I didn’t get what impact the dogs actually had. Still, I like the peculiar idea of the animals being in this kind of falling down thing (don’t know the name for it) heading for their respective pen. This is cute. <3
thanks for playing, lupercalia. the dogs have a range of influence. when animals are within their radius, they move "away" which can help you guide animals to their respective pens. it's a lot more noticeable now compared to the first implementation. when placed right, the animals can "run away" almost 1/2 the width of the playing field. it might be subtle, but "its in there". of course, they'll still bump into the posts or other animals :) i'm in the middle of another jam but will revisit this project some day and expand it beyond 20 seconds and a single "pachinko-like" board to play on. until then, thanks for your feedback :)
I played this game when it was first released, and just had a chance to play it again: Wow! So much new stuff. This is feeling like a nicely polished game now!
the jam hosts, community, & their creations have been motivating and inspirational. i may have left it at the first or 2nd draft without you all. so, thank youall for making RR better than it might have been :)
Nice thematic way of making pachinko more proactive. Maybe things could be a bit more intuitive though, I thought I could only choose the spawning point at first!
I think the dog mechanic is the best part, especially when there are multiple balls and you have to make choices, also the fact that you can place two of them, I liked it.
The gates felt a bit useless/awkward to use. maybe on/off vertical gates would feel better?
thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback. the gates came first and then i thought of adding the dogs (gotta have 'em on a ranch). personally, i use the dogs a lot more than the gates (especially since i upped their influence) but i do still use them once or twice a game. and, sorry for not making sure the player knows there's more to it than choosing drop points in game. ie, there's no tutorial. only the gameplay vid and the .gif on the project page. thanks again!
I liked the idea! I just believe that some small things could be fixed, for example, as the game already has its own icon, the mouse arrow could be invisible and when leaving the game in full screen, the game's graphics are stretched.
thanks for the feedback, LDG. TBH, i always use 16:9 and haven't had any complaints until now so i need to consider this going forward. and, i did think about hiding the OS pointer, knowing it obscures the pointer image but i've been told it's bad practice on web stuff <shrugs>. i need to consider both of your points and at least give options that the user can set. thanks for trying RR :)
This is a cool spin on pachinko! My best score was 1300. Having the dogs gives the game an extra dimension (literally, since the controls are usually 1D) that I haven't seen before. It's definitely a little hard to follow everything at once, but I think that makes it more interesting, and more satisfying when the animal you're focused on gets into the correct pen. Good job!
thanks for the kind words, gabe. and, yah. just focus on the animals up top until you get the mechanics down, learn the order of the animals below (so that you don't have to keep looking down then back up), etc.
and, the "spin on pachinko" was the goal and i'm happy with the results.
Hello. This is quite an interesting game but, sadly, not for me. Too many things need to be managed at once and I can't do that at such a speed. Maybe if I could move animal "starting point" with arrows, instead of mouse. But as it is, every time I focus on placing the dogs to stir the animals, another animal drops somewhere far from where it should.
From technical side, I would say the game also is pretty good, with fancy fonts and stuff. Definitely more polished than most of my own projects. The only thing I would personally prefer if the music would only play during the game itself and stop after the timer run out.
P.S. There is a bug, though I'm not sure if it's the game or Itch site. Sometimes when I load the page the browser version just doesn't load.
if you haven't played it as many times as me, it can get hectic if you try to do more than choose where the animals drop from (which occurs every 2 seconds; 2x10 animals = 20 seconds). i get lost myself if i try to choose the drop points, work the gates and place dogs too often so i recommend just choosing where the animals drop for a while until you get used to the pace, if you choose to continue playing.
unfortunately, if i offer arrow-keys, i'd have to re-work some stuff and i'm winding down development on this but i'll consider it if i re-visit the project. but, i have addressed the Music as an option (see next post).
odd about the bug. i know that if you choose Full Screen from the bottom before the media loads, it will error, but i haven't seen/heard of errors otherwise?
otherwise, i totally understand "not for me". i feel that quite often with faster-paced games myself.
i took your advice on stopping the music when the game was complete along with a couple minor aesthetic changes for an html update today. i do continue to play this and the shorter music now allows the barnyard background noise to shine which is more enjoyable to me ;) thanks again for your feedback.
