FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD46 → Aero-Ball

Aero-Ball

By rsim

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall9802.8225
Fun10272.4024
Innovation4813.3425
Theme9582.9725

Comments

diamond-wolf 2020-04-20 04:22

Interesting concept! My only real issue is that you're kinda screwed if the ball gets trapped in the corner. Otherwise I liked it!

garett-cooper 2020-04-20 04:25

Neat idea, but in practice it was really difficult to gauge the trajectory of the pinball. I also couldn't tell why I was finished levels.

sacrface 2020-04-20 04:32

To echo above, I can see the idea! This 3d pinball concept could be really fun. But you don't have enough things in this game that'll give the ball velocity. More paddles in the corners, or making the center platform more bouncy could help.

marston 2020-04-20 05:26

Cool concept but the execution made it impossible to advance consistently

tomeks 2020-04-20 08:06

Good effort, I have a delay on the paddles that make it hard to control. Will you continue developing it ?

goldfish-games 2020-04-20 08:57

Awww... that's it? That was fun, the physics were so satisfying :(

Although minimizing the delay between pressing space and operating the flippers would help a ton and give your game a more responsive feel, and the game definitely wasn't perfect, it was fun! :)

brian-teng 2020-04-20 09:51

It's a 3D pachinko machine. It's a 3D pachinko machine!

sinamon 2020-04-20 17:44

I liked the idea.

The is much room for improving the controls though.

thomas-bringer 2020-04-20 17:53

Nice game! Liked the idea of a 3D pinball. Yet, it felt a bit hard to get to the next level because of the limited control you have on the ball--it bounces a bit randomly. (Also there was a problem for me with the UI in fullscreen in web build, but it was ok.) Overall a nice entry! :)

nick-barrash 2020-04-20 18:12

Really cool concept. Camera angle worked really well, always felt like I knew what was going on which seems like that might be hard to get right in a game like this. Would be awesome to see levels that are more than just flipping the ball at the right angle (like breakable roofs or pinball bumpers that launch the ball higher or multiple layers of flippers or whatever). I'd totally play more this if you fleshed it out after the jam!!

binaryprinciple 2020-04-20 20:10

Good idea, I can see it in mobile using the gyroscope, mabe double check the camera perspective or hight light the place where the ball will bounce for easier distance perception.

rsim 2020-04-25 06:28

Thanks for playing the game everyone! I agree with all of the criticisms - if only there was more time. ;) I fought with physics a fair lot on this one, and the slow flipper speed is a direct result of that. If the speed was increased any further, the ball would be launched at an insane velocity. Dampening the ball enough so that didn't happen then made it fall like it was in syrup and not rebound nearly enough.

The corners are my biggest annoyance with the gameplay. I knew they were an issue, but I spent about as much of my mental cycles as I could spare on trying to come up with a level design that addressed it while not destroying the visibility/camera angles. In the end I just left it, and in hind sight I think the solution is to have the flippers in the corners, not in the middle of the walls.

@thomas-bringer: Thanks for the heads up on the fullscreen issue - I'll have a look at addressing it in a post-jam update. You're right about the ball bouncing a bit randomly; I added a bit of randomness to the bounces to avoid situations where the ball was stuck infinitely bouncing between the same places where the player couldn't interact with it to stop the process. I think if I could address the above mentioned physics issues, I could disable the randomness - it was definitely a hack.

jesterseraph 2020-04-25 18:48

Game was innovative, but definitely felt less like playing a game and more like fighting with the randomness & the system. Half the time the ball would just spawn into an untouchable space, and it took a while to figure out when swinging the paddle. Overall a good attempt! Maybe some other camera angle would have made it easier to time the paddle swings.

rsim 2020-04-25 20:21

@jesterseraph: > Half the time the ball would just spawn into an untouchable space, and it took a while to figure out when swinging the paddle.

It sounds like you might've missed that you can move the orange paddle with WASD/gamepad? The ball will always spawn in the center of the play area, mostly out of the reach of the flippers. The idea is to use the orange paddle at the bottom to bump the ball towards a flipper to the side.

jesterseraph 2020-04-25 20:34

@rsim Aaaaaah, yeah, that part was definitely missed. Dang, lol. We actually managed to beat both levels with nothing but the flippers & the ball happening to land on the bounce pad lol. Definitely gave it a funky "challenge" mode. Well that definitely improves the fun & reduces the frustration! I do still believe the paddles could have been a little bit faster to swing, and the camera angle could have helped make it clearer where the ball was in relation to the space. Or maybe some kind of indicator on the wall to show the relative height. :sweat_smile:

designernap 2020-04-26 13:32

This started strong but ended with a bit of frustration for me. Looks great, neat idea, loved the bouncing and movement of the pad... but there is such a delay on the flippers between hitting the button and them moving that the game get quite hard to play. Bit of balancing and you will be there though!

rojola 2020-04-28 12:51

I enjoyed this game! Very interesting idea for turning the regular flipper in the 3D space tunnel thing. I wish this was developed into full game with good gfx and audio, I would buy from Steam!

tim-eriksen 2020-05-12 16:28

Can't say I've seen something like this before, so that's exciting :slight_smile: Nice game! Some sound would be nice, but I know that it can be hard to have time for everything :sweat_smile: