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Feedback Box Blog
15th March 2019
During the course of making Shoebox of Games, I'm sure there'll be plenty of feedback.

If you want to get a mention, you can send feedback either in the comments, via Twitter, via email, or any other method you can think of that includes me receiving the feedback!

You can Play Shoebox of Games here.

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@RSKGames


Played all three variants of Leapfrog game and was able to score a win in each of them. I thought based on my experience with other ShoeBox games I will not be able to win in the 10 and 15 move variants but the undo button made it possible to win.


It's the right balance of possible and playable, I think.
My Mum seems to really like it, so I think that's probably good enough!!

On every new game different colours to the pieces will be nice.


You read my mind!
Since the Leapfrog game is my test of the basic "board game" functionality, I originally intended to randomly select from all the available tokens. ... But hadn't drawn them all yet!
I finished off designing the last few "tokens" today, and have now added a random-selection at the start of each round.

In the same game I have never won a single time in the 4 and 5 colours. On the other hand Same Game 3 colours is fun to play as the chances of win are more than 50 percent.
For Leapfrog game I am sure you are generating the pieces that have a clear chance of winning always if the layer moves the pieces correctly. I wanted to know if you are doing anything special in the Same Game grid generation to make sure there is always chance of winning.


Leapfrog is indeed generated to be solveable, but .. yes, you're right. Same Game is 100% random. Every other game in the collection so far is entirely random, and I'm trying my best to stick with that mentality.
I'm imagining the games specifically like a set of board games and the like. They rely on the outcome of the roll of a dice, or the value of the next card, not on a pre-determined solveability.
I might instead add a little "bomb/pickaxe" powerup to remove a single tile on the board, or perhaps a penalty (-100 points!) for removing one. I think that might work a little better.. ..

I feel Shoebox games are turning about to be more accessible and fun for casual gamers. The feature which saves the previous played game state is great for players who play the game on their commute to work in the morning and can continue the same game in the evening.


The save was absolutely essential.
On iOS you can "Save to Home Screen", and this allows you to easily run the game directly from there. It removes the browser-GUI, and leaves you with a fullscreen "as if it's native" experience.
Unfortunately, if you so much as multitask away from the game for a second, and return, it attempts to reload EVERYTHING, and you've lost where you're up to.
I learned this whilst making Score My Words, last year, and vowed to ensure that any such game would always return to the point you left it.
That was in my mind when I started this collection, so it was practically one of the very first things that I added.

I feel background music from your vast repository can be used in the Shoebox games randomly.


That's a lovely idea, but right now I'm trying to keep the audio to a minimum. If nothing else, you can stick some music on, on your Mobile, and then carry on playing with sound integrated because everything's running in the browser.
If I start to add my own music to the thing, I'm not entirely sure how a mobile might handle it.

.. Plus I'd possibly be using your mobile data, too, and that's not a very nice thing.
One thing I'd like to do is optimise the way the elements cache on your phone, and hopefully make that work a little better when you're out and about. Save on data, and potentially keep the game playable without needing to constantly redownload everything.

Of course, none of that matters if you're playing on a desktop! But if you are, you've got ample music options available anyway.

Michael Fernie


Played a bunch of Golf and Pyramid games. Maybe consider those if you add more card games to Shoebox. Of course FreeCell and Canfield are also popular. So many to choose from.


There are TONS of card games that I can add to the mix, and I'm sure over time they'll come. But right now, the "Word Games" section is looking rather lacklustre. I think I really need to add at least one thing there, before attempting anything else.

Also, I've allocated space for "Board Games" as well as "Misc Games" in the main menu. So far, neither of those have been used, and I'm not even sure what sort of games Misc Games will include, but it would be nice to start opening them up at some point.

Maybe you are sick of shoebox and want to get back to your normal type games. Who knows.


I probably should.
I've only posted 3 "proper" AGameAWeek games, so far, this year.

I'm not bored, though. I feel like I'm only just starting, and that this might actually end up being the only thing I tackle over the course of this year.
I'm really enjoying the flexibility of being able to tweak games, and add new features, once the game's already "live".
And there are SO many possibilities as far as games go.

I'm not 100% sure where this is going to end up, but as with most AGameAWeek journeys, it's certainly going to be an interesting ride.

And I hope you all enjoy it!

You can Play Shoebox of Games here.
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