[Released] Cluster - Need signal boosting !!
HalvCirkel is my shot at a mobile game.
Partly inspired by Super Hexagon, I wanted to try and make a infinite runner in all directions but what I ended up with is much more interesting to me than an infinite runner.
You can turn left and right by using the arrow keys. To go into boost mode you press both down. When you boost the boost bar gets depleted but you can destroy the blocks to get score. The arrow is pointing to the nearest glowing hexagon which will refill your boost. GET THE HIGHEST SCORE, mine is 3800
I know that it looks similar to faraway (
) but in my opinion it plays very different to that.
Some design questions I am currently struggling with :
>How do I break the connections to faraway ?
>I need more things to keep the player busy but do I add them in the form of a shop or do I add more mechanics... Both seem crappy...
Here is a gameplay video :
Here are some screenshots :
Download it here (8 mb) :
https://drive.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B8L1lapR2kOGQnp3cmhJSENWNVU&export=download
Thanks for your time
Kobus
Partly inspired by Super Hexagon, I wanted to try and make a infinite runner in all directions but what I ended up with is much more interesting to me than an infinite runner.
You can turn left and right by using the arrow keys. To go into boost mode you press both down. When you boost the boost bar gets depleted but you can destroy the blocks to get score. The arrow is pointing to the nearest glowing hexagon which will refill your boost. GET THE HIGHEST SCORE, mine is 3800
I know that it looks similar to faraway (
) but in my opinion it plays very different to that.Some design questions I am currently struggling with :
>How do I break the connections to faraway ?
>I need more things to keep the player busy but do I add them in the form of a shop or do I add more mechanics... Both seem crappy...
Here is a gameplay video :
Here are some screenshots :
Download it here (8 mb) :
https://drive.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B8L1lapR2kOGQnp3cmhJSENWNVU&export=download
Thanks for your time
Kobus
Comments
-Bad
*The first problem I encountered was that the game doesn't explicitly show that you need to boost through blocks to attain score.
*Personally I prefer 'A' and 'D' to arrow keys but that is kinda a minor thing.
*Hitting blocks isn't very satisfying. Just some score numbers.
*The blocks being stationary makes things feel a bit dull. The game should feel like it is constantly in motion.
-Good
*The boost is fucking cool.
*The controls are simple and fun. Might need some tweaking though.
*It feels like it's on the right path to having SH like elements of just need to beat that score, but it lacks a distinct flavor of challenge that SH has
---
As far as Faraway goes? Yeah there are some similarities. But well there are similarities between most games. While there are some surface similarities I the core aesthetics of the game seem really different. Faraway is about building in space, while HalvCirkel is about destroying colored rectangles (which gives you quite a bit of room to wiggle in some kind of narrative if you really wanted, but the you can always just go with the SH style of you are Triangle avoid everything else or die)
To do list for friday :
*Add tutorial
*Add blocks that cant be smashed
*Add moving spinning things that you have to avoid
*Make space infinite
*Add menu
*Add score multiplier. So you will basicly be able to get a much higher score if you destroy blocks in a short time.
Thanks for the feedback.
Like the boost to collect. Would like to have known more about the controls before I started. Just flew around collecting the hex's getting no score for a while.
Key bindings. Arrow keys were not the first I tried. A-D were.
Sound :D
Some of the spawn conditions might be problematic. A hex was spawned in the middle of a rectangle. If I had no more boost I could never have collected it.
More arrows showing where other hex's are the closest to you the others on the edge of the screen.
Juice, much more juice.
Do the smaller hex's give you less boost? They harder to collect so I am hoping there is more boost not less when you do.
Something else moving perhaps a smaller block that's worth far more points.
I would love to see some context, say you a worm eating nutrients space alien gobbling up planets even just a virus breaking through firewalls to get some juice info. This might just be me some people mind either way.
What if the large blocks spilt when you hit them. Like the asteroids game. Leaving more and more smaller harder to dodge blocks in your path over time.
Fixed that. :)
I have mixed feelings about this cause its cool for me that you need to save some boost in case you need to get more boost but on the other hand people might just think its a bug. Though I think your suggestion about having multiple arrows is very clever and that would solve this. You can just fly to another hexagon and get boost there Coming right up...
