The game has a fair bit of challenge based on the core mechanic of changing the direction of the ball with the space bar. It challenges your sense of timing and prediction by having you determine what's the optimal time to hold or let go of the space bar, which feels satisfying to accomplish if obstacles are successfully blocked. This is augmented with the sound effect when successfully blocking incoming obstacles. The power ups also change up the gameplay by creating the equivalent of 'rest points', since it's far easier to block incoming obstacles with the bigger ball. These components overall reduce frustration with the game when missing obstacles. The background audio also is a welcome touch.
The game is very intuitive, and it is very easy to tell what the goal of the game is with the health bar and points.
This game has a unique and interesting concept! The controls being hold to change directions instead of tap to toggle also made it much easier to 'wave' the orbital ball around, allowing the player to block incoming reds.
I love balls!
This is actually my favorite game of the whole jam gameplaywise. It's a game I can actually see myself mashing my face against in class during middle school. The music is vibey. Gameplay's hard but fun. The powerups are so simple yet so effective, particularly since these stupid projectiles are so hard to hit.
The game is very intuitive and easy to understand. The game is hard enough to be challenging and easy enough not to be. After figuring out the trick to stay in one place by keeping changing directions, the game provides a skill curve to master.
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What could this game have done better?
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The distribution of incoming obstacles doesn't take into account the rotation speed around the core. There are sometimes impossible scenarios where two incoming obstacles are so close to hitting the obstacle at the same time but are on opposite sides, meaning a sacrifice has to be made. Without a means of recovering health, these can lead to some frustration and a cascading sequence of failures as one miss may lead to subsequent misses. Perhaps a predictive or algorithmic means of spawning obstacles based on rotation speed and placement of previous obstacles can alleviate these concerns.
There is a problem with the difficulty after about 40 or 50 balls, the game becomes very difficult very quickly, and feels impossible after a certain point.
It's impossible to block every incoming red ball, even with the most skilled player. A tweak to the spawn time/move speed of the balls such that they line up with the orbit could make the game feel really good, almost as if any player can naturally be good at the game. Right now, if you over commit to some red balls, you'll let a lot more red balls through, and once you mess up once, you will lose a lot of health at once.
I noticed that the upgrades were changed from purple squares to red squares, but I think the squares being purple was actually a better design. This is because the shapes are so small and moving so fast that color was more important indicator than shape.
I think the upgrades could be released more intentionally, rather than at random times. I also think there's a bit too much dead space on the screen, which makes it seem a tad anemic.
Obstacles become impossible to defend against at some points and towards the end the obstacles come as a spiral which doesnt follow the random path as before
Comments
What did this game do well?
****************************
The game has a fair bit of challenge based on the core mechanic of changing the direction of the ball with the space bar. It challenges your sense of timing and prediction by having you determine what's the optimal time to hold or let go of the space bar, which feels satisfying to accomplish if obstacles are successfully blocked. This is augmented with the sound effect when successfully blocking incoming obstacles. The power ups also change up the gameplay by creating the equivalent of 'rest points', since it's far easier to block incoming obstacles with the bigger ball. These components overall reduce frustration with the game when missing obstacles. The background audio also is a welcome touch.
The game is very intuitive, and it is very easy to tell what the goal of the game is with the health bar and points.
This game has a unique and interesting concept! The controls being hold to change directions instead of tap to toggle also made it much easier to 'wave' the orbital ball around, allowing the player to block incoming reds.
I love balls!
This is actually my favorite game of the whole jam gameplaywise. It's a game I can actually see myself mashing my face against in class during middle school. The music is vibey. Gameplay's hard but fun. The powerups are so simple yet so effective, particularly since these stupid projectiles are so hard to hit.
The game is very intuitive and easy to understand. The game is hard enough to be challenging and easy enough not to be. After figuring out the trick to stay in one place by keeping changing directions, the game provides a skill curve to master.
========================================
What could this game have done better?
****************************
The distribution of incoming obstacles doesn't take into account the rotation speed around the core. There are sometimes impossible scenarios where two incoming obstacles are so close to hitting the obstacle at the same time but are on opposite sides, meaning a sacrifice has to be made. Without a means of recovering health, these can lead to some frustration and a cascading sequence of failures as one miss may lead to subsequent misses. Perhaps a predictive or algorithmic means of spawning obstacles based on rotation speed and placement of previous obstacles can alleviate these concerns.
There is a problem with the difficulty after about 40 or 50 balls, the game becomes very difficult very quickly, and feels impossible after a certain point.
It's impossible to block every incoming red ball, even with the most skilled player. A tweak to the spawn time/move speed of the balls such that they line up with the orbit could make the game feel really good, almost as if any player can naturally be good at the game. Right now, if you over commit to some red balls, you'll let a lot more red balls through, and once you mess up once, you will lose a lot of health at once.
I noticed that the upgrades were changed from purple squares to red squares, but I think the squares being purple was actually a better design. This is because the shapes are so small and moving so fast that color was more important indicator than shape.
I think the upgrades could be released more intentionally, rather than at random times. I also think there's a bit too much dead space on the screen, which makes it seem a tad anemic.
Obstacles become impossible to defend against at some points and towards the end the obstacles come as a spiral which doesnt follow the random path as before
simple game that requires you to defend the middle ball using a outer one. Control the outer ball using the space bar.
Team: Zhuang, Wesley Zhang, Zhongyu Wu, Aaron
Controls：
Space - change directions
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Nz2MLFfPmg0Q_TuckYrLuBhVrfsWhMT6/edit?us...