Testing needed for Pinball game (with a twist)

[stuey16]

Hi all,

I'm developing a new game for Android that's a cross between Pinball and Bejeweled. It's entitled "Jewel Bash Pinball".

This game is still in beta, and I could use some help testing it. It's only well-tested on maybe a half-dozen different devices. I'd like to know a few specific things:

1.) Is the title stupid? I'm notoriously bad at naming my own work.
2.) Does it crash or draw improperly on your device?
3.) What about the gameplay or difficulty could be tweaked to make the game more fun or more addictive?
4.) Is the menu/help system helpful and intuitive?

The .apk can be found at this link:
http://wraith-software.com/jbp/JewelBashPinball.apk

There are in-game links to some market content that won't work (yet).

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

 

[Unforgiven]

Laoding it up now. I am running an LTE Samsung Galaxy Nexus on rooted ICS Stock 4.02.

 

[Unforgiven]

Gameplay was smooth for me but I had a crash at game over. I was on the wooden table. The hint popups are a little distracting but I only played one game, maybe I'll get used to them after a few more tries.

 

[Ezduzit08]

Game play was smooth, no crashes! Htc Rezound!

 

[stuey16]

Gameplay was smooth for me but I had a crash at game over. I was on the wooden table. The hint popups are a little distracting but I only played one game, maybe I'll get used to them after a few more tries.

pupkact, I looked at the stack trace for your crash. It looks like something wasn't initialized with Scoreloop. I can code around that to save any data about achievements locally that needs saving if the SL stuff hasn't been initialized. But it's really helpful to see stuff like this.

Re: the hints...should I just do away with them? Trying to teach the player about the game is tough (without forcing them to read a few long pages of text). I've struggled with how to present this, and Toasts seemed like the least invasive idea.

Thanks to everyone for testing so far!

 

[Unforgiven]

pupkact, I looked at the stack trace for your crash. It looks like something wasn't initialized with Scoreloop. I can code around that to save any data about achievements locally that needs saving if the SL stuff hasn't been initialized. But it's really helpful to see stuff like this.

Re: the hints...should I just do away with them? Trying to teach the player about the game is tough (without forcing them to read a few long pages of text). I've struggled with how to present this, and Toasts seemed like the least invasive idea.

Thanks to everyone for testing so far!

Ah, yeah, I did the no thanks on the scoreloop. As far as the hints, gameplay was going too fast to read them anyway. But like I said, let me play it a little more so I am concentrating on the game and not just getting used to it. Maybe when introducing a concept for the first time, a quick pause and click OK to continue with an option to turn tutorial mode off.

 

[stuey16]

The folks at Scoreloop recently pushed out a new version, and I'm still figuring out some of the scenarios. I have a new version of the game at that same link that should correct the crashing you found on Game Over.

I actually tried the pause/hint method. Everyone that tried it said it was way too disruptive, and just turned it off right away. Each hint only shows once, and I might try removing some of the hints that are more obvious/less important to make it less distracting for first-time players. But either way I appreciate the input...