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(+3)

This game is great and tickles a bunch of childhood itches, all while making it your own and coming down with smooth graphics, gameplay and turning it into a fun roguelike.

That said, I'm terrible at the game, and while it's fun to play regardless, my skill issues have unearthed a rather frustrating part of the game loop: the game goes swimmingly while the centre protective bumper is active, usually lasting till act 4, though I've made act 6 with good resets. But as soon as they run out, I lose one ball after the next, throwing 10 balls away within a single act and losing.

This feels incredibly frustrating and lopsided. Extra balls don't even matter at my skill level, and getting multiball is a debuff since its chaotic nature kills the bumper faster relative to the progress you're making. I really only have 1 life and it's the protective bumper.

So for the sake of us worse players, I'd advocate for making the protective bumper have significantly fewer HP but resetting every time you get a new ball.

This more gradual loss would really help give (at least me) a better measure of where we are, make the game less dependant on a bumper reset, and also give a more rewarding feedback for keeping a ball going for longer. Plus of course no more losing 5 balls within 20 seconds.

Thank you for hearing me out, and of course for letting us play such an awesome demo. Good luck with your Steam release!

(+2)

This is a great idea and seems like a no-brainer now that I've read it... Just goes  to show I've been to close to the game recently to view it objectively. It will take some rebalancing but I think this could really work, you're definitely not the first to mention the difficulty once the blockers are gone. Thank you SO much for playing, and even more so for the feedback!

I second this feedback. I like the game, but I'm so bad, that once the middle bumper is out it's game over.

Btw, I don't know pinball and the text tutorial made me think that bumbers are those things I control.

(+1)

Ok, I've pretty much added exactly this in the latest patch, I hope it feels less punishing once that central blocker is gone. Thanks again for the feedback, I feel this is a really big change and one that might not have happened without this input. Hugely appreciated, thank you!

Happy to be of help.

And yes, it really makes the game feel better paced and makes buying additional balls truly worth it. With these changes I managed to beat 1st difficulty as well as 2nd difficulty with Inferno ball. And it was really fun!

In those, I also had a couple of other, though much less significant thoughts:

  • The tutorial could mention that you can switch around the active lights of each mission. That one took me some time to figure out.
  • The Multiball mission is probably still a net negative. You get 3 balls, so unless the centre bumper has less than 3 HP, you get something that helps no one except speedrunners. My personal idea would be to alternate it with a mission that restores your protective bumper to half of the HP it had the last time you triggered Multiball + 10% of its base HP.
  • Saving a ball that goes out at the side funnels feels really cool, so it's sort of disappointing to me that the side protective bumpers (usually, at my skill level) last longer than the centre one.
  • The slow motion effect is really cool and fun, so I see a lot of potential for fun Glyphs and Blessings unlocking additional situations when it triggers. E.g. once a minute when a ball is about to be lost, whenever you cradle a ball, or when a ball moves downwards at a very high velocity.
  • There's some potential for a couple cool temporary damage boosts from Glyphs in return for doing risky things. E.g. remove side blockers and gain temporary bonus damage after a ball enters a side funnel, while holding one or both flippers open, or while the centre protective blocker is gone.
(+1)

Thanks for coming back and trying again! So glad it made things easier for you and congrats on beating the table, I’ve added all these comments to a feedback doc I’ve got and will go over them all and see what I can do, some more great suggestions in here so massive thanks once again!

(+1)

Adding to that, an accidental discovery I made is that slow-mo on hitting a ramp shot would be a really cool glyph, since it lets you easily switch the lights for the mission.