OK, needs work
I saw this highlighted on Swiss TV and really wanted to give it high ratings to support a Swiss app developer, and because I love brick breaker games, but it needs more work and polish, especially the controls.
- The location on the bat at which you let the ball hit the bat is ignored, and every brick breaker game worth its salt totally takes that into account. You basically can't aim your shots and it's totally random where the ball goes. Sometimes the ball also bounces off bricks in a weird and unexpected way. Not fun. The ball movement needs to be more predictable.
- The bat needs to be moved up a bit, because right now it's at the bottom edge of the screen, and during hectic gameplay it often happens that the finger moves below the touch-sensitive area and then the bat is stuck and you lose. Very frustrating. You can keep your finger above the bat to always stay in the touch area, but that just feels wrong.
- The music is horrible (really cheesy e-guitar), and it's on by default. It really doesn't add anything to the gameplay, so it should go, or at least be disabled by default. Instead, spend the effort on the interactive sound effects.
- The menus use lots of superfluous animations that slow down the interaction. The sliding effect also cuts the UI elements in weird locations, sometimes it shaves off just the bottom few pixels. The animation really has to go. The menus would gain a lot if the sliding animation were eliminated completely or replaced by a simple fade.
- Overall it doesn't look like a professional designer had a hand in this: the on/off buttons on the settings screen are rendered on top of their labels. The typography is really awkward. The main screen has a wavy animation of the text that doesn't add anything and looks glitchy when it starts.
So in summary:
- Refine the gameplay physics and interaction
- Hire a professional designer
- The location on the bat at which you let the ball hit the bat is ignored, and every brick breaker game worth its salt totally takes that into account. You basically can't aim your shots and it's totally random where the ball goes. Sometimes the ball also bounces off bricks in a weird and unexpected way. Not fun. The ball movement needs to be more predictable.
- The bat needs to be moved up a bit, because right now it's at the bottom edge of the screen, and during hectic gameplay it often happens that the finger moves below the touch-sensitive area and then the bat is stuck and you lose. Very frustrating. You can keep your finger above the bat to always stay in the touch area, but that just feels wrong.
- The music is horrible (really cheesy e-guitar), and it's on by default. It really doesn't add anything to the gameplay, so it should go, or at least be disabled by default. Instead, spend the effort on the interactive sound effects.
- The menus use lots of superfluous animations that slow down the interaction. The sliding effect also cuts the UI elements in weird locations, sometimes it shaves off just the bottom few pixels. The animation really has to go. The menus would gain a lot if the sliding animation were eliminated completely or replaced by a simple fade.
- Overall it doesn't look like a professional designer had a hand in this: the on/off buttons on the settings screen are rendered on top of their labels. The typography is really awkward. The main screen has a wavy animation of the text that doesn't add anything and looks glitchy when it starts.
So in summary:
- Refine the gameplay physics and interaction
- Hire a professional designer
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