FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD46 → Air Ball

Air Ball

By joh

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3963.8632
Fun2333.8931
Innovation304.3132
Theme3324.0932
Graphics15443.3832
Humor4953.5130
Mood5393.7630

Comments

darspace 2020-04-21 07:05

Very funny game :D

plutonium-powered 2020-04-21 07:21

This is really cool. Such a unique idea. Only thing I didn't like was that the mousewheel was reversed.

aerosoap 2020-04-21 07:23

Very well put together, I love it! Keep-it-up games have always been so fun, it's nice to see such a graceful digital implementation pulled off in such a short timeframe.

tad 2020-04-21 07:33

Very cool idea! Very enjoyable to play!

I'm not sure whether it just happened to me, but the zoom panel (at the bottom) overlayed the players which made life difficult! Otherwise, great job!

joh 2020-04-21 20:46

Thanks all for comments and feedback!

@plutonium-powered The mouse wheel is actually not meant to be used... just some dev power I accidentally left in :sob: . Game progressively gives a wider view as hits go up!

@aerosoap Thanks! It's funny because I once tried to make one outside jam but scrapped it because I couldn't get it to work. Jam comes in and I get a totally different gameplay direction idea and I think it worked nicely! By the end of jam I even had a third concept idea of keep it up, but that will have to wait... if it ever happens!

@tad Thank you, must have been a bug, because that isn't meant to happen. Hope its a rare enough occurrence but I'll look into bug fixing. maybe you zoomed with mouse wheel? as I mentionned to plutonium-powered, that wasn't meant to be. Nonetheless it is my fault and I hope it wasn't too inconvenient!

synystercola 2020-04-21 21:19

Yo this game is really addicting. I can't stop playing it! Almost got to 60! It took me a bit to realize the colors beneath the people indicated their range. addictiinglol.PNG

magus77 2020-04-21 21:23

refreshing new way of playing i didn't see before. loved it! would be great to have on mobile maybe?

faiorb 2020-04-21 21:38

This is one of those time consuming games for me, where I can't let it go. In my opinion it would make even cooler if this had some kind of quick way to set the player up (Example: Holding the click would change the angle on the go).

Great entry, I love it!

opera_ELbaW7trbt.png

igor-kingamer 2020-04-21 21:46

Too much happening at once! Nice character design, fun game!

I think recruited people should automatically turn to face the ball. I'd suggest left-click to change hit angle as someone said plus right-click to change position instead of the buttons below the person. I would definitely like to play it again with these controls!

haoro 2020-04-21 22:26

Nice game ! I did succeed in "blocking" the ball after some angle arrangement, so I think adding a new ball or changing some property of the first one after some time can be a good idea =D

apos 2020-04-22 01:12

I played it with my family and we had some fun.

joh 2020-04-22 05:21

Thanks again everyone!

@synystercola Thats an impressive score! Forced me to step up and make a new record! And yes color bellow indicates range, but the color itself represent the unit's "class" described on second page of help. for exemple, yellow can jump and red reduces the % of the ball. But to reach such a high score, I hope you got that... otherwise your potential is even higher :smiley:

@magus77 Thanks, thought about it at the start, but dropped the idea but maybe I'll reconsider it.

@faiorb Strong score here too! and yes quick set up is something I wanted but had a hard time coming with a nice scheme. I though of dragging people, having screen seperated in move zone (near units) and aim zone (sky). but yes, this is an area worth revisiting.

@igor-kingamer Recruiting toward ball is a great idea. So far it is direction of movement to be "predictable" and because if you are fast enough (ie, before they cross the center) it tends to be a convenient direction. Left click/right click might make some sense, I think that was dismissed back when i wanted mobile potential.

I'll be sure to let you know when/if I update; thanks for the feedback!

@haoro Ok, this I am very curious about! How did that happen?! Thought I balanced things for that to be impossible! Even if you manage to create a setup where the % remains at 0 (which is possible) The base speed will keep on increasing assuring that sooner or later, you will break out of your loop angle (or it would go too fast to react)

Id consider such a setup an achievement in itself, but I'd like to know to... fix it nontheless.

@apos Very nice and I'm glad you did!

New record for the competitve folks!

new_record2.PNG

lethalturtle 2020-04-22 17:11

I wasn't really sure how it worked in the beginning however the moment that everything clicked it became a lot more fun, the music and the background beach noise didn't feel repetitive and the characters are so wonderfully drawn (I like these kinds of simple styles that remind me of Animal Crossing).

I couldn't get an impressive score but it was fun, overall a wonderful cheerful game with an interesting take on "Keep it alive"

avzgui 2020-04-22 17:11

A really nice entry ! Well done ! :smiley:

iker-diaz 2020-04-22 17:19

Really nice concept! At first I had to play 2 or 3 times to know how it worked, but I really enjoyed it!

nurk 2020-04-22 18:06

56 ! Really fun and cool game ! I want to beat the highscore but the auto zoom is annoying sometimes. We can't replace our men in time. :/ Without this problem, I love a lot your concept ! Well done ! :D

nurk 2020-04-22 18:45

BIM !.PNG HAHA YES ! Sorry, I try hard too much. :p

r3l0ad1 2020-04-23 09:35

Nice game! nice concept and the art is amazing! great job!

albertnez 2020-04-23 09:37

Pretty nice game, I like the game play and game progression. The game allows for learning and keep getting to higher scores quickly. Well done!

kjscott 2020-04-23 13:19

Really well made and polished, the audio and visual work well together. It's really tricky to figure out what some of the best combinations are but that's half the fun of putting together a team and positioning and see how it goes. Once you start to get a handle on how the game works it gets a little easier to make longer strings of passes (saying that my record is only 33 at the moment). Good game!

joh 2020-04-23 16:56

@lethalturtle Thank you! Its good to know its understandable. instructions was the last thing I added (and in a rush) but I think the core gameplay is simple enough to be grasped after a few tries.

