NOMBZ: Night of a Million Billion Zombies!!!!!!

Tulkamir

Hey, demo for a little game we've done here at work. It's been one and a half months from concept to almost beta with only 4 devs and an outsourced music guy.

For more check out http://www.nombz.com

A kind of pre-release beta demo with three levels is available at:

http://www.nombz.com/demo/NOMBZ_Demo_Installer_v0.9.7.exe


The game still has some work to be done, which is why this is merely a "pre-release" demo.





Anyways, just thought I'd share. We'd love to hear any comments or feedback anyone has by the way!

Uly

: ) Gratz, Mitchie. I'll give it a shot later today.

pliang

Perhaps later

Emil Mujanovic

The title of the game is great, plus anything zombie related is generally covered in hot gooey winsauce.
I'll give the demo a run during my lunch break.
Congrats, dude.

-caseyjones

Steve Schulze

Thats quite a lot of zombies. Downloading now. Verdict shortly.

HonkyPunch

I like the title, I like the "KRILL!" thing.
Beyond that, I don't like it much. The graphics are interesting, but..
The game is oh so boring.

Neo_God

It's fun in a flash game sort of way, I really dig the music too.

Steve Schulze

You've got a nice sort of atmosphere going with the fog and lighting (this aspect was mentioned by both our art director and UI artist as they wandered by while I was playing too) and all of the ingredients of a simple, fun shooter, but at this stage I'm inclined to agree Jimmy. Its not really that much fun. Don't get downhearted though, because making it more fun should be just a matter of tweaking some numbers.

If I was doing the design I would:
*Sync the run speeds to the animation. If nothing else, you really need to fix this.
*Slow down the characters run cycle a little bit so that the
zombies are a greater threat.
*Increase the fire rate of the pistol by about 50%
*Increase the speed of the tyre iron by 100% and make it a one hit kill so that theres a clear advantage for getting up close and personal.
*Increase the number of zombies by about 2000%. The most enjoyable part of the game is when you've got loads of zombies baring down on you. I was actually running around deliberately kiting zombies to get big packs to battle through. Given how low poly everything is, you should have no problems having zombies pouring from everywhere. Think Crimson Lands with a slightly higher likelihood of survival.

That, I think, should turn the game from kind of mediocre to pretty good fun. Keep at it mate.

Slum

I havent checked it out yet, but by the name, i thought this was a new version of the HL2 mod... "Night of a million zombies" ...

Tulkamir

Thanks James and Casey, if you get around to it let me know. Same with you Pete.

Jimmies - I definitely can understand your point of view. It's certainly not for everyone, but if you have any more detailed crits on why you didn't enjoy it that'd be great. But yeah, I kind of expected that it wouldn't be for everyone.

Neo - Hah, well, that is in part what we were going for, so good I think. It's going to be for online download, so that is sort of the market we'd like to hit with it.

Jackablade - Thanks man. Great to hear the good comments on the art style . And thank you very much for the critiques. We're gonna be looking into everything you said. We're trying to figure out how to best balance it all (the animation/speed thing is forsure known issue). Problem is that we don't want to make the tire iron a powerful melee weapon as there is a chainsaw specifically for that later on, as well as a machine gun toting mailman, so we don't want to make the pistol too close to that. However if you are finding Mot (main character) a bit dull we're going to have to play with the numbers as you mentioned them a bit. Do you think it would help to change the demo around so the player gets to test out some of the other characters? (Machine gun, Letter Bomb, Molotov, Chain Saw, Healing, Steroids, Shotty, Taser)? We were kind of just making some of the initial levels avaliable, hoping to get people to buy to experience the rest, but if it's not attention grabbing we may have to change stuff around. As to increasing zombie numbers... haha, we are actually sadly already hitting the roof. Problem being that we're cpu bound, so the poly budget isn't what's holding us back (mainly it's all the ai's I think). The later levels do increase in amount quite a lot. We may have to look into making everyone more powerful anyways though so the initial levels are more interesting. Cause yea, more zombies is more fun! (The last level has obscene amounts)

Slum - Wow, none of us had even heard of that. Haha, crap, that's no good. NOMBZ is actually a spin off of a movie script our lead developer wrote a while back.

