teammonumental 2017-04-30 04:31
This game was very fun to play. The pixel art and music was great. The idea, while not too new, was executed very well.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Batter Bros.
By lazyasteroid, fanatrick and Sylex
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 78 | 3.95 | 50 | |
| Fun | 23 | 4.08 | 50 | |
| Innovation | 285 | 3.31 | 50 | |
| Theme | 207 | 3.75 | 51 | |
| Graphics | 23 | 4.63 | 52 | |
| Audio | 90 | 3.83 | 51 | |
| Humor | 1 | |||
| Mood | 202 | 3.60 | 48 |
This game was very fun to play. The pixel art and music was great. The idea, while not too new, was executed very well.
As soon that I found out that I can win without moving and just spamming J even on the highest difficulty, the game got a lot easier. Because the controls where not that great (K for jumping? Thats a bit random I think, why not W or Space?). But graphically pleasing and the audio is also nice.
Very good game with quiet a fresh concept and nice graphics and audio! Keep up the good work!
The first strategy I tried out with this game was the obvious one - mash J repeatedly without moving. And to my great dismay, it worked. The game ended up feeling really shallow and repetitive because the optimal strategy is to ignore most of the game's mechanic and just get a good rhythm going with the bat.
And this is really dissapointing because the graphics, sfx, music are outstanding and the core design idea is solid (if not terribly innovative) and promises a lot of fun dodging and timing challenges.
There's a number of fairly simple ways to resolve this issue. Most trivially, you could force the player to face in the direction of the ball, or add a cooldown to the bats, maybe a .1-.2 second animation of the bat going back into position for the next swing. If you were to go a bit more extravagant, a charge-up mechanic would be nice, where I have to hold down the j key to pull the bat back, and release to swing it, with force proportional to how long I've been holding it.
Great work on this title. I would love to play it with friends as a simpler alternative to Lethal League but the optimal strategy weighs it down too much.
Gameplay is great fun, art and audio is really good too! Not too original or innovative though.
So much fun! It's really challenging to play with the hardest AI. And the art is pretty good too!
I think that you should publish more screenshots on this page for better promotion~
5/5 overall. I enjoyed playing this game.
Thanks for the feedback so far!
- The key scheme is weird, but it was made with multiplayer in mind.
- Yeah, we're aware the game can be beat by mashing the swing button and I tried a few things. In the end, it still felt a lot better and faster without a long cooldown, I didn't feel like murdering the action by increasing it.
Good job. I like the art.
That's it. I found my perfect 5 from this Jam. Really enjoyed playing it. Definitely would get this if you make a post-jam version, this is great, I'm giggling like a little child while batting 3 balls at once. The only correction I propose is that you can't jump and bat at the same time, but anyways, I loved it.
Congratulation guys, keep making games, you're good at it.
Playing this against a human player and using 3 balls is pretty great. The controls were a little weird for me at first.
This is my first 5/5. Literally a homerun. The game is fun to play, has a chipper tune in the background with solid sound effects. Looks good, and is overall just plain fun.
The game reminds me of Lethal League, but you could of got your inspiration from anywhere. The controls took a bit to get the hang of but after a few games it wasn't noticeable.
Oddly enough it took longer to beat a 2nd player that doesn't move than it did the CPU. CPU is pretty well programmed though and hits some pretty speedy baseballs.
Awesome game. I played it with a friend and it was really challenging. Sometime the ball was stucked in a loop between down and up. I also liked the fish eye effect with the glass sphere. :)
A Lethal League-like game but with cuter art. I thought you did especially great work with the limited amount of time you had what with a fully functional CPU and even different modes of difficulty. I loved the absolute mayhem of having several balls on the playfield! :boom::baseball::baseball::baseball:
Very well executed Lethal League clone. I really love the colorful crayon-like pixel work and playing inside a glass dome was a really neat twist. One thing I don't understand is that the balls streak the color of the player that hit it last, but other than that, they're neutral in the sense that they can hit anyone. It kind of dampens the reward of hitting a fast flying ball when it's still just as dangerous to you afterwards, especially if you hit it from behind and it bounces right back into your face. Just a small critique to a great entry.