Also nice to have some art appreciation! I'm no artist, just dev and I'm trying to pinpoint a proper... "developer art" style. It seems to be hit or miss, but I think its charming!

@kjscott Hey! Thanks! Really cool seeing people trying to find the right combination. Theres no right answer, but definitly some strategy. Red are good to have, the prevent the % to go high and the ball to go crazy fast. blue has great range but increases the % faster and yellow got the jump! Highly effective but risky and prone to hitting ball out. If anything, Yellow should definitely be the last line of defense at extremities. I'm seeing some of that in @nurk crazy record!

@nurk Ok , nurk... How did this happen? :thinking: I'm sorry about the camera bug, such a silly bug, but its very situational so I missed it. (Impact Zooms happen after 50%) but screensize perma zoom happen every 10 hit and save screen position. so when/if they overlap, it can lead to awkward zoom/camera position.

But back to you, Over 100?! thats pretty crazy, you dont even have a high red concentraction! curious how you went about it! Glad you saw the rain! that was my secret "pump up the difficulty once player clearly got this", but it couldn't stop you!

synystercola 2020-04-23 17:59

So.....I think I got the game stuck in an infinite loop LOL

infinite.PNG

proforce 2020-04-24 19:41

I suck at this awesome game, but it is awesome nonetheless! It was very humourous, and I did enjoy the base mechanics of the game, but it was a little hard to control at times, and switching between people was pretty hard. Other than that, great game dude!

bart-wach 2020-04-24 20:46

Fun, cool concept, innovative.

joh 2020-04-25 01:10

@synystercola Hey! Good to see you back! I have no idea how you managed to do this (there should be some short cooldown between hits exactly to prevent this) but I can see you did! Congrats!

@proforce Thanks for the feedback! It's something I'll look into!

eduardogacn 2020-04-26 03:43

good game

william-carlisle 2020-04-27 02:37

This Was Pretty Fun! I Always Think Its Pretty Cool When People Pull Off A Style Were You Don't Play But Choose How The CPU Does, Very Fun Game.

dextreon 2020-04-27 11:35

Such a unique and cool idea! It was a bit hard to understand at first, but it is so fun! Congrats for this awesome entry :ok_hand:

adamv 2020-04-28 02:28

Really nice game! I liked the idea a lot! Also the zoom when the ball hit the ground was a nice touch! It was hard though. The first few times I tried recruiting someone, they immediately hit the ball and screwed things up. It took me a few tries to realize I should recruit them away from the ball so they don't interfere and then move them. Good work!

PS I thought I recognized your profile picture - I was following the development of Project Killer for a while. Sorry to hear it's on hiatus, I hope you can get back to it some time :smile:

rojola 2020-04-28 13:46

Wow this was difficult :D I can see how this gets pretty fun once you progress in the level and expand the play area. I am just not skilled enough for that... Nice beach breeze atmosphere :)

joh 2020-04-29 02:15

Thanks everyone! @william-carlisle that was my aim, I had previously attempted a direct control version of this and couldn't make it work. (though I'm sure its possible and would be fun) I thought here the management side would be fun. You don't directly do anything, and yet it feels like you are in control and when "they" mess up, in a way; you did. It's very satisfying and its something i'd like to explore more. hard to pull off though (and perhaps not as appreciated) so it's nice to hear positive feelings about it!

@adamv Thank you, the Zoom was a must! I wanted to add a lot of the "magic tricks" to give life to a little game. Zoom, particles (though not enough!) & screenshake (it didn't work, but I'm happy it didn't break anything). theres also Zoom and Hitstun on big hits (150%+). I wanted to have camera angle activity too! ah, I'm remembering all the little things I didn't get to add!

Recruiting them away from the ball is part of the strategy, but I think it got a lot of people. **Picking WHO and WHEN (WHERE) to recruit is something that probably caused challenges for many**. However it's not something I can formally teach, because its not an absolute truth, just one of many strategy! (you could also just recruit & move ridiculously fast)

And yes, I'm behind project killer. Very cool being recognized on a totally unrelated platform! It's unfortunate that its on hiatus, but it was a seriously ambitious project I may have started before my time! I've been prototyping a lot since, trying to find a great, more reasonable project that is just as fun if not more! It's a bit hard though and I'm trying to have ready to show (and playable!!) before unveiling anything to avoid another dissapointing situation. Still love that project, and mystery games are a concept I'd like to explore further!

With that being said, thanks for bringing this up, means a lot and is very encouraging! Even if I don't post much anymore be sure to keep on following, for I'll be sure to post whenever I'm ready to unveil something new!

@rojola Thanks! don't let the difficulty intimidate you! :sweat_smile: as many have pointed out its a bit hard at the start. I've mentioned some tips in the above comment (see bold), but a good starting trick is to recruit people while they are far from the ball and then move them. Also make sure you cover most of the ground with your units range. avoid yellow units until comfortable, their jumps can be a bit less predictable. Hope this helps!

peachtreeoath 2020-05-07 05:33

This is a really funny concept and I hadn't seen this done in any of the other jam games despite the fact that we've probably all played something like this growing up. I like that in some way it's like a rube goldberg machine that you're constructing on the fly. There are many kinds of games that do this but not in a real-time fashion like the way you do it. The game is inherently enjoyable because of the theme, friendly graphics, and just wanting to see how big a crowd you can generate. Took a bit to get over the learning curve but I'm glad I stuck with it!