Most of my feedback has already been mentioned by others (charging indicators, seeing what the enemy is "thinking", etc.). I still feel the urge to comment just to say how cool this is.
The sprites being animated was definitely not something I expected. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more alive all of a sudden.
I encourage everyone to also read the accompanying blog post linked in the OP. The paragraph about how I'm probably thinking that AI wrote the game for him really made me chuckle. That's exactly what I was thinking when I first read the blog title! Granted, it still would have been cool for a 9-year old, just not as cool as the alternative. So great job in immediately addressing this in the introduction. That seems like a really good use-case for AI (and I'm generally not the biggest fan of AI).
The "Dad's comments" throughout the post are also a great way of providing some additional context without editorializing the kid's own writing.
I was not expecting animations for v1 either! But one day he asked me what the extra buttons were in Piskel and I explained frames + layers. His eyes lit up and the flying snake was born an hour later. Originally with 4 frames, but mom gave him feedback that he needs more frames for it to be smooth. Thus I believe it is currently 8 frames!
And we have talked in depth about how not to use AI. He has a healthy mistrust of it because he's seen first hand how it hallucinates.
v2 has sounds, which got us into a long discussion around copyrights. He's recording his own! ;)
Dude, flying snake is my favorite. I've had a pretty bad week, and this really made my day. I miss the weird internet, with sprites and CMYK bright green. Great job.
Appreciate your comments. At this point, he definitely doesn't understand the depth of the attention his game is getting, but it will be good fuel for keeping him moving towards the next version!
The sprites being animated was definitely not something I expected. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more alive all of a sudden.
I encourage everyone to also read the accompanying blog post linked in the OP. The paragraph about how I'm probably thinking that AI wrote the game for him really made me chuckle. That's exactly what I was thinking when I first read the blog title! Granted, it still would have been cool for a 9-year old, just not as cool as the alternative. So great job in immediately addressing this in the introduction. That seems like a really good use-case for AI (and I'm generally not the biggest fan of AI).
The "Dad's comments" throughout the post are also a great way of providing some additional context without editorializing the kid's own writing.