Reviews of Space Prisoner

Good and bad, here are the reviews I've seen so far.
All comments are appreciated - it really helps with the game development process.

  • By Qaeyious via email, Aug 25, 2009 (posted with a high score of 1,246,095):
    "There were a couple of times the game said that I still had prisoners trapped on asteroids, but there were no asteroids anywhere. During that time I if I stayed in one position my allied ships with nothing better to do kept running into me. I got a division by zero error once. Many more times, though not often, the prisoner would just keep circling my ship and not board. I swear those traitors are out to have me killed. I have an iMac with the big screen. It would be most helpful if I had all four views up at the same time. A radar screen would also be appreciated, along with how many allied ships and enemy ships. May we please have missiles? Something when we are all by ourselves facing more than a half dozen so we have a better chance of surviving. Either that or on the later levels give us a couple allied ships at the start when we don't have any. Or a shotgun blast option. Allied ships seem to get killed very quickly in the beginning of a later level. I can't be sure since they get killed offscreen, but I suspect they have problems with time management, spending too much time on the wall guns when enemy craft is also pursuing them. A shadow of an object on the closest wall would make it easier to gauge when the thing is going to bounce."

  • By Zeke Moore via email, Aug 9, 2009:
    "Just got to say, great job with the game. The controls and physics definitely had a learning curve, but now I cant stop playing. You should update the requirements though. I get 40-60 fps stable even on my 600mhz g3 iBook w/ 8mb Rage M3 graphics.
    Love the game..."

  • By Hamul via email, Jul 29, 2009 (posted with a high score of 167,535):
    "Space Prisoner is the most realistic and challenging dogfighting game I've ever seen! Kudos!"

  • By Timothy Gentle via email, Mar 29, 2009 (posted with a high score of 561,420):
    "Add a pause function, seriously..."

  • By Jeremy Russell via email, Mar 19, 2009 (posted with a high score of 1,325,175):
    "This game is addictive!"

  • By James Morris via email, Mar 19, 2009:
    "Just downloaded it via apple.com, and it's a lot of fun. I noted limited joystick support, and I hope you continue to develop and refine it. The primary difficulty I had with the game was its perception of null on the joystick, just south of center. This made maneuvering significantly difficult, and the Newtonian mode, as you might expect, was impossible. The stick is a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision Pro, which self-centers/nulls upon moving it through its full range of motion. It also has a twist axis, which would be awesome for roll control. Abstracting the controls and providing a manual Button/Axis assignment option would also be excellent, as users could customize control to their hardware and taste (the hat button would be great for switching views), without you having to provide mappings for every joystick known to man. Anyway, some thoughts, which may already be in the works. Good luck with your continued development, and I look forward to the results!"

  • By Laslow Olliefelde via email, Feb 14, 2009 (posted with a high score of 352,725):
    "Love the game, though it runs a little rough after level six. My machine must not be haus enough to build the graphics. Still though, the simplicity is the best part. It reminds me of a kind of aerial Spectre."

  • By Wolfgang Hefele via email, Feb 26, 2009 (posted with a high score of 546,735):
    "Thanks for this nice game!"

  • By Cyril Q via email, Feb 17, 2009 (posted with a high score of 1,124,010):
    "Thanks for the fun!!! Really cool game!!
    What I would like to change:
    1. A bit of a relaxing time after shooting down enemies. I mean hey! They just keep comming when you shot them. It takes a bit the fun out of shooting them if you know they're back in an instant
    2. Weapons!!! I want rockets double tripple hyperguns and everything!!! ;)
    3. about the Key assignments (until they get user-configurable) I would change the back-forth-roll settings into W and S for thrust and A and D for rolling. That way I'm sure I anyone can make cool maneuvers."

  • By Mem Dixy via email, Feb 15, 2009 (posted with a high score of 149,825):
    "There is definitely room for improvements. First off you need to make it so enemy ships don't keep regenerating otherwise the player can just hang out on the first level an score a bunch of points killing them. Also because the first level is the easiest to survive in (or so it seems) there is no reason to want to get the prisoners to advance to the next level because if you do you die faster and get a lower score. Another way to solve this problem is to have the prisoners run out of air so that they die and the player is forced to go to the next level (or maybe just make it so the enemies have an easier time hitting the prisoners). A feature that you should add is a identifying system (when you are so far away everything looks the same). It looks like you tried to do this with particles but it doesn't work very well (I guess the prisoners have a small white cross but it could be bigger and a color that doesn't look like an asteroid). Instead you should add a GUI element that draws a red box around enemies and a green box for friendly ships and a green one on prisoners (or whatever colors you want to use). Another problem is trying to pick things up (prisoners, giant health cubes) which seems to be caused because there is so much drifting around (that may be what you intended but it seems like it would be more fun if you could pick things up easer (maybe have it like the no friction option where you can turn on high friction)). Oh and it appears that the controls are based on what letter you pressed and not what key you pressed (So if someone like me is using the Dvorak keyboard layout then the game can't be played very well unless the player switches back to QWERTY layout). The game also needs the ability to be paused. And I noticed that the camera clips things out if they are too far away (as seen in third pictured, the green turret). If this is a performance optimization then you don't need it because the frame rate sure is high enough."

  • By Goof Kerling via email, Feb 14, 2009 (posted with a high score of 732,135):
    "nice game! dr. amy gooch must have given you high marks for this one..."

  • By Romain via the project blog, Feb 13, 2009 (posted with a high score of 470,005):
    "This game is quite addictive and difficult, I like it."

  • By Brian via email, Feb 7, 2009 (posted with a high score of 169,235):
    "This is a really nice game, simple and fun when I want to take a break and shoot things for a few minutes. Thanks for creating this game, and making it free!"

  • By hamsterfactor via email, Feb 6, 2009:
    "love your game, but it's kinda hard for me to play, since i don't have a u.s. keyboard and i can't remap the 'a' or 'z' keys. will you be adding key assignment?"

  • By "bernabauer" on bernabauer.com, Jan 25, 2009 (translated, with Google's help, from Portugese):
    "It is a game that could be quite interesting, but after playing a few minutes left me with a headache and frustrated. It is very reminiscent of Asteroids, but it is a little different. The best part of the game is that it is free and works very well on the Mac. The resolution is a bit strange, but the controls are simple. I mean, simple after you use "y" to invert the pitch controls. Another thing that helps a little is to change the camera. 4 camera views are available."

  • By "rackham" on versiontracker.com, Jan 20, 2009:
    "Spankin'. This one will leave you dizzy. 8-) Could use some polish, but is incredible fun! Would like to see screen resolution and key assignment settings."

    ©2009 by Tom Spreen

    Back to the Project Blog