I found inspiration from an old flash game called something along the lines of "atomic baseball" or something similar. Never saw Lethal League until you guys mentioned it, but now I can definitely see the resemblance <.<
;___; seems a great cool game!! but i want to play it! XD
FATAL ERROR in Vertex Shader compilation ShaderName: shader_cycler
D3DXCompile failed - result
at gml_Object_o_waterfall_Draw_0
@Jabba Your GPU doesn't support shader model we're using. I'll prepare a version that doesn't use shaders in a few minutes.
this is beautiful! I had a lot of fun playing the game
New download link update, nothing changed in the game but it now checks if the machine supports shader model 3, and if not - turns shaders off so it's playable (but way uglier :P).
Wow.... Game is extremely solid. Absolutely love the graphics. Music and sound effects work well with the game. Definitely one of my favorites so far, awesome work!
I played the game, and before leaving a review, I ended up reading what others wrote first. Seeing people saying it could be completed by only mashing the hit button encouraged me to play it by actually moving around after the ball.
Turns out I suck at this :I
Anyhow. First of all, congratulations to the team for making such a great looking game, with its theme, art and music coexisting in glorious harmony. Simple and quirky, yet fun, and possibly even great when you actually have someone else to play it with.
First of all, I really enjoyed the presentation of the game. a cute retro-esque logo, followed up by a very impressive mix of pixelart of old and new. The effect of the water and moving closer to the borders of the world were awe inspiring. The music fit juuuuuust right with the setting.
Gameplay wise, simple and to the point. Hit the ball, and don't get hit by the ball. Games don't need much more than that to be functional. But the extras and details are what really pushed the project. Underwater ball physics, ball bouncing around, and even playing with 3 balls in play at the same time. I love modifiers in the games I play, and I ended playing up for longer with that last setting. The game felt so refreshingly chaotic.
If you'd like to continue with this project in the future, I'd love to leave some feedback and suggestions. As others have said, the controllers are an oddball. While they were selected by considering that 2 players will play it, you should add an option to either remap controllers or have an alternate scheme for when there's only one player. I didn't check if this game had controller support, so, if there's none, there's another one.
Expansion-wise, play to the game's strengths. If it's too easy to spam the hit button, adding a cooldown, forcing the player to look at the ball, or adding bigger blind spots could possibly work. Other things that could be added is to add more reasons for the player to move around and jump. Maybe have it so jumping also pushes the little island down, making it float at different levels? Add some tides to the water to push the islands around? Those kind of things could make the game a bit more dynamic. They could be added as modifiers if they make the game too chaotic for the general public's taste (I'd personally embrace it).
Anyhow, this was a great jam game. It does what it was made to do. Looks great, feels good. Not much reason to replay it when alone, but it's the kind of game that could be showcased in small reunions. Great work!
If you and your team have Twitter accounts, we'd like to follow you, so we can stay informed about your future projects. If that's the case, do share them. As for now, keep up the good work! :whale:
PD: Something something Lethal League. That you haven't heard of it before submitting the game is proof that we do live in a... hehe... small world. Great minds think alike, I guess, so kudos for coming up on your own with a gameplay reminiscent of an old favorite. I hope that you don't get discouraged by the comparisons, since I have good faith that your game can stand up on its own. Like I said, the 3 balls modifier was astounding, and that's something that wouldn't have worked in LL.
Nice! Great art and just super polished overall. Good use of the theme too and the curved wall gives this type of game a bit of a different spin.
I really like the graphics. The details. The player can see that some balls are more dangerous. The game is in a snow globe and the distortion near the edges is another nice detail. When a ball hits the water it creates waves and little bubbles. And the pixelart is well done. Falling in the water felt a bit buggy. Sometimes I got hit in the water or shortly after my respawn.
Hey, thank you again for the streaming of my game ! I played yours ! It was a lot of fun, I really appreciated it ! Graphics are well polished, the menu with option is also a nice to have !
Regarding the gameplay, the cooldown between 2 hits is first a bit frustrating but we get used to it pretty fast ! Sometimes, trajectories were really hard to anticipate though. The music matches the game very well ! And there is a lot of challenge, I first managed to beat the CPU 10 with a 3 balls match with only one try (and a lot of luck I imagine).
Then I went on the 1 ball match and it was a tough battle, and after several lost matches, I managed to win in the end, and I was so proud of me that I took a screenshot ! :grin:
P1win.png
So I felt really excited by playing Batter Bros, you definitely deserve a 5 stars for the fun category ! :wink: Well done !!!