HonkyPunch

Sorry tulk, I got distracted and didn't have time to type detailed crits, but I agree entirely with Jackablade. I liked the zombie presence, but it felt a bit slow paced. My main question, though, is there a jump button?
Because if there is I've totally missed it.

Steve Schulze

At the moment the pistol really feels like a sidearm - the weapon you use if you run out of ammo for your real gun. If its the only gun you're going to get to play with as the hero character, its going to need to be more fun to use. Fun is one of those annoying, nebulous concepts though. Theres any number of different ways you could achieve it and you won't really know what works until you've tried it. You best bet is to look at other games that have used a similar mechanic succesfully and see why they work.

As for the tyre iron, if you're going to get a heavy melee weapon later, the logical thing to do would be to boost the speed of the tyre iron as a clear contrast - you have to whack a zombie a bunch of times to take him down, but you can do it quickly. Your chainsaw would take a long time to swing but would do a hell of a lot of damage when it connects.

Rhinokey

the overall art direction and the UI looks pretty good. everything else is relly amatuerish at this point. the overall stylized shape of the buildings is neat, but beyond that there is no interest in them. the game play is pretty terrible at the moment. for 4 months work this is not bad. but for a beta release it is pretty bad. i personaly would not show it to anyone outside for another 5-6 months

Tulkamir

Jimmies - No worries man. And a definite no to the jump button. Supposed to be more of a top down style game, no three dimensional movement.

Jackablade, thanks again man. Very helpful stuff. I'll have to try to get our lead dev to test some of that stuff out here.

Rhinokey, I definitely hear ya. I wish we had another 5 months to work on the thing. But there are some schedule and budget constraints that disagree. Bit of a tough situation.

Rhinokey

are you guys planning on selling this? for money?

gauss

why is everyone posting this kind of stuff in GD instead of P&P? so long as you're pimping something, you can post it there.

and i am definitely going to give this a try later

Tulkamir

Doh! Sorry, didn't really think of it as a pimp, thanks for moving it. Let me know what you think eh?

And rhino, we sure hope to, though that statement is not entirely encouraging on the matter. It's supposed to be sold as a budget title.

A new version is up with some updates as well. :P

Rhinokey

sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is not ready to sell yet. If I paid even 9.99 for this I would be pissed. The art is not the problem, its passable for a budget title. Your major problem is animation and gameplay, both seem very amatuerish, close to what I would expect out of a school project. People will enjoy a super fun game with shifty art. They will also sometimes enjoy a not fun game with super awesome art.

You have a moderately decent looking game with horrible gameplay and animations. Get your animators and gameplay guys and kick them in the ass. With some shine this could be good, but as is I would feel ripped off if I purchased it. Good luck, I wish you the best. Apologies for any gramatical errors, this was all typed on my iPhone.

Tulkamir

Rhino, no worries on that. I do agree with you on all of what you've said. I'll definitely talk to our animator and our lead dev about the animation and gameplay. Thanks for the honesty man.

Sage

The game is sort of fun. I find it annoying how you can really see the zombies it be nice if there was a bit more contrast there. They just blend into the background. The iron thing, well the arm swings are way too slow, I think you should just make it so it feels like you were playing the legend of Zelda 1 for example. You can out run the zombies but you can't swing fast. Just make so it takes a lots swings to knock the zombie down and then you can finish him with the gun. The biggest annoying thing I have is the damn camara. It sucks. They need to fix that. It clips and point the wrong way like crazy. Makes it very hard to see the blending zombies coming at you. If you increased the contrast of the zombies to the background a bit you can have the camera be higher so the player can see the game better. I think thats part of what makes the game not be fun. That and the fact that arm swings too damn slow. He runs like the wind but can't swing. I like the art how it is. You might want to color code the zombies read on the mini map so the user gets freaked when he sees what he has to go through. It might be helpful to give the user a clue as to where he has to go. Maybe show the entire map on the mini map thing for a few seconds before it starts and then have it go away.

