[Prototype] Bounce2D - Game in a week
A simple game of "keep it up" and eventually escape, (pretty impossible to escape at the moment though)
Want to add some polish and then publish, any thoughts?
Here's the link:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/206246577/Bouncer2D/Bouncer2D.html
Want to add some polish and then publish, any thoughts?
Here's the link:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/206246577/Bouncer2D/Bouncer2D.html
Comments
Also, the scale seems completely unrealistic. The ball feels like its hundreds of metres in diameter, and reaches velocities of tens of kilometres a second, which my engineering brain really doesn't like.
I really like games like Mega Jump and Doodle Jump... and this has a similar feeling... though I appreciate the twist on the formula where you have the player trying to get as far as possible and their penalty for falling is that they have to regain that altitude.
Some suggestions and feedback!
I found the horizontal movement quite slippery. I imagine you've done that to get the right sort of difficulty, or to emulate using a tilt control mechanism. However I think if you could find another way to achieve this (and make the momentum on the ball a bit easier to manage) it would be a more pleasurable experience on PC... although after a while I did get better at moving the object around.
I'd like to see you experiment with the pickups to give the player more complex intermediate goals. Maybe that the way you pick them up matters, or the order you pick them up (like every three pickups something happens based on the last three pickups), or the pickups themselves have different types.
I felt the way that the pickups were skattered was a bit random and not very aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes a boost and a stop were overlapping, which kind of makes it a non-pickup because the control on the ball didn't allow fine enough control to catch one and not the other.
Some more feedback for when you pick up speed boosts or stops would really help... maybe some screen shake on the stops. Maybe a trail on the ball that is longer when it is boosting. JUICE IT OR LOSE IT!
Another thing you could do is make a lose condition like Doodle Jump (i.e. the screen doesn't travel downward very far before you lose) and then you make upgrades that you can purchase between attempts (like Ridiculous Fishing)...
(Actually, if you don't do that last suggestion I might make a little experiment like that myself at some point).
Obviously there's still a lot you can do with this, and you probably have your own completely different ideas about it. I'm looking forward to seeing where you take it!
I'm sorry about the resolution, I was fiddling with the html to get it right didn't really think about the consequences. As for the lag, I do destroy the objects as soon as they leave the screen. I am not too familiar with how Unity draws objects that are far away from the camera, as i do have many pickups at once. So i will have to look at improving performance. I appreciate the comment!
@BlackShipsFilltheSky
600km?! Wow, haha I couldn't even do that!
Yeah, I hear you. I do need to find the balance between difficulty and smoothness for the control system. I will experiment a bit with that.
I really like the goals idea so will definitely try to implement that!
And I will try to work on the aesthetics, not my strongest skill unfortunately...
I appreciate yet another long and helpful comment! Thank so much!
I'm not sure what your goal here is. Do you want to learn the skill of making aesthetically pleasing prototypes? If aesthetics aren't your strong point then don't spend a ton of time on them, rather find some cheap tricks that help convey the experience you want.
I'd suggest looking at games that share something in common with your game, and trying to figure out if anything they're doing is within your artistic capabilities, and then experimenting with that.
Off the top of my head:
Faraway by Steph Thiron is beautiful, and very minimal. It isn't about going up, but maybe there's some ideas there.
You could look at Aether by Edmund McMillen. Although it is obviously heavy on the illustration. However the colour scheme might be useful?
And Doodle Jump is the godfather of this genre... but it's old and it's been well overdone now.
(I know originally I was just talking about the placement of the pickups when I said "aesthetics" ... but it's probably best to think about the overall aesthetics, including sound, animation, art, layout/composition, flow etc, when thinking about aesthetics)