Symphony:A Lesson

…in how not to introduce concepts, anything to players. A lesson in how not to open a game. Just a lesson. Don’t do this shit, people. Just don’t. Not like this.

This is the first experience people will have of Symphony. Each of the blue band screens are information screens that require a click to proceed. The shots with the game in the background? It stops the game to display these.

25 screens before you’ll even start the game. (24 in this gallery as I didn’t screengrab the splash screen at the start)
7 screens after announcing TIME TO PLAY!
2 in game interruptions.
12 more screens after game over.
And there’s more in the ship customisation screen but by this point, I’d gotten *really* bored of screengrabbing prompts.

Don’t do it.

  • http://twitter.com/danielcassidy Daniel Cassidy

    Stupidly, I preordered Symphony. Now I regret it before I’ve even downloaded the game :( .

  • http://twitter.com/danielcassidy Daniel Cassidy

    Wow, this game is just awful. How disappointing.

    When did difficulty levels become something to unlock? Some game designers are depressingly stupid.

    • Rob Remakes

       I’m not sure they add much? I unlocked the second difficulty level after it interrupted one stage with a sort of devil-from-a-magic-catalogue thing which I thought visually was quite neat even if it did nothing, and the only difference I could note was that sometimes things went a bit faster.

      Whether it continues like that, I’m probbbbbbbably not going to find out.

  • Matthew Trevor

    Thank you, you just saved me $3.40 in the Steam sale :) (Although it’s as much for your comments on RPS on the blandness of gameplay as the excessive prompting. If anyone knows the intricacies of shmups, it’s you!)