Play game
Peggle Defense's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #1851 | 3.459 | 3.459 |
| Overall | #1897 | 3.288 | 3.288 |
| Enjoyment | #1954 | 3.081 | 3.081 |
| Presentation | #2037 | 3.324 | 3.324 |
Ranked from 37 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
It's peggle/pinball but you're trying to defend the attacks. In my mind, the original Peggle/pinball had the sword/ball be a destructive oppressor/predator happily destroying whatever he pleases for their amusement, and then now you're shown the other side, that the pins actually care what happens to them. With my assets, time and lack of experience, I had difficulty illustrating that storyline in time though, and had to focus on functionality and basic gameplay.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
We used pre-existing art
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
We used pre-existing audio
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Interesting concept and very stunning spritework!
It looks very pleasing and the concept is interesting. The pixel art looks very good and the colour palette used too. Really fun ! Good job :)
Cute little game. The levels are well designed. Perhaps the difficulty increases a bit too quickly. Other than that good job!
Great game! There could have been a better tutorial but other than that it's a great game.
Thanks for playing and giving feedback! I agree, I'd do it differently if I had more time and experience. But would you care to elaborate on what you first thought and where you got stuck/frustrated before figuring it out? If not, that's okay - I'm just curious how different people approach this.
Really neat idea. I was a bit stumped about the hook of the game until I figured out the income system - a lot of potential there to play around with balancing your income with protecting your hearts. I hope you keep working on it after the jam, I'd be interested to see where else you go with the concept!
Would definitely be interesting to continue working on it. I think I'd prioritize very differently (and both visuals and audio would change a lot) if it wasn't a 48 hour game jam. One of my biggest reasons to do the jam was to try to finish a small game with a guaranteed chance to get feedback from different players - and without that, I haven't found enough good reasons to do it, unfortunately. But thanks a lot for the encouragement. If more people feel this way, then I'd be way more interested.
Cool! I like the idea of a reverse Peggle, definitely a lot of potential there in terms of game mechanics and level design. Reminds me of Peglin in that it's a more modern take on the genre.
Had fun playing the game, wish there were more levels. I like that it isn't just a game of "keep away", but there is also a more puzzle based aspect where the player has to figure out how to raise their income levels and keep the sword in the air for a certain amount of time to finish the level, as demonstrated in level 2.
Like others, I think the game would benefit from a little bit more tutorialization, but at the same time it's good to have the player experiment a bit. I believe that it isn't necessarily bad design to have the player fail a couple times.
Good stuff!
Thanks for the detailed review, and I wholeheartedly agree with all you've said! I also thought of Peglin but to me Peggle/pinball has so much more left to give than Peglin did, and this was just my first game jam attempt - and I thought I could make it functional in time because I knew how to make gravity and bouncy objects.
Interesting about the experimentation. I feel that users should be encouraged to experiment and ideally have surprising 'aha' moments, but figuring out the UI is never fun - I think that should just be intuitive. What do you think?
Congrats on your first Jam game! It's a fun one! It took me a minute to work out what was happening. I think it needs a little more feedback for the player. I got to level two and then wasn't able to place the pins and I wasn't sure why. It took me a while to realise I had run out of gold. But this game feels great to play and I really like your interpretation on the theme! Good job!
Thanks! Yeah, I hope next time I'll have enough experience to make some more feedback in time (e.g. I definitely won't spend an hour installing and exporting WebGL next time, hopefully xD). If I could, I would've included the income info for each pin, and made some audio and shake/flash of the money when you were out of money.
I'm really glad that you think it feels great to play - as the developer, it's really easy to only see what it's lacking.
I always like a good peggle game. Not a ton of strategy but really addicting.
Very interesting puzzle.
Could have used a little more hand-holding but what a game! Great work
Yeah, agreed. That's why I tried adding the screenshots after the fact. I wish I had time during the jam:
Cool idea of inverting Peggle! For my taste, I liked the levels with obstacles in them rather than the empty ones. They give something to work with :D
Me too! So many things were last minute though. 2 hours before the deadline I had only one empty level and could only place the apple - so... yeah, I just scrambled together the best features I had created and tried to make some quick challenges out of those exact features. I'd have loved to do more with it though. Maybe next year when I have more experience and don't have to research how to do things in the middle of a jam!
EDIT: My main idea with level 3 was to add a break where you could spam pins to have a satisfying feeling and also explore the randomness that goes in peggle - and not just make it a super short physics puzzle game. And level 4 was supposed to be hard, but that was negated with the bug of pins persisting through levels that didn't get fixed last minute.. if I had more time I'd have "followed the fun" more and found more interesting levels with new mechanics for sure
Really fun, polished gameplay. Congratulations on your first jam entry!
