I think this game is a real class act, especially amidst the Sea of Dreck that I find in Community Games.  It's definitely a lot better than many of the XBLA games I've paid 800 points for.  It is definitely 400 points well spent.

But that doesn't mean I don't have ideas about features I would LOVE to see added in a sequel:


Level Saving - Sometimes I may be working on a level. Sometimes I may be proud of my solution and want to see it again.


Adventure Mode Restriction - One of the things I think is cheap about Adventure Mode is that, if you don't like the level you're presented with, you can quit and restart and get a brand new randomly generated level.  And if you don't like that one, you can repeat the process until you find one you do like.

In a sequel, I'd love to see the game save the last <n> generated puzzles for the current Adventure Mode level, and, if the user keeps quitting, the game would cycle back to the first puzzle again.  Make the player pick one of these if he wants to go on.


Level Builder - I'd love to create my own puzzles.  As an added bonus, I'd love to be able to share them with friends over XBL. Posting or downloading user created levels on a server!  That would be the cat's meow.  I realize that this may is three different degrees of "feature wish".


Co-op Mode - Both local and XBLA would be nice.


More Music - I love the music in the game -- I think it fits in well with the mood of the game -- but I do wish there were more tracks.


Thanks, David and Jonathan.  The game you came up with is excellent. I must be enjoying it a lot, or I wouldn't have so many ideas and interest in a sequel.  

-Rexkix

Level Saving - Sometimes I may be working on a level. Sometimes I may be proud of my solution and want to see it again.

I'd love to see that in an update. I don't however think Blow needs a sequel, some games are perfect the way they are and should stay as single game gems. Personally I'd love you see another physics based puzzle game but with different gameplay. Since the originally planned TIM for XBLA won't be released anymore (Sierra Online closed some time ago) I'd like a clone of that game like Crazy Machine does on the PC. I think the Blow mechanics would work pretty well if you switched bubbles with balls. Instead of floating towards a goal they would bounce, thereby overcome obstacles and with trampolines you would do what you do now with fans. There could be all kinds of balls with different behaviours, maybe a ball changer so you can switch in a level from basketball to bowling ball to crush an obstacle.

And the name would by pretty obvious. The sequel to Blow could be Bounce. :)

Nah, just add a subtitle. Blow 2: Balls

More of a "feature wish list":

Save Level + XBL Co-op == Show Of  Your Machines to Your XBL Friends - I know I've mentioned both of these features before, I didn't think then that if the game supported both "Save Level" and "XBL co-op", we would be able to share our masterpieces with our XBL friends.  Since me and my friend's solutions are obviously so very different, we're quite curious to see what the other had done.  Some levels my friend thought were easy, I found to be difficult, and vice-versa.


I Want More Bubbles!! - Several times I've made machines that took so long for the bubbles to go from the start to the finish, that the game stopped spawning new bubbles, waiting for existing ones to either pop or reach the end.  Though I would often have an apparently working machine, when I'd call out the King Bubble, it would either pop or the faeries in Adventure Mode would abandon him and drop whatever flames they picked up.  I understand that there is probably a memory storage or processor limit to how many bubbles the game can be support, but I wish it were more.  2x would be nice, but I really want 4x or more.


Single button to Flames Screen - Especially for Adventure mode, the Flame collection is important.  It would be nice to have way to get there with a single button instead of having to use the pause menu.

Also, IMO, the music should still go on while you are looking at your Flames, but it is correctly silenced when at the pause menu.

I might suggest using either joystick click (most probably the right one), or, better yet, have it be both shoulder buttons used simultaneously.  I'm sure the latter would be tricky to implement, given that the shoulder buttons already have meaning by themselves, but I think this would be very natural to use.


"Pop All Bubbles Now!" - Sometimes I've just re-tuned my machine and I want to test it out, but there are all these bubbles still in the air and I've got to let them hit the ground before I can really test the new setup.  If there were a "Pop all bubbles now," function, I wouldn't have to wait.  IMO, this could would be a natural fit for the left-joystick click.


