Review of Astria Porta

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Aedan93

Astria Porta Review
By Aedan93 on 26 April 2010


Pros: I really like the possibilities of this game concept. You've got a decent foundation set up for a great game in the making.

Cons: Nasty bugs that tragically reduce playability in this great concept. =/

Great game concept. Great potential.

Half the success of a game is the original (or at least rarely done), gameplay concept and half is the execution of the concept. Although you got the idea from Stargate Atlantis, the Stargate Atlantis aspect is what I would call the hud concept. It's what is presented to the player rather than the system behind it. This is how I would define your game concept at the core of what it is:

Astria Porta is a universe exploration game in which the player competes with CPU players in various fields such as research, ship production, population management, and more. The interface system allows the player a graphical representation of the actions he or she makes that gives the feeling of being a commander looking at a computer interface that displays the position of planets and ships and gives the player information about said objects.

Some things to work on for a playable foundation:

1. Work through the "game freeze" bug
2. The click-to-open menus (meaning not the part of the hud that is always there) are allowed to have more than one open at the same time and sometimes they overlap, seriously inhibiting playability. This is a must fix.

Some ideas for a future fully-functioning game:

1. More variety: I like how you have the planets working with various terrains and production rates, but it could use to have even more variety such as different minerals/ores that can be produced that are required for certain ship types and things like that. Also you need some variety of ships/weapons/research. Right now your research is at ground level. A complicated and lengthy tech tree would be great for this game. This game screams the need for different kinds of weapons and ships. It needs ships with different specialized purposes as well as customization for the ships such as hull material (which would be produced from various planets that have different ores and minerals), weapon types, shield types, cargo space, etc. There's a lot you could do in this area to make it really awesome.

2. More gameplay: Right now, your gameplay is *great* but still very foundational. Increasing the variety of ships/weapons/research will give you a lot of ideas to increase gameplay. Another way to increase gameplay is to come up with an storyline (campaign as well as your default skirmish mode). Also I don't know if your skirmish mode has a goal set in place, but it needs one. Right now it's fun, but the game freeze bug masks what I'm guessing is a very incomplete game. Several goals could be come up with such as militaristic win, diplomatic/cultural win (you would need some sort of trade system in place as well as things *to* trade), and others that I can't think of at the moment. To add more variety you could add different secondary goals throughout the game to give a sort of "begin game, middle game, end game" progression.

3. Sound/Music: While I wouldn't say that sound is vital to this type of game as it would be to say an FPS game, sound and music really increases the enjoyment and adrenaline level. Good developers use sound and music to increase the intensity or calmness of a game.

4. Graphics: I actually like the way you work your graphics; it really gives the feeling of being a space commander looking at a computer generated map of the positions of everything.

5. Storyline: This is becoming a must for almost any game. This is the sort of game that would really benefit from a storyline.

6. Interface: The interface is of medium quality. It could really use some reworking to get it really good so that increases the quality of the gameplay rather than distracting from it (such as the menus overlapping).

Overall...I really like this game concept and I hope you continue working on it to build it into a full-fledged awesome game!

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