Hey Virtual Nomad! That was quite an experience. I like that you added two gates instead of one. I also like that the animals drop on their own so that the player doesn't get too much control but also that it doesn't feel unfair. It is a decent balance between randomness and control. I had trouble understanding how to use the dog, though. A suggestion I'd offer is to add visual feedback at the pens so that when the animals reach the bottom, there'd be better clarity as to whether the objective was fulfilled. Overall, it is a nice one and I wish you good luck!
thanks a ton for the feedback and i agree on all accounts. i've been thinking of how to better indicate when the animals enter the correct pens and to make the dogs' influence more obvious (right now it rings 2 cowbells if they enter the correct pen vs 1). as i'm using Box2D, i'm using ~2 second forces emitting from a given dog's location but believe the force is too subtle right now. i want to give the player more control so will increase the strength, there (i've only been able to hit 1900 of a possible 2500 myself so it needs to be a little easier to win). thanks again. you've confirmed where i need to do more work :)
thank you and it's the paid version (i own everything AGK but i prefer Classic). i don't know if you've played with Box2D but i'm still finding myself tweaking the physics of the game. it's a love/hate thing for me :) thanks for playing!
i had Classic, then bought a couple DLCs, then Studio and the rest over time. they have great bundles on Fanatical and sometimes Humble. and, it's always "for life". no levels, no subscriptions
i should be clear: the AGK libraries in Classic can also be used in C++ (called "Tier 2"), and have been wrapped for C#, Python, et al, by members of the community, if any of those are your thing but i stick with the BASIC AGK scripting language.
You managed to make an enjoyable game out of something I've always found quite dull. I think this idea could be extended into a bigger game with a few extra game mechanics thrown in. Congratulations and good job.
Comments
I didn’t get what impact the dogs actually had. Still, I like the peculiar idea of the animals being in this kind of falling down thing (don’t know the name for it) heading for their respective pen. This is cute. <3
thanks for playing, lupercalia. the dogs have a range of influence. when animals are within their radius, they move "away" which can help you guide animals to their respective pens. it's a lot more noticeable now compared to the first implementation. when placed right, the animals can "run away" almost 1/2 the width of the playing field. it might be subtle, but "its in there". of course, they'll still bump into the posts or other animals :) i'm in the middle of another jam but will revisit this project some day and expand it beyond 20 seconds and a single "pachinko-like" board to play on. until then, thanks for your feedback :)
nice pachinko game! i like the physics and the dog mechanic that has influence on the animals. it has a good theme too, good job
thanks for playing and glad you liked it! :)
I played this game when it was first released, and just had a chance to play it again: Wow! So much new stuff. This is feeling like a nicely polished game now!
the jam hosts, community, & their creations have been motivating and inspirational. i may have left it at the first or 2nd draft without you all. so, thank you all for making RR better than it might have been :)
Very enjoyable pachinko style game. Having to 'herd' the balls is a good twist.
glad you like it, SAWD :) thanks for playing!
Nice thematic way of making pachinko more proactive. Maybe things could be a bit more intuitive though, I thought I could only choose the spawning point at first!
I think the dog mechanic is the best part, especially when there are multiple balls and you have to make choices, also the fact that you can place two of them, I liked it.
The gates felt a bit useless/awkward to use. maybe on/off vertical gates would feel better?
thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback. the gates came first and then i thought of adding the dogs (gotta have 'em on a ranch). personally, i use the dogs a lot more than the gates (especially since i upped their influence) but i do still use them once or twice a game. and, sorry for not making sure the player knows there's more to it than choosing drop points in game. ie, there's no tutorial. only the gameplay vid and the .gif on the project page. thanks again!
I liked the idea! I just believe that some small things could be fixed, for example, as the game already has its own icon, the mouse arrow could be invisible and when leaving the game in full screen, the game's graphics are stretched.
thanks for the feedback, LDG. TBH, i always use 16:9 and haven't had any complaints until now so i need to consider this going forward. and, i did think about hiding the OS pointer, knowing it obscures the pointer image but i've been told it's bad practice on web stuff <shrugs>. i need to consider both of your points and at least give options that the user can set. thanks for trying RR :)
This is a cool spin on pachinko! My best score was 1300. Having the dogs gives the game an extra dimension (literally, since the controls are usually 1D) that I haven't seen before. It's definitely a little hard to follow everything at once, but I think that makes it more interesting, and more satisfying when the animal you're focused on gets into the correct pen. Good job!
thanks for the kind words, gabe. and, yah. just focus on the animals up top until you get the mechanics down, learn the order of the animals below (so that you don't have to keep looking down then back up), etc.
and, the "spin on pachinko" was the goal and i'm happy with the results.
thanks for playing!
