[SA GAME JAM 2017] Bubble Trouble

Hey Guys.

Seeing as I started really late, I decided to go with something really simple. Inspired by Agar I am making a game where you collect bubbles in order to grow your own. My twist on the game? You're a sugar crystal trying to escape a refreshing glass of the worlds favorite fizzy drink ;) The larger your bubble the more bouncy(speed) you have and you have to get to the top of the glass before the drink gets chugged down. I wanted it to be a local multiplayer/AI racing game. But it made no sense to have sugar crystals race. So now you just race the clock. Ice cubes will decrease your size and thus your speed.

I have included a link to some of my progress. I'm done with the core mechanic. Please let me know what you guys think?

https://3xclamation.itch.io/bubble-trouble

Comments

  • When I try to run it I get an error that says:

    Data folder not found
    There should be 'BubbleTrouble_Data'
    folder next to the executable
  • @Upside Sorry about that, I fixed it now. Thanks!
  • I like the idea but here is a bunch of small suggestions to make it much better.

    * Game feels a bit random as if going left or right doesn't really make a big difference
    * Would be cool to see more of the glass. Maybe see the entire glass and see you progress up to the top and predict the bubbles and ice blocks much better

  • Really like the premise of this game, the microscopic nature of the concept... a tiny sugar crystal trying to escape a glass of soda, hitching rides on the bubbles. Trips my mind in a good way.

    The game itself is simple, but pretty much covers what you set out to create. The graphics are effective, I could picture myself inside a glass of coke. The little sugar crystal dude is cute too.

    The steering felt a bit slow, and it was a little hard to see which direction I was heading at first with the only indication being the eyes. Perhaps some kind of trail on the opposite side might help, or allowing the player a little bit of movement within the frame (the camera's frame feels static and locked on the player and makes it hard to feel the space).

    Building upon what you have, perhaps an added base movement vector which causes random wavy movement from side to side could be cool. Could add to that bubbly feel.

    Anyway, cool game! :)
  • Nice concept and cool art! My playthrough stuttered quite a bit though, not sure if anyone else has experienced that.

    Movement was a bit hard to track. Think adding a background with some details would help players to judge where and how fast their moving.
  • Cool thanks everybody! So it seems everyone is finding similar areas for me to improve the game:
    > Make it easier to track movement of the player bubble
    - Lazy camera/Camera smoothing should do wonders
    - @dutchbacon suggested a trail which would be cool too, maybe smaller bubbles could work well?
    - @SleepingSafari A parallaxing background was on my agenda, time just got away from me :( but now its definitely
    needed! Thanks!
    > Make collectible bubbles movement less random and move natural
    - I think I'm going to experiment with some sine waves to solve this

    Thanks everyone for the awesome feedback! really helpful.

    Some other improvements I plan on implementing:
    > when spawning collectible bubbles and growing player bubbles, they will grow smoothly instead of just appearing/instantly growing
    >UI Needs work... (needs an actual UI)
    > Show the glass as @Zaphire suggested
    >add waves to the top of the glass

    @SleepingSafari Your performance issues are strange. I'm pooling my bubbles and ice cubes. The game has very few verts and draw calls. I am however applying AA from unity's post processing stack, and I am performing a square root every time you consume a bubble(I use it to calculate the area the player bubble should grow.) Neither of these should be wrecking the CPU or GPU. I will look into it though, Thanks!
  • I gave it a go and it was quite interesting, I liked the *ahem* bubbliness of it.
    My concerns line up with what has been mentioned above.

    Well done!
    Thanked by 1StormGameDev
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