Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
A jam submission

The Bendy Strawmen Inc. Team Bonding Beach Volley BonanzaView game page

Submitted by anttihaavikko (@anttihaavikko) — 57 minutes, 47 seconds before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

The Bendy Strawmen Inc. Team Bonding Beach Volley Bonanza's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#54.3554.355
Overall#64.1294.129
Audio#134.2264.226
Game Design#224.1614.161
Graphics#324.3874.387
Innovation#883.8393.839
Theme#2583.8063.806

Ranked from 31 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

In what way does your game fit the theme?
Two players are better than one. Same goes for the opponent too. The characters also have a special attack that can only be performed together.

Did you write all the code yourself and made all the assets from scratch?
Yes

https://github.com/anttihaavikko/tbsitbbvb

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted

Excellent game, ready to sell quality :-) I had some lags but maybe its my browser. Maybe I would incorporate some rules concerning maximum number of hits or "touches" and ball "holding". Especially holding the ball between my players or against the "net" are excellent trolling tools. I can hold the ball infinitely long and ruining the game for my oponent.

Developer

Haha, I don’t think the AI minds your trolling. Thanks for playing! ❤️

Submitted

Yep, I should have said first, that this would be great 1v1 or 2v2 playing on one keyboard as in the old days :-)

Submitted

herecome & datboi here (in game leaderboard lmao). I'm looking to 100% the game, what does "win solo" mean?

Submitted

yea that's the only one i haven't completed 

Developer

Only one of the guys can touch the ball.

Developer(+1)

And finally I'm getting surpassed in the leaderboards! ❤️ There always comes that time when devs are dethroned from number one spot, sometimes by quite a lot...

Submitted

Oh hey! We got the 100%. Really fun game. I hope you guys win!

Submitted

Yea me too. Really really fun game! You guys deserve the win.

Developer

Oh thanks! Just me though, alway jammin' solo.

Submitted(+1)

I honestly didn't realise the ai was an ai

Submitted(+1)

Really cool and polished game! There is almost nothing wrong with it, only that the AI is just playing against themselves. Maybe the court could be a bit bigger, as it felt a little restricted, there is a lot of bumping into each other. The music is great and the sound effects when you score/lose a point is very fun. I like that the background is also not just a static image, the parallax effect is a nice touch. The AI is a bit exploitable sometimes, but overall really impressed by it. 

The upgrades are not always very clear in what they do, maybe you could add a visual indicator that shows what changes. Really good game!

Submitted

This game was amazing. I honestly cant find anything wrong with the game except for the fact that its a little boring when the com players keeps hitting the ball to themselves. From the art to the music, this was so much fun to play. Congratulations on making such a well made game in a week! and btw im Ali and Bob.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

My thoughts are based on playing the WebGL version solo:

  • The transitions to and from the title screen look very polished

  • Nitpick: You can see the edge pixels of the boxes surrounding the title screen text sliding back and forth. I think this happens on every sprite it’s just harder to notice

  • Entering the names of your team’s players is a very cool feature

  • The typing sound effects hurts my ears

  • Nothing spectacular about the art but it works well for this game

  • Really good music

  • Good tutorial

  • The controls are simple to pickup yet hard to master

  • The slowmo effect and the squash and stretch animation upon hitting the ball looks really good and makes it feel really impactful and satisfying

  • I’m a huge sucker for upgrades so I got really happy when I saw the upgrade menu popup. I was a bit confused with what some of them do though and what the little boxes to the side of them meant

  • I don’t know if this is intentional or not but you can grip to the wall like this:

  • The AI can get pretty challenging and I think that’s a good thing. My favorite match was when we were just one off from each other because I was constantly on edge

  • I realised after my second match that the upgrades change the color of your rings/body which I think is a really cool touch. Although it would be difficult to remember, you definitely could find out what upgrades your opponent has and use that to strategise

  • I don’t understand when the ball powerup happens (when it glows and turns a greeny yellow kind of color)

  • After my third match I was moving about in celebration which led to me picking random upgrades by accident

  • I love how you call the achievements a “TODO” list

  • I have no idea how to get the “Win solo” achievement. On my first attempt I moved my left character to the far left wall so that he wouldn’t bother me. I won by only swinging the right character but I didn’t get it. I tried again but this time I didn’t touch any of the left character’s controls at all and even won 5-0 but still didn’t get it

  • Overall, very solid game. Well done!

Edit: I just noticed that apparently “The characters also have a special attack that can only be performed together” but I never noticed this. Is this related to the ball powerup I mentioned earlier?

