I had a play of this yesterday and this is what I think:
because you don't have a separate website:
- bulk up and jazz up your indieDB profile page, if you're into art then add some general game art.
- maybe think about keeping a blog on indiedb.
- add a proper summary to the IndieDB page of Max vs Mars, with a basic description of the game. At the moment it's all buried in the news updates.
the download
- add a readme file with the download to include:
-- your name and contact email address (seems like a polite thing to do if you want people to run a exe from what is basically a unknown source).
-- description of game
-- controls (there is nothing on the indiedb page or the download that tells people how to play the game)
-- maybe something about the future development of the game
-- maybe include a link to the wip thread and indiedb page (there's no guarantee that the player would have gotten it from either indeidb or the tgc forums).
the game
add a proper menu for the start of the game to include:
- credits
- controls (again, there is nothing to tell the player how to play this game)
- the basic objective / summary of the game
I thought the limited move set was actually alright, I don't think you really need to add to this. I thought the animation for the punch and getting hit felt a bit stilted, you might want to have a look at exaggerating the animation.
There needs to be more going on in the level, more thing to jump over, some different enemy types. I think MrValentine's ideas are pretty good, maybe add an alien with a gun and some crates to jump over.
I'm not particularly fond of the current art style for the level. I like the background (although I don't think the style for flying sauces fits the rest of the game). The buildings in the foreground are just dull and dour. It feels like you might have been going for a dark, moody roof top setting but I'm not sure, whatever the mood you were going for I don't think you've pulled it off.
I did like the art style for the characters, although the orange jump suited aliens felt a little unimaginative. I did really like the look of the robot at the end of the level.
The difficult bit to know is whether it would be better to enhance and finish the current level. This would probably be the quickest thing to do. What ever you do I think having a completed single level, including end of level boss battle, would probably help a lot.
Like BigAdd said, I think people are a lot more wary of backing these kinds of projects and what you need to do is persaude people that it's worth giving you money, that you can actually finish making the game and that the game itself might actually be good.
I think something that counts against you for any kind of crowd funding is that you don't have any finished games nor have you worked on any finished games. This might not be a problem but it might mean that you need to work extra hard to get people interested.
One other thing that you may want to consider is making the game using a different engine so you can go multiformat. I think the game could be made to work using AppGameKit, the animation would be simple enough to do in code. SoftMotion3D has also put together some animation commands that you could use.
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=211339&b=41
The only think I wouldn't know how to do is the water shader, but that's more because I'm not that good with shaders, and you might need to tweak the controls for touch screen (say double tap for the harder punch). I'm not saying you should do this, swapping engines half way through is not something I'd generally recommend, but it might be something to think about.