Final update for all versions:
~VN
Hello. This is quite an interesting game but, sadly, not for me. Too many things need to be managed at once and I can't do that at such a speed. Maybe if I could move animal "starting point" with arrows, instead of mouse. But as it is, every time I focus on placing the dogs to stir the animals, another animal drops somewhere far from where it should.
From technical side, I would say the game also is pretty good, with fancy fonts and stuff. Definitely more polished than most of my own projects. The only thing I would personally prefer if the music would only play during the game itself and stop after the timer run out.
P.S. There is a bug, though I'm not sure if it's the game or Itch site. Sometimes when I load the page the browser version just doesn't load.
thanks for checking it out and the feedback.
if you haven't played it as many times as me, it can get hectic if you try to do more than choose where the animals drop from (which occurs every 2 seconds; 2x10 animals = 20 seconds). i get lost myself if i try to choose the drop points, work the gates and place dogs too often so i recommend just choosing where the animals drop for a while until you get used to the pace, if you choose to continue playing.
unfortunately, if i offer arrow-keys, i'd have to re-work some stuff and i'm winding down development on this but i'll consider it if i re-visit the project. but, i have addressed the Music as an option (see next post).
odd about the bug. i know that if you choose Full Screen from the bottom before the media loads, it will error, but i haven't seen/heard of errors otherwise?
otherwise, i totally understand "not for me". i feel that quite often with faster-paced games myself.
thanks again, and thanks for playing!
i took your advice on stopping the music when the game was complete along with a couple minor aesthetic changes for an html update today. i do continue to play this and the shorter music now allows the barnyard background noise to shine which is more enjoyable to me ;) thanks again for your feedback.
Hey Virtual Nomad! That was quite an experience. I like that you added two gates instead of one. I also like that the animals drop on their own so that the player doesn't get too much control but also that it doesn't feel unfair. It is a decent balance between randomness and control. I had trouble understanding how to use the dog, though. A suggestion I'd offer is to add visual feedback at the pens so that when the animals reach the bottom, there'd be better clarity as to whether the objective was fulfilled. Overall, it is a nice one and I wish you good luck!
thanks a ton for the feedback and i agree on all accounts. i've been thinking of how to better indicate when the animals enter the correct pens and to make the dogs' influence more obvious (right now it rings 2 cowbells if they enter the correct pen vs 1). as i'm using Box2D, i'm using ~2 second forces emitting from a given dog's location but believe the force is too subtle right now. i want to give the player more control so will increase the strength, there (i've only been able to hit 1900 of a possible 2500 myself so it needs to be a little easier to win). thanks again. you've confirmed where i need to do more work :)
thank you and it's the paid version (i own everything AGK but i prefer Classic). i don't know if you've played with Box2D but i'm still finding myself tweaking the physics of the game. it's a love/hate thing for me :) thanks for playing!
i had Classic, then bought a couple DLCs, then Studio and the rest over time. they have great bundles on Fanatical and sometimes Humble. and, it's always "for life". no levels, no subscriptions
Classic is all BASIC code, Studio has a 2D editor within the IDE with D&D + all the code of Classic: AppGameKit - Feature
i should be clear: the AGK libraries in Classic can also be used in C++ (called "Tier 2"), and have been wrapped for C#, Python, et al, by members of the community, if any of those are your thing but i stick with the BASIC AGK scripting language.
You managed to make an enjoyable game out of something I've always found quite dull. I think this idea could be extended into a bigger game with a few extra game mechanics thrown in. Congratulations and good job.
thanks, boss. i have a couple of ideas. i'll see what i have time for ;)
now with gates to help herd the critters!
HiScore is now functional, as well. YeeHaw!
Good improvements!
Yep, the gates added a lot to the game. Nicely done! Looking forward to whatever else you come up with
Made some adjustments to prevent animals from getting stuck and added a new feature: Dogs now help you herd the animals!
QUACK!Android version posted.
Thanks for checking it out!