[quote name=\'parliboy\' post=\'218524\' date=\'Jun 20 2009, 02:16 AM\']Commentary from a gameplay perspective:
Cory, you've put cool stuff out now that I think you can stand some constructive criticism here: sometimes the randomness in a game can be a bad thing. The original incarnation of Drop the Bomb was a total press your luck game, and so who cares who random it was. But here, to use Joker's Wild references, your balance between Knowledge and Lady Luck is off.
Point 1: Questions range anywhere from $100 to $1000. When it takes $5,000 to win, the idea that I'm answering questions at a 50 questions to win rate is a little unfair (and I spun $100 enough to make that a concern). I know you can't really change the upper value now since you've got a medal that relies on it (first medal I won), but you should consider raising the lower value slightly.
Point 2: Chris's concern about the bomb is absolutely reasonable. I have also spun bombs twice in a row -- once in a 4 question contract, and then in a 5. The idea of, "well, you survived 9 bomb questions and now have a score of $0" kinda sucks. You're already penalizing them by making them answer a "game over" question. Doing 5 of them for no money is over the top. A more fair way to handle this would have be that normal contracts run from 2-5 questions, and then any 1 question contract is a bomb (and since bombs would appear in the center window, the bomb question could still be worth money). So while bombs would appear more often, the individual bombs would be less dangerous.[/quote]
Agreed on both of these counts. I would consider changing the values to 250-500-750-1000, or 200-400-600-800-1000. And the Bomb's current placement just sucks the life out of the front game. Parliboy's right - shift the Bomb to the second window, and make it a sudden-death, one-question contract. Get it right, win the money in the third window. Get it wrong, and it's Turtle Wax time. In fact, to add a certain risk/reward element, you might want to consider offering the option of continuing to play with the Bomb (with the category and money windows staying as-is) after getting the question right. For example, if I were to spin Sports-BOMB-1000, I would probably be willing to keep tempting the fates with that Bomb, rather than spinning again and getting, say, Travel-5-200.
Bonus game works great as-is, dollar amounts and all. And the medals are bound to make me sign up for an account. Very nice work overall, Cory.
EDIT: Also, with only 4 or 5 dollar amounts, it might be possible to sub-categorize the questions by level of difficulty, though I don't know if that's something you'd want to go for.
ANOTHER EDIT: Maybe a cash bonus at the end of the bonus round for going the full number of spins without bombing out?
/Trivial Pursuit deck + dice = potential multi-player home version