The sound the bat makes when you hit the ball is so satisfying!
The game was fun, nice job getting AI in there as well, that's impressive.
Graphics were solid too. I wasn't a huge fan of the music but it's more of a style thing and I feel like I have to point out SOMETHING or else what's the sense of feedback!
I didn't try any of the button spam stuff, I played for real and had a good time doing it!
Nice concept, it's a upgrated pong ^^ Graphism and music are great! Even if the music begin to be annoying at the end ^^ Good job
The game has a very great feel to it. The pixel art is adorable, but still has some great complexity to it (refraction and deforming), music and sound also fit very well. I like the water and rounded dome, which raises the complexity of the main mechanic tremendously. Also I suck at it, CPU too good, rip.
Really gorgeous art, I love the reflection and the colors. Really fun gameplay. Certainly one of my favorite entries so far.
It is a very beautiful game, and the gameplay reminds me of Lethal League a bit. But very nice though.
We need controller support asap! cus this gud game needs to be played by 2 (i cannot right now but i will)(it it's possible, please @ me in a message when you announce it ) loved the game, keep on jammin'!
Nicely put together game! Good art, good music, fun gameplay. Solid work!
Really fun game, wish I had a friend over to play it. A nicely graphic'd game of pong. I would consider a way to add some more interaction, seemed very simple, so maybe some added spikes or a faster ball or multiple balls so I had a lot of different things going on. It was fun, keep up the good work!
@simple-blue The ball does get faster, that's the point of the game. Also there is a multiple ball option, and AI, I have a feeling you didn't play the game thoroughly enough :P
Loved playing this one! got to have a few goes with my friend, I love local multiplayer games you've done a great job...
IF you take this any further snow-globe selection would be quite cool to see (select your environment) :D
This is really fun. The 3 ball mode is insane. The only complaint i have is that the jump feels really stiff. Probably because the fall speed is so high. I love the art though and you should add different snowglobes if you expand on this. Nice job!
Simply perfect. Continue this, and release it. :smiley:
Gamepad support is a must have, and network play would be the finishing touch!
Nice entry! It's unfortunate that Lethal League already exists, because this would have been a pretty innovative entry otherwise!
The artwork is great and the game is pretty fun, but the fact that it's inside a snow globe feels kind of inconsequential to the rest of it and only serves to give a connection to the theme.
Having a vs. CPU mode was a really nice touch though. It makes it a lot easier to get a feel for the game than trying to play a 2-player game with only one person.
Really liked your game, 5/5 theme and graphic for me. Suuuuuper nice **hi-bit pixel art**, nice pastel color palette, mega attention to details, I was impressed when I noticed the visual distortion at the edges of the sphere and how curated was the physics of the water.
I won on first try, but I think because the AI made a couple of very bad mistakes. Anyway I really enjoyed playing it. Yeah, like many said, gameplay is short and not much innovative, but being innovative it's really hard, and I prefer short games when I have to try a lot of them :)
Easily in my top entries for this LD, bravissimi!
@sean-s-leblanc thank you for your kind feedback, although I'm puzzled how is the dome inconsequential to the gameplay? Without the dome this game falls flat, it makes the ball trajectory hard to predict. Our very first idea was to make an arcade game in a dome, it took us some time to figure out what we want to put in the dome and what exactly could reinforce the theme with gameplay and vice-versa. The game would clearly be very different if the characters were batting inside a box rather than dome.
This was very fun to play! I have a few things to say about the gameplay though. Sorry if someone else said it, I see there is already a lot of feedback. * the ball was a bit too difficult to predict. Couldn't tell how exactly it moved sometimes. It feels... weird. I like that you play in a dome but the way it bounces feels very strange. * the movements are way too quick. Like, you almost hit the ground immediately after releasing the jump button and the bat animation is slow. As a result, I felt like the timing was... sketchy? Like, I just felt like bashing the bat button. Longer animations would have been great in my opinion. Gravity could be a bit less strong to allow the player to fall down slower (although I assume it causes issues as you might find a way to jump to the other side but you can place some kind of walls I guess)
Hey! Nice game. Is very fun, the art is balanced ... very very nice. Free coockie, friend! :cookie:
Lovely graphics, fun game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcx-zIJDIVM