Thank you! Very kind to call it "polished" haha. I thought my panic really showed with level 3 and the very unbalanced diamond
I found the premise took me some time to understand, how the money ticks up as the sword gets more airtime, but other than that I found the game pretty fun. I think the idea is cool since it's like peggle but more strategy.
Yeah, that was supposed to be the 'aha' moment in level 2, but without actually displaying the income gain on the apple and giving some audio/visual feedback when you had insufficient funds, it was definitely not intuitive without a lot of experimentation. Thanks for the feedback!
Creative concept, great gameplay loop and the game looks and feels great to play, tho it could've benefitted greately from some basic sound design. The game could've used a tutorial or some simple popups explaining what each peg does. Other than those 2 minor presentation hickups I have no complaints. Great job buddy, you're getting some high ratings from me.
Definitely. I don't know sound design very much but even to me, I thought the levels were way off. If I had the time (or help) I definitely would've prioritized it. This was my first jam and there was a lot of last minute learning involved.
I don't like popups, but I definitely agree that it needed more help with what to do. I would've preferred that you couldn't start the first level without placing a pin or similar. And displaying the income gain on the pins that did that.
Thanks for the feedback and the high praise!
Needs a little bit more failure feedback, it kept going to Game Over in the 2nd level without understanding why since I did manage to keep the sword away. Took a while to figure out. Fun game otherwise!
Yeah, I wanted the money figure to do a basic animation (flash or shake) and play a simple sound when you didn't have enough, but it didn't make the cut unfortunately. Thanks so much for the feedback!
Took me a bit to understand the mechanics, and I'm still not sure about the winning condition. More feedback for the player would be good fot an easier entry into the game. Questions I asked myself were: How do I win a level? What's the differences between pin types? Why can't I place my pin (the answer was money)?
The gameplay felt smooth though, and overall it was a nice experience.
Very understandable. Win conditions are to survive all the balls. I'd love some level transitions with displaying the level names too. Level 3 and 4 blended together though because of a major bug unfortunately (that took me 2 lines of code to fix, minutes after exporting. As for pins, I definitely agree that players need more information than the cost. Problem was that I tweaked what they did a lot, since I was trying to get them to do many more complicated things like having different bounciness, making the ball/sword confused and shooting randomly etc. but they didn't make the cut and then I made last minute adjustments and basically designed 3 levels in a few minutes - added a fourth one to make the last one easier (which - because of the bug of pins persisting - made level 4 much easier if you had many extra pins left).
This is my first jam, so next year I hope I'll have more time to do tutorial stuff and UX, with more experience.
Thanks for the feedback! It's comments like this that I feel are the real reward of trying out jams like this!
I liked the mechanics and presentation, I do miss the general goal and how the roles are reversed, but that might just be me, I might need some context as I'm an elder millennial XD
I also found the controls either buggy or hard to understand in my part. Overall very creative and enjoyable and with nice visuals.
It's a reference to "Peggle" and instead of being someone shooting pins down to maximize points, you're trying to protect yourself from bouncy attacks. In my mind, the ball/sword was a dictator happily destroying whatever he pleases, and then now you're shown the other side, that the pins actually care what happens to them. I had difficulty illustrating that storyline in time though, and had to focus on functionality and basic gameplay.
I agree that the controls were hard. I broke the ability to click the buttons to select them last minute, and there were a few bugs still. Also, would love to have a "design phase" with different music, and have it impossible to start the first level without placing a pin or similar. And have animations and sounds that illustrate what you're supposed to do when stuck - and more UX stuff. All of that didn't make the cut, since this is my first game jam and I don't know how to do it yet, and didn't have time to research more.
What a fun and cute concept! Very well done :D
I’m a little confused with level 2, I do it fine, but then it restarts except I don’t have enough gold to place anything. What am I missing? As a peggle enjoyer I rly like the idea tho and the targetting system is pretty impressive for a first ever jam.
It's intentional but not very intuitive, I know. It's because you don't have enough money to buy another pin (which is possible to have if you experiment a bit). Ideally I'd have some audio/visual feedback that you were out of money to clue players in about this, but it didn't make the cut unfortunately.
I enjoyed the game a lot, but when I reached level five I very much felt like I completed the level but got the gameover screen. Thank you for your game! A good execution of a simple and fun idea. I definetely had half a heart left on level five though. :)
@Rowlof Yeah, I didn't quite make it to the win screen (although completing it gets you to level 5, rather than level 4). There was a lot of things I really wanted to do of course. Thanks for playing and rating!