Balancing Tips?

11clock

I'm having difficulties balancing the difficulty of my game, AntiMal. In the game you must tap the enemies before they cross the screen. I'm having difficulties balancing the spawn rate of the enemies. I have a chain 12 spawners, each one introducing a new enemy and increasing the spawn rate. Every 12 seconds the game replaces the current spawner with the next spawner until it reaches the 12th spawner. So far I've tried these combinations:

Spawner 1: 1s
Spawner 2: .75s
Spawner 3: .75s
Spawner 4+: .5s

Spawner 1: 1s
Spawner 2: .75s
Spawner 3: .75s
Spawner 4: .5s
Spawner 5: .5s
Spawner 6: .5s
Spawner 7: .45s
Spawner 8: .45s
Spawner 9: .45s
Spawner 10: .45s
Spawner 11+: .40s

Spawner 1: 1s
Spawner 2: .80s
Spawner 3: .80s
Spawner 4: .60s
Spawner 5: .60s
Spawner 6: .60s
Spawner 7: .55s
Spawner 8: .55s
Spawner 9: .55s
Spawner 10: .55s
Spawner 11+: .50s

It's just too hard or too easy. When I think it's decent and let my family play, they don't even get to Spawner 6. When I try to decrease the difficulty, it's just too easy for me. I don't know how to balance the difficulty of my game correctly, so can I have some tips to help aid me in balancing my game?

quantumsheep

One trick I'll be using (hopefully you'll see it soon) is to make the game cycle in difficulty.

You could have:

Wave 1
Spawner 1 - 2 seconds
Spawner 2 - 1.5 seconds
Spawner 3 - 1 second
Spawner 4 - .5 seconds

Wave2
Spawner 5 - 1.55 seconds
Spawner 6 - 1.25 seconds
Spawner 7 - 1 second
Spawner 8 - .55 seconds

Wave3
Spawner 9 - 1.25 seconds
Spawner 10 - 1 second
Spawner 11 - .55 second
Spawner 12 - .4 seconds

This way, it doesn't just get harder and harder (though it does really). It also gives you room to breathe between the 3 'waves' (as I've called them here).

So Spawner 5 starts at the same rate as spawner 2 - and so on and so forth. Every wave increases the difficulty, but by using 'speeds' already experienced by the player, and adding a faster speed on the end.

Try experimenting with that, maybe?

Hope it helps,

QS

11clock

Thanks for the advice!