No but they should. Or they should all be the same size. I am shooting to clean up the visual clutter a bit so I will probably force them to be the same size.
Sounds interesting. I want to try and keep it "fair" in the sense that you can compare score to decide which is the better player. So adding this sort of thing might take away from that. People will argue that the one player was just lucky..
Yeah, I think in my mind HalvCirkel is a much improved version of windows disk defragmentor.
You are actually de fragmenting your computer by playing the game :D
Another interesting thought. This goes against my supposed "narrative" but I guess you could be a virus as well. I will have to test this to give my opinion on it but its at least worth evaluating.
Thanks a ton for the feedback,
really valuable.
I like the concept, it's nice and simple and takes some of the cues from the two button design challenge, which was a goodie :)
I like the boost, it feels fun, I like the camera movement, very cool.
If I was never told of how the game works (reading above) I would never know that boosting was needed to break the blocks.
So I feel that there's a funny two-way pulling that the mechanics are doing: Boosting costs the energy thing. So the best way to use the boosts if you're going for "optimizing your play" (which is ultimately what people will want to do) is to boost as little as possible to hit as many blocks as possible, while not dying due to you coming out in the middle of a boost into a block.
But boosting is FUN, and the game is making me not wanting to boost because of how it works.
So those are the two forces that I feel are working against each other in this prototype.
Then there's the way that you can play through the whole thing without ever using boost - it's not the most fun but it's the safest, and I bet some people will play it like that. The game should make it both fun to boost and make it so you want to boost, and indeed make it so you HAVE TO boost to play the game. Maybe you lose momentum as the game goes on so if you don't boost you will die?
Maybe there's some kind of boost combo-ing mechanic that rewards you for boosting in a good way, maybe each boost will last longer than your tap, giving you a limitation to your boost (so you don't get to make puny little boosts to be cheap) that makes the boost feel better overall, maybe there's a skill in foreseeing where your boost will end so you can chain up boosts in a meaningful manner...
Spitballing ideas :)
Looks pretty, keep it going :)
I get that. At the moment you can stay alive forever by never boosting but you cant get any score. This is a score driven game so you probably should boost.
I think the multiplier will help somewhat with this. Though I think the multiplier will only add to the case where you make a ton of little boosts.
In any case thanks for the feedback,
I will try and upload a newer build later today.
I'd like you to play more with the music and visuals. Like, when the tempo is higher your boost looks "better". Juice the visuals with the music a a frame of reference. Just like the blocks do already.
Oh, when you break through blocks they explode with a complementary sound to the music, this could make the player want use the boost more. I'm just spit balling here.
Anyway. I like the concept! :D
As for when the blocks gets destroyed : I will juice that up a bit more. Everything is prototypy atm.
I should probably mention that I updated the build guys. There's music and some pathetic sound effects.
I am currently not sure in what direction to take the game..
I do not like that you can float around the whole time without doing anything. But on the other hand I feel like thats cool cause its a fail state without actually failing.
I also don't like that you are able to get score but you can do it on your own time. I want you to solely focus on the multiplier. You should not be worried about the score just about the multiplier.
I dunno, games get really hard to make when you cross that initial "test the mechanic" phase.
One thing I learned about failstates is that you'd rather give people a definite fail, and quickly, so that they can try again. It's a game loop - a definite "I WIN" or "I LOSE" gets people to learn and come back. Ambiguousness gives people much less, unless that's the point (a la minecraft and Lego).
I really think you should direct people towards the focus of your game - and that means penalising them if they're going the "wrong way" - in this case, floating around doing nothing.
I think if you always lose energy/speed until you eventually just fail, you'll be forced to collect more stuff. If you don't do the right thing, you'll lose. Definite failstate.
Other than that, keep exploring :)
Thanks @Tuism at the moment I decided to force you to destroy blocks regularly or you lose.
