Hi Xavier, > Don't hesitate to be critical - feedback is good, it would help us to improve!
I spend some time playing HackIt and I have some critical feedback if you do not mind ;) Several years ago (it was 2002 if I remember well) we had large web based game project. It was Mafia-style game. Unfortunately it is not functional any more (it was closed after ~3 years of work) but I've got a lot of experience working on it. Therefore I would like to talk about several problems I see: 1. Gameplay As far as I see you want to make game simple but fun. But even in this case it is not enough to have "hack" button and "chance" parameter to make it fun to hack sites. It should be interesting process that depends several parameters at least. Usually these parameters are: resources, weapon/ammo, health/power, skills/level. Balance between these parameters is very important. In our case these parameters could be: - Money. Why should I hack sites? Sites generate money, the more sites I hack, the more money I can get. - Hack tools. How to hack sites better? How to hack bigger sites? Invest money into new tools, hardware, software. Then better tools you have, the better chances to hack you get. - Hacker`s Skill. How my experience can help me? Spending more time to hack increases chances to hack but also increases chances to get noticed and fail. Balancing between these parameters will me it fun to play I believe. Also it is not enough to hack site, you should also protect it to avoid being stolen. When you hack site that is owned by someone else there could be tricky traps setup, that is what scan option would be useful form but not for getting know if site was hacked or not. Even site was not hacked by player it is owned by someone else and you still have to hack it. I would use scan option to get information about how site is protected. And that is what I need tools/software/hardware, skills and money as well. 2. Multiplayer game. You have a lot of players in game - make them know each other. Make it possible to see other players and their property, add friendship/groups options, make other players able to see activities of each other. Make it possible to trade sites. 3. Wired options. I do not actually understand why certain sites are parent/children for each other. People never think about sites in terms of distance between them. How google.com can be parent of itscript.com? What does it mean? This makes players confusing a lot. Tagging of sites is also wired thing I believe. Why hacking sites with same tag brings be bonuses? It is not logical from point of view of hacker. I believe that there better sites I hack (popular sites with good PR and Alexa rank) the more money they can generate. I think that it should be easy to understand and easy to play game, but it should be fun to play. You should have motivation to play more to get more achievements, to be able to fight with more skilled players and hack top sites. It was great experience working on mafia game several years ago, and I would be glad to take part in development of your game as well. So if you like my thoughts I would be glad to join work ;) -- Thank you Anton A. Chukhlomin www.itscript.com
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