FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → SpinPlan

SpinPlan

By fupi

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall12503.3227
Fun13023.0826
Innovation5153.5626
Theme12843.3425
Graphics12733.3326
Audio5173.6226
Humor2813.5825

Comments

hamzaplayssssssssss 2021-04-26 13:17

It really really cool I like the cute graphics I had a lot of fun playing it

fupi 2021-04-26 13:21

@hamzaplayssssssssss Thanks! I haven't started rating yet but I'll play your game as soon as I can.

imzary 2021-04-26 13:49

THAT WAS POG, the music was nice, the art looked simple & clean, & the game itself is Fun !, one thing i would say is that at least in the web version that i played, the arrows would like stick to te cursor, even if you didn't press & hold, sometimes just a tap & it will follow the cursor, but other then that, a fun & ragy & hard game at the same time :D

imzary 2021-04-26 13:50

A pog game overall

fupi 2021-04-26 14:04

@imzary Thank you! I haven't experienced that bug, maybe it has something to do with the lag of the web version, idk. Hope it didn't screw you over.

imzary 2021-04-26 15:11

@fupi i mean it did, in a lot of times lmao, but i manage to finish the game

fupi 2021-04-26 15:14

@imzary Oh.. that sounds awful actually. Well there's 9 hours left, I'll see if I can reproduce it.

Edit: That's weird, I couldn't reproduce it at all. Were you playing on a touchscreen? Even though the game uses only mouse input I never actually tested it on a phone.

imzary 2021-04-26 17:09

No actually, i am playing on a pc @fupi

fupi 2021-04-26 17:10

@imzary Welp, don't know what to do then. Sorry it happened to you.

imzary 2021-04-26 17:14

@fupi nah it's alr, & btw, i played the game jolt webgl version so maybe it's on their side idk, & i am using the chromuim edge if that helps.

But yeah, good game, i can see it be expanded even as a mobile game

itsboats 2021-04-27 02:18

Pretty fun! The art is simple but I like all the little things you did with the Eggo character with animations, dancing, blinking, and damage states. The humor was great and the bonk sounds xD

The controls were a little awkward (I would have preferred A/D or arrow keys to rotate left and right) but Eggo was really sensitive to the planets moving, using mouse does give you more control

Fun idea would be a planet with multiple Eggos haha

fupi 2021-04-27 02:45

@itsboats That's exactly why I chose mouse controls. The first prototypes used the arrow keys but they were simply too inaccurate. Just to be clear: you do not need to use all the pads to rotate the planet, just pick the one that feels the most comfortable and use that. For example I only use the bottom right pad when I play.

Now hey, multiple Eggos in a single planet, I hadn't thought of that, sounds very fun actually :0

refrax295 2021-04-27 11:27

Pretty cool game, albeit a bit clunky at times. I think using the mouse for this was perfectly suitable, but I would suggest using an angle-based dragging approach rather than a horizontal/vertical dragging approach, as it would probably feel more intuitive.

felixmreeve 2021-04-27 11:27

Nice job, I like the little eggos and how they slowly break! The mouse controls might have felt better if you're click+dragging the planet rather than dragging in a straight line, so it kind of spins the planet if you click and drag all around the meatball? Very funny game, cute graphics and a fun vibe!

Edit: I didn't realise you made the music, the music is great!!

sadsmile 2021-04-27 11:29

This isn't as disastrous as you claimed it to be haha. I enjoyed it, although it is a bit clunky

fupi 2021-04-27 11:31

@refrax295 @felixmreeve Thanks! I agree with the thing about the mouse controls and definitely would have preferred if it was like that, I just didn't know how to make it. That's why after many iterations I settled for this, and now I see why it's bad..

fupi 2021-04-27 11:34

@sadsmile Thanks, the comments on Newgrounds were a bit more.. honest xd

felixmreeve 2021-04-27 11:37

@fupi haha don't listen to the newgrounds comments, the Ludum Dare comments are the ones that count :smile:

snowdrama 2021-04-27 11:41

I think for me was a challenge more in perspective than controls(I played both Keyboard and mouse) There's some weirdness with rotations and my expectation of gravity that doesn't line up quite right. I'm not sure if that's some element of how the gravity is working but if I rotate the planet so that I'm falling straight down then center of a shaft and turn the planet, I expect my momentum to continue going "down" relative to the screen until either I hit the bottom, or rotate enough that the shaft hits the side. Instead there's this odd air control that causes me to like move sideways instead of still falling. For me the problem is less the controls and more how the character's position and momentum work, they line up in a way that doesn't match my mental expectations about how the visuals tell me the game should be working. This dissonance makes it frustrating to play because I can't intuitively feel how a rotation will affect the player, making it feel like it's near impossible to control, regardless of keyboard or mouse controls.

Cool idea though I like the characters and graphics and music and such! Nice work!

fupi 2021-04-27 11:52

@felixmreeve Newgrounds comments have helped me a lot on projects though, they're not as toxic as people usually think and being brutally honest sometimes helps.

@snowdrama Thanks for playing! This was one of my fears. The way the gravity works is that the character always goes down. Maybe if I hadn't made the levels planets it would have been more apparent that there is no gravitational pull going on. I did experiment with making the planet pull you in but then it was just too easy.

snowdrama 2021-04-27 12:17

I guess the question is that does the rotation rotate the existing momentum or position? Imagine you removed the colliders, what happens when the planet is turned? I would presume it should behave like dropping a marble in front of a spinning wheel. It would just fall straight down and nothing would interact with the marble. However in the game it seems to change the player's position relative to the rotation like the player is parented to it and the initial downward force becomes a left/right force because the direction of the existing momentum changes, though I may be mistaken on the momentum part.

fupi 2021-04-27 12:21

@snowdrama Uh, the planet literally just rotates. If you