"Sprint Mode" - I understand very well that the game is meant to relax and sooth and I love that about it, but sometimes I've got a complicated machine and just tuned something and it will take a long time to see the effect of it.  I'd love it if there were a (limited?) way to speed things up.  I don't need this often or long, just sometimes.  Perhaps this could get mapped to the B button, where you would go into "sprint mode" as long as you held down the B button or as long as the game can do it.


Get Rid of the Border - I don't understand why the game has to have a border around it.  Is this because I have a 16x9 TV and the game also needs to support 4x3 users?  Even still, I would like it if the part of the screen that's not used for information is available for gameplay.  I do worry about burn-in on my plasma TV caused by the static border.


Random Nitpicks on the Help System:

The Quick Help is Useless - If you're smart enough to read the quick help brought up by the B button, then you probably don't need it.  It's cryptic as ***.  Anyway, that stuff is explained well enough in the Help->Controls menu and the Tutorial.  If it's really a problem, tell people that if they still don't get it, do the interactive tutorials in levels 1 and 2 again.  You can't do more than that.

Stop Giving Me Repeated Help - I thought that when I changed my "Show Help Tips" setting to "No", it would stop the game from repeating certain things, but it doesn't.  By now, I know that placing fans bursts the bubbles nearby, that in Adventure mode, faeries pick up the "Galaxies" (my word for Flames), and when I get low on gold in Adventure mode, I'm going to need to go to the Flame screen and sell one of my precious babies.  I don't need to see one of these messages every time I play the game or run low on gold.

Flame Screen - "Stumblefoot"? - When I look at the flames, on the top, there is a level number on the left and a name on the right. Neither is explained at all.  At least, from years of playing videogames I get the concept of levels, but I've been a StumbleFoot since the game began and I have no idea what that means or when it will change.

Explain Adventure Mode Better - There is no help screens what Adventure mode is except what the fairy tells you when you start.  I'd love for there to be some help (~2 screens) explaining what the three "speeds" are about and maybe a little about picking up flames.

Give Adventure Mode a brief Story - I know I'm probably in the minority about this, but I'd like for there to be a very brief "story" to go with the Adventure mode.  It should be told in no more than 1-3 screens when the game begins and a similar length bit when the game ends.  If you wanted to get crazy, you could give about 1 screenful when the seasons change too.  Whatever it is, it should be very light and not too sticky sweet.

.

I love Pandapadawan's suggestion for the next game: "Bounce".  The bubbles move very slowly.  It is a natural speed for bubbles and makes for a relaxing game, but bouncing things could move faster.

-Rexkix

Some great ideas there.  I have an update coming soon which fixes a few minor bugs.  This update will also address a few ideas mentioned above.

Save/Share Level: Not in this build but maybe in the future if the game sees more support.  There is quite a lot of UI functionality to add and the coding isn't trivial but it's something I've personally wanted to see in the game as well.

More Bubbles:  Additional bubbles are being tested for performance but in any case, you will see an increase in the next update.

Single Button to Flames Screen: I agree.  This will be in the upcoming build mapped to the key during play

Pop All Bubbles:  Not in this build but in consideration for future builds.

Sprint Mode: Ah yes.  I did in fact have a function like this during development of the game but it's killer on the game's performance (seriously) so I had to leave it out.

Game Border: What? Don't you think it looks nice? :) In any case, screen burn isn't an issue anymore with the newer TVs.  It will burn into your retinas before it burns into your TV screen.  Press "Pause" every now and then if you're really concerned about it.

Quick Help:  This was a throwback to an earlier version of the game before the Tutorial was introduced.  It has been removed in the upcoming build and is now mapped to "Quick Flame View".

Repeated Help:  Yeah, sorry about that.  Turning this option on kills most warning messages but I missed a few.  That's fixed in the new build.

Flame Screen:  The Level# and Rank don't have any in depth meaning.  They're just there for fun.  Blow was originally designed for XBLA and that data was meant for Leaderboards.  It's less relavent in Community Games.

Explain Adventure Mode:  Not a bad idea.  This may flesh out more in the future as I learn the specifics on where people need the most instruction.

Story:  A story would be cool but I have to call it "complete" as some point :)  Especially if I want to get the next project underway.

I appreciate the feedback and thanks for taking the time to really get into the game.

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The Headsman | Mirror (DBP 2009) | Blow (DBP 2008) | Blazing Birds (DBP 2007)