Ive deleted and updated old links but here it is again :
https://drive.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B8L1lapR2kOGQnp3cmhJSENWNVU&export=download
Perhaps replace the bar below with tail length and the timer could simply count down and start flashing red and white with a big 5 second count down when you reach the last bit so you don't have to watch it too closely just be aware of it.
One concern is it feels hard to develop skill, not sure if that's just me or a general thing.
Its something to look at.
As for the bars I dont want to remove the boost bar entirely but I did originally think of using the tail but I think that wouldn't look as cool. At the moment the tail is used to convey a big change in speed. If it were to be variable lengths the effect would not be the same cause it would seem that the tail is long because you have a lot of boost.
But I do agree that the UI needs some more clean up. I am either going to bump up the size and move the position a tiny bit up so that you can see below it. Or I am going to move it up there with the timer or bring the timer down to the boost bat. I will see.
Thanks for playing the newer version.
Thanks for your time.
Game looks really slick, I like the impetus of the life counting down :)
Thanks, Ive been enjoying this very much. That song is actually called Syndicate by skrillex (he made it for the trailer of the game I think)
But yeah I needed to test the blocks movement sync with the music so I just grabbed from my playlist. If someone think they can do a piece of music in that style just do it and send it to me if you want.
Listen to that! :P
I have a penchant and a strange useless talent for remembering classic games' songs :)
In true Super Hexagon fashion I suggest you mess with the game's speed for more challenge :)
So there is definitely something here. But I'm struggling to "have fun". Let's if we can figure out why?
Some notes on the player feedback:
- I didn't get that the bar at the bottom was the amount of boost I had. I actually thought this was the timer. Especially because it starts with a "countdown" tween. If this tweened in from the middle to show "It's filling up the tank" maybe I would've got it. But who knows. Also shows you how much focus I paid to it once I started playing to not notice it wasn't going down consistently.
- I had to read this thread to get the tail was my countdown on how often I needed to break blocks.
- Once I understand that I had a "boost resource" I then understood the pickups were fuel. Before then I wasn't sure if the pickups where the point of the game (they have an arrow pointing to them) or if breaking blocks was the point (I seemed to die a lot for no reason).
Okay, so I think for me you need to figure out what your core loop is. Is it breaking blocks? Is it navigation? Is it resource management? Right now Cluster is a resource management game. You need to manage your time, you need to manage your fuel. The need to find fuel also adds the navigation loop.What's fun about the game? Breaking blocks! Boosting! Flying really fast and not dying feels awesome! Those are twitch mechanics. So you're going to have to choose, is it a game about reflexes or resources? Good design advice I once heard was "be generous with your most fun mechanic". Going fast is fun. Make me go fast as much as possible. Don't make me stop going fast just because my fuel has run out. So I would like to see a version where you drop the fuel. If you're really attached to the pickups leave them as "secret" collectable. So at the end you can say you found '2 of 3 orbs'. That will still encourage exploration for advanced players.
Okay, so now that we have a focus, going fast, how can we ramp that up? Black holes are now important. The time running out is important. This in a way encourages people to go fast. I wonder if there is a better way to do this? Maybe we can get the player go faster not because they have to, but because it's more awesome?
So how about this, the player starts of with a limited boost duration. You can boost as much as you want but you can only do for a short burst. But breaking blocks enhances this ability, and go for longer. Breaking blocks now has meaning! So maybe because you can boost for longer you can now also boost faster (for a difficulty curve? this might be too much though). Maybe, in order to break the bigger blocks you need to go faster than for the small blocks. That way you have to start by skillfully picking off small blocks, and then as you get more awesome you can deal with bigger blocks that we're previously way too burly for you. That sounds like a pretty sweet game loop to me.
I imagine you could do this by having each level of block "obviously different". Small blocks are all blue, medium blocks are yellow, big blocks are red kind of thing. You would need have explicit feedback to show the player they are now capable of destroying better things - I think the level 1,2,3, etc feedback you currently have would work nicely for this.
Also the problem with allowing more boost the further you get is that the difficulty curve decreases. Again, the difficulty curve decreases the further you go. This also works against the go fast break blocks mechanic.
I now have to build up more layers without adding unnecessary stuff again.
Thanks for your time.