Alex

MAUL0r

to spite all the harsh critiques so far, I thought it wasn't bad for an early beta. animations, more items, and some better camera code would really go a long way to improving this game. Please keep us updated because I'd like to see a more polished version!

Baddcog

Yeah, I had a bit of fun so far. Found the cop and the Lumberjack.

I really like the art style. I could see myself playing it now and then if it were more polished.

I think the others hit on the bad spots pretty well. Somewhat annoying camera clipping and spinning.
Zombies too dark. It's good that they come out of shadows but I can't see them when I'm so close I'm running into them.
Arm swing way too slow. But is cool that you can clock 3 zombies at once.

Map pointers a little misleading. I kept running by the alleyway the first exit was in 'casue it looked like I had to go far away to reach the white triangle.

I'd like some loadups along the way. Maybe a bit of health now and then so I could stay and kill more zombies before I die.

Again, I thought the art was perfect so it would be cool to play a more polished vers.

Smirnoffka

Style looks cool. D/L ing now.

dejawolf

http://www.lastblood.net/
zombie comic! maybe inspirational.

pliang

Had an issue that one I was gonna try it out...it's asking me to install Direct X 9.0 even though I already have it...perhaps you folks can look into it?

nkoste

same here.

notman

I agree with Rhinokey on this one. After playing for a bit, I started enjoying the game, but the animations are horrible, everyone looked like they were just skating around. Also, camera angle was driving me nuts. I wanted to be able to lower it down for a better angle. The set position it had, was causing my to look through buildings all the time.
It also seemed like there was no rhyme or reason as to how to kill the zombies. Is there a target location to hit these things?
Also, when I switched to the cop, Mot just kept dancing all over the damn place and flickering like crazy. He was shooting shit (usually before I could), but when I was just standing at the end, waiting for the level to finish, Mot was going spastic.

I think someone missed the collision box on the hydrants also. I was able to walk through them.

The reload needs a different sound. I thought I was out of ammo, and that sound was the sound of an empty clip. Then I spent a lot of time looking for an ammo reload. I didn't know I had ammo again already

I know it's in beta, and my critiques sound harsh, but I don't mean them to be bad. These are things that I think need to be polished up and you'll have a fun little game. Oh, and add some variety to the zombies... like a bigger zombie that takes more to kill, or maybe requires me to change to the cop (to use his taser). Something to break up the gameplay.

Lord McMutton

Having some problems playing the game. Whenever I try to play I get this:



Solutions?

Maddness

no online coop? but the art style looks awesome

pliang

We need more power ups!

StephenVyas

I liked the game, and there's a lot that I love about it but I won't go into that because it's not going to help build a better game..Above all else-it's not at that addictive state yet. Here are a few ideas to help move it towards that state.


Giving rewards to the player, on a small-rapid scale would increase the addiction level. eg After a certain number of zombie kills(say 20) or headshots, one of the characters would get a new attack combo/level up/new weapon/ just small rewards to keep the player interested in seeing what's next. A surprise of some kind.

Also, if you want to bait the player.. show them what they can get, but don't give it to them yet That'll increase motivation in the time when zombies are few and far between or you have another mission for the character to go on.
I like giving the character friends- its a big reward, maybe increasing the anticpatory reward after you pick up a friend would be a good idea. ie For the cop, he has run out of bullets, so before you can use him he needs to be taken back to the cop station to reload. Then he's all yours. Maybe increase the zombie difficulty level at that point or introduce some new challenge to the game, because it gets really easy at that point.

The zombies are great, though I would suggest a few things for them. Different types of zombies, fat and slow, skinny and a bit quicker.. some that jump out from nowhere, some that grab your friend and turn them into a zombie. Just a few little things to add variety to the zombies.
Good luck with the game, I look forward to seeing it on the shelves

Tulkamir

Hey guys, we're on christmas break here so there won't be any news on this for a while, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm taking all the suggestions and making up a word doc of everything that has been said. There are some great comments in here, and keep em coming! And thanks for all of the encouraging coments as well!

Also, thanks for posting the screen and stuff marshall. We've since repoduced the bug and are workin on a fix.