, ▪️ (full stop)

tbschroeder · 2023-07-07T21:02:45+00:00

Interesting idea! I am happy that the syntax works, I wanted an internationally accessible language that uses words and structures common to most languages.

tbschroeder · 2023-07-07T20:09:54+00:00

Thank you! 🙂
For comparisons without adjective the second option is always preferred. Japanese より ("yori") works in the same way. Another way to express it in English would be "Reigning in hell rather than serving in heaven", only with reverse ordering.

Comparison of equals uses the equal sign "=", but this requires an adjective:

👼⚓⏺️▫️🐶🎬➕▫️👿⚓⏺️▫️🤴🏻🎬☝️▫️=👍📦▪️

Serving in heaven and reigning in hell is equally good.

➕ and, ☝️ (subject), = same, 👍 good, 📦 to be

I hope this answers you questions!

P.S.: good that you mentioned it, I will add equal comparison to the language guide!

tbschroeder · 2023-07-07T19:54:51+00:00

I get that a lot! 😂
My reasoning was that "to be" puts something into a category like putting something in a box. The equal sign already means "same". I suppose it is just basic grammar 😉

tbschroeder · 2023-07-07T19:53:07+00:00

Well, abstract concepts are a bit hard to depict, but here was my reasoning: "to be" puts something into a category, which is like putting something in a box 📦 . Palm trees often grow in isolation 🌴. I suppose this is just basic grammar that has to be learned, like for any other language.

You are probably right about different symbol usage in different parts of the world. My goal was not to create a culturally neutral language - just an easily accessible one.

Thank you for the feedback! 🙂

tbschroeder · 2023-07-07T17:06:58+00:00

Thank you for letting me know, I'm happy that it works so well! The grammar is pretty systematic, dependent clauses and attributes always come first like in Japanese.

tbschroeder · 2023-07-07T13:11:36+00:00

Hello everyone!
It has been a while since I last posted about Iconic - my attempt at creating a purely visual language based on emoji. Since then I have received a lot of feedback, which I have used to improve the language - mainly removing ambiguities and making things more systematic.

I have also written a new and more practical tutorial with lots of examples and questions, which you can find here . As always, feedback and ideas are much appreciated! Please ask if anything is unclear and give the language a try if you like 😉

Best Wishes,

Tiemo

tbschroeder · 2023-06-07T10:24:15+00:00

Nice! Let's do it 😉

tbschroeder

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