@dislekcia I am not a big fan of that idea. That would impose a hard cap on the game cause eventually stuff will get so big and out of control that you can never get any higher. I want to have a game in which you get better the more you play. Like super hexagon.
So don't just speed the boost up, speed everything up incrementally, it's like playing the game on fast forward. *Someone* will rise to the challenge and it would be glorious to see them do it :)
I mean seriously wtf is this shit:
But my point is that level has the same level of difficulty throughout. Maybe it gets a tiny bit more difficult but not really noticeable.
So if I would want to do it like that I would split up the game in levels like SH and have it transition into those levels the more blocks you destroy. BUT the levels themselves has the same amount of difficulty.
Ive played with this it didnt feel right (thats why I have the level indicator there in the first place :) ) But I think I should revisit it.
But yeah 'beaten' Super Hexagon a couple of times, been trying to make some progress in BW, but really haven't had the time to sit down with it.
Really liking the way things are progressing ;)
So having just played the new build - The limited boost is great. The juice you have on the craft movement and breaking blocks feels awesome! You know what doesn't feel awesome? Dying every time I hit a block. I know that's kind of the point, to be difficult. But you have a movement system that feels awesome! Let me enjoy that! ;)
So when I'm scootching around using my boost system, you know what I see? I see a microbe eating food. When I don't die, it feels like a turbo charged Osmos / Flow. Yeah, those are zen games, but whatever. Dashing around and eating blocks feels awesome. When I'm actually concentrating on staying alive I play very timidly. Short boosts. Don't obfuscate the awesome! You have black holes to keep players in check, you don't need the blocks to kill you. There enough game in exploring the environment using a totally sweet movement system. While blocks don't kill you, they can still block your way if you don't get your boost right.
Okay, so at this point the question might be, if you can just explore the environment, what's the point? Well, I feel like exploration is already a decent reward. But maybe let's imagine you're going around collecting blocks. You're eating and doing a good job of surviving as a microbe. Your score is increasing. Block number 23 looks just the same as all the previous blocks. Munch- "HOLY SHIT WAT THE FUUUU IS THAT?" There is a monster(microbe) lying dormant inside the block. He's wakes up. He's higher up on the food chain than you... you better run. Good thing you are an ultimate boost ninja!
Point is there are so much you could do by adding other creatures and "agents" to the system. Ala flow and osmos. ;)
PS I've also finished Super Hexagon. The trick there is there are patterns you brain can learn. I don't really see a scope for patterns in Cluster
I am not sure how one would do the "blocks don't kill you" situation. I mean i guess you could do a situation where if you hit a block it deducts 5 of your score, and if you go below zero you loose. Or if you hit the black hole you die. And then you could expand the exploration aspect by having some sort of procedural shape generator.
The above situation feels like its too easy, so I will probably split up the game into an "normal" and "WTF? THIS IS INSANE" mode.
Thanks for the feedback.
Boost is infinite now. You can only go upwards in this one. There are saws that are chasing you.
https://drive.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B8L1lapR2kOGQnp3cmhJSENWNVU&export=download
https://drive.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=0B8L1lapR2kOGQnp3cmhJSENWNVU&export=download
In this build Ive added blades that rotate around a point.
The levels is better balanced, so there is 5 levels from 1 - 100 you level up every 20 blocks.
Ive added SCREENSHAKE !!!!!!!!!
There is now a death counter and a all time best counter added.
I think we might be getting close to an actual release. I am thinking about $3 - $5 through itch.io and humble what do you guys think ?
You can play the game over here : http://kobusvdwalt9.itch.io/cluster
Also if you wouldn't mind re-tweeting this tweet : https://twitter.com/Kobusvdwalt9/status/570799674287742976/
Here is a video :
Thanks again for the initial feedback. It shaped the game into what it is today.
Small bits of feedback:
Can you make the "Press hold to boost" text in the tutorial a little more obvious? Some people I made play didn't read the text properly and kept going back and forth to the main menu.
I think a little example animation of your arrow breaking through the blocks would work quite well too.
Edit: Oh! I played the LInux version on Ubuntu. Worked flawlessly.