I decided to take a peek at what is going on with this game now. Oh my, this is shocking.
But what is shocking is that this is more disappointing. Like all the updates -they are just plain useless. What even is this Junior thing in this game?
What is even more surprising is that they removed the Volcano that was supposed to be released already in 2020. Does the developer doesn’t have anything to do? This is why this game is going dead. The dungeon is already easy enough. I don’t get how is doing a bunch of moveDir() methods are so hard for little kids. Why should the devs add like over 150+ levels around moving a character?
What really turned me down is the removed volcano. If the developers really want to get the game going, they should add harder levels and better rewards. Probably more arena levels too. This strategy worked back in 2015. Right now, what I am witnessing is that what players do when they get in the later levels, is that they are just getting through by copying code (mostly) through github. This is resulted by the lack of the game mechanism and the pace. The players just simply rely on the hero methods TOO MUCH, and maybe the gear, but just not coding.
The pace of the game was already too unreasonable, and after the update this got even worse. Just in python, for example, students are supposed to learn all types of data already at the very first, then moving on to conditions, then moving on to data structures, then moving on to classes and imported modules.
The game right now decided to teach just a while True loop and a bunch of useless methods in the first 250 levels (including the junior), causing a huge waste of time, and also without even teaching the basics. Then, in the forest (next 100 levels), still a huge waste of time, with only the if-statement introduced. So what is now happening is that in the first half of the whole game, players barely knew anything (only if statement, while true, no variable types, just a bunch of methods that will never be even used in real programming).
Now in the desert, while loops and lists, breaks, continues, also gets introduced. This speeds up the pace so fast that players cannot adapt quickly, and this is the point where players start to ask questions on discourse. I’m glad the environment is nice, but shouldn’t the team reflect on why this is happening? The game jumped from using multiple if statements to using a loop to iterate over a list (kinda like for-loop) in like two or three levels (that is meaningless). The game never told why this is the case. Like you got to explain to the players so that they can learn. Come on.
Also, for arithmetic part was so poorly done. Like the tiresome GCD and the bombing run for example, the game never told us why we should do them, but instead just let us implement the functions. Basic arithmetic should be taught at the very start (yes, that includes the mod operator )
Now in the mountains and glaciers the pace got even more faster. I am not going to judge the rest or else this post would be too long. The main problem is that the structure was very loose in the game. Players didn’t even know the complete variable structures from the start, and the pace was so unorganized. What I can conclude the gameplay in a sentence is that it feels like a bunch of unrelated parts of programming taught separately, with players have the complete lack of the basic. In the glacier, the team decided to add Vectors which is completely useless and doesn’t even exist in real programs (at least in python). The levels just feels screwed up, and I feel like the devs have nothing to add anymore.
Another crucial problem is that the game defaulted almost every data type to work with expressions. I don’t even get why can you use == != < > for everything out there. This is just seriously wrong. I also realized the game imported math for all levels after the forest, but the game never taught players how to use those methods, not even the ones that python came with. For instance, the % mod was taught so late. Integer division never shown up. Useful stuff like at least the pythagorean theorem should be taught (it is also the best way to calculate distance between objects). Useful methods like abs(), ord(), char(), upper() weren’t there. Most players just play the game with the default methods already given so that they don’t understand much.
Suggestions
First, let us adjust the level schedule and the pace.
Dungeon: Basic variable types, methods, using the say() effectively (saying what is meant to be said) by joining various types of data with basic arithmetic expressions. (that is int, str, tuple, lists, floats, bool). like 1 + 1 = 2, or 1 + "hi" = error #instead of doing nothing.
Forest: Conditions (while loops and for loops and if statements and break/continue). I strongly recommend that different types of data should go with different operators that they belong to. Introduce functions (void/non-void), parameters.
Desert: Introduce the for-loop, for-each, and sets. Teach useful tricks, like reversing a string using str[::-1], reversing a list using reversed()
Mountain: Data structures, like dictionary. 2D arrays for mapping grids. More useful methods like .join(), .extend(), copying and deep copying.
Glacier:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP): classes, objects, inheritance, polymorphism
- Modules and packages
- Decorators and generators
- Comprehensions
I suggest a lot of gear methods should be removed in the glacier levels, instead let the players write them themselves. Maybe they can even pull out a hero object, enemy object with all of these methods associated to them, who knows?
I played this game for over 6 years and I genuinely want the game to grow. But the devs are now just not doing stuff and players are going away.
Like in the arenas, players who subscribe and have great gear can win, but not with good code.
Please consider my suggestions and review what I said.
) But I think the main focus of the developers right now is the AI league. Because you have to update it every 3 months or so. I think the AI league can help you learn beyond what the levels are teaching you, just by watching what the top players are doing and coding in order to beat them, or just move up the leaderboard. So yeah, the volcano world may not be coming anytime soon.