| Agreed with the design criticisms; disagree strongly about 2 and 3. It sounds like you might not be in the target audience for these sorts of games. I absolutely loved games like Theme Hospital, Sim Tower, Roller Coaster Tycoon - all games which are about rather mundane businesses, certainly not "taking over a galactic empire" or "taking over the world". The idea of a Sim Taxi/Taxi Tycoon game on real streets with google-maps street-level views of my taxi routes tickled me. That enough was a "hook". Granted, there are probably more gamers like Mystalic than gamers like me, which is one of the reasons why Civ II and Imperium Galactica sold more copies than say Theme Hospital. Which market you go after should depend on your business model. That said, here's some more criticism (hopefully constructive!) from someone who buys the idea but not the execution (yet): 1. You badly need a strong artist/designer to give the game its own personality and charm. One common thread around these quirky business games like Theme Park or Gazillionaire is that they are funny and amusing to look at, which is important when large parts of the game are spent simply watching your business run. 2. Your interface has far too much clicking. Why do I have to click on "cars" to send my one taxi somewhere? Why can't I see how tired my driver is just by hovering over his cab? Etc,etc. 3. Your tutorial isn't very helpful. Not only does it look like experts-exchange.com instead of a game (see #1), but because it's all in one place instead of some bright AJAX popups showing you around the interface, I don't even learn where my vehicle page is because I click the link in the tutorial. Why there should be a "vehicle page" that isn't clearly marked by a brightly colored icon of a car is another matter, but at the end of the tutorial I still had no idea what I was doing. 4. I don't think what appears to be your core gameplay mechanic of trying to "find the best route" by clicking a bunch of short-distance waypoints to form a route to your passenger and the destination is very fun. The fact that your interface is on top of a Google Maps mashup only reminds me of how a computer could do a better job than me at this. When I thought "taxi sim", I immediately thought that the game would be about keeping your taxi busy and managing the balance of (a) getting people there fast by avoiding traffic (you are using google maps for a taxi game and don't incorporate traffic?!) in hopes of getting better and more tips and (b) getting people there slowly, choosing the bad routes, and stalling in traffic, just like it seems my cab drivers always do, risking fewer tips but ensuring you're getting a fare for every mile you drive. Or how about choosing what areas of town to patrol to try and snag fares from rival firms, rather than be presented with a plain old list of customers to click on? I'm not saying that any of the above gameplay suggestions will fix the game or are even necessarily a good idea, but if you're dead-set on trying to make a company based off of one game (as opposed to a site hosting or aggregating games), you'd better spend lots of time brainstorming and refining your core gameplay and making it fun before even worrying about your logo or artwork or front page videos or any of the other stuff suggested by either me or the parent. Spend some more time playing Railroad Tycoon and Sim Golf and how about Crazy Taxi, which you can find for like $10 for your PS2, with a critical eye towards what makes those games fun. |