I have received a lot of great feedback from players of the prototype! One of the things that was discovered is how to maximize your score without having to play skilfully. Since the shields can be triggered by simply moving over them, you can move the mouse back and forth over the 3 shields, rapidly, and catch almost all the bullets. With no skill, you can "win" the game, or, at least, maximize your score.
Over the past week, I've been contemplating how I might remove this ability from the game, while maintaining its core idea.
The first fix I thought of was to put a slight delay in the activation of the shields themselves. So, you would have to keep your mouse over the shield for some fraction of a second before it activated. While this would fix the problem, it would also change the feel of the game, in a way I don't want. I like the speed aspect of moving your mouse from shield to shield, trying to catch all the different bullets.
What then came to mind was something I had considered for a earlier version of the game - a strength value for the shields. How I've used this value to fix this problem is: Each time a shield is activated, its strength is reduced by 1 from some arbitrary starting point (right now that is 5). Every X seconds (right now a 1/2 second), the shields strength increases, back up to the max value.
This has, to my own testing, fixed the original problem, while allowing the same game-play. In a more complete or final version of the game, there would have to be some visible way to show the reduced strength of the shield. It will probably be something like having the shield get thinner as it gets weaker. Right now i simply have some text to show the values.
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