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the detail critique, truly appreciated! ❤️

Yes some of the upgrades are worded weirdly (due to small amount of space etc). Majority of them should be pretty clear though and some can be seen afterwards, of course there is no going back really. The small boxes on the right represent the colors that bonus will add to your character (from the top skin, shirt, pants) but they are actually random per bonus instance so you can't really decipher the bonuses from color. And the colors are mixed too so it'd be even harder.

The power hit / special or what ever you wanna call happens simply when one of your dudes passes the ball to the other one who then hits it with enough force. The timing gets more lenient with more "special" bonus picks you have along with the force of the effect. I don't really like how hard it is to pull off even if you know it. That was like my partial hook to the theme.

Pretty funny how I completely have missed the wall hugging issue when it's me who is usually commenting about it to other people on jam games. 😅If we go to excuses I'd say it is because majority of the dev time I had the same crew of dudes and the net guy was tall enough to get his chin on the net edge and hang there which is indeed intentional.

The win solo should be exactly that. You can move with the other dude but can't touch the ball with them at all. So either you touched it accidentally at some point or I have a bug in my code. 🤷‍♀️

Aww you were one point away from getting that 15 point cheevo! These neck to neck matches are indeed pretty damn fun even if I say it myself. I was kinda surprised how competent the ~50 line AI ended up being. It's the same code all the time but they start off with a high "derpiness" value which then keeps decreasing incrementally until it is zero after five won matches. I wanted to try doing neural network AI but didn't really want to waste a day for it. Been thinking of trying it now post jam to see if I could train it to be any good.

Thanks again for playing! ❤️

Submitted

You can move with the other dude but can’t touch the ball with them at all.

Ah, that explains it then. The ball hit them a few times

Submitted (1 edit)

Easily one of the most polished games in this jam, i'm suprised it doesn't have reviews players!

Submitted

holy, this is fun! (and well polished)
though I don't have friends to play with :(

Submitted

it was worth waiting the loading, 11/10

Submitted

This is probably the most well made game in this jam. The details is so amazing. Nice work!

Submitted

Really great game! probably the best one I've come across yet.

Submitted(+1)

Whoa, this is a really great game that does well to feel completely finished! Honestly one of my favorite games of this jam. The level of detail put into the graphics is insane. I love how the straws kind of move around when you move so you don't feel stiff.

Submitted(+1)

I really like this game, its premise is simple but it has an insane amount of polish. I wasn't sure if it's actually multiplayer or if it's a computer, but tbh I'm not sure which one would be more impressive, I mean I guess it's probably AI because to get a match in a jam game would be almost imposible, but still. The art is simple but good and the music is just great. The only thing I'd add it's that if the player has too much strength it tends to just bounce back the ball to its side, so if the other team has that it's just a matter of waiting for the ball to actually fall on your side, but other than that it's great!

If you could check out mine too I'd appreciate it, or at least check if it actually loads, some people seem to have issues with that

Developer (1 edit)

Haha, yeah it's AI. It's not AI but I think it gets the job done for what ~50 lines of code it's worth. 😅 They start off doing some intentional derping quite a lot but after 5 wins (incrementally each time) they are performing at its peak performance. By strength do you mean the stat or actual swing speed? Well they do come hand in hand but even without any upgrades on it it is easy enough to blast the ball so it bounces right back at you from the back wall. I think boosting any stat really far enough will completely break the game. I have no idea how broken it could be at after something like 100 wins.

Thanks for playing and leaving feedback! ❤️

Submitted

Loved your game. It was a bit hard to predict the speed of the ball when coming from the top, but I really enjoyed the game. Well done :)

Submitted

That was a fun experience i liked it a lot, super polished, the audio and visuals are top notch very well done.  

Submitted

Wow man the games really polished, this would definitely make an awesome couch co-op game

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Wow, this is insanely polished! All the camera movement and parallax and particles and everything is just so cool and animated. Super stylish. And there's so much subtle detail, like how the ball squishes a little when you hit it. Audio is great too. Must have been a busy week. I'm gonna have to save this game and play it with my sister later today.

Submitted(+1)

Damn, really polished and nice gameplay. Played with my bro and it was really fun, especially 1v1 against eachother. When we played against the enemy team they did do some weird stuff, like fail their server. Still super good looking!

Developer(+1)

The AI is indeed far from perfect. They derp a lot by design at the start before you get few wins and only start playing at their peak performance after you get 5 wins. Just to ease out the difficulty curve a bit.

Submitted

Nice! This game is cool for two players.

Deleted post
Developer

Thanks! Yup, fuly meant to be played solo. That is the reason for the swing button to be positioned so weirdly. But of course could share a keyboard with another player too, kinda another take on the theme. It is indeed quite tricky to control two of them but you don’t really need to use both at the same time much. Thanks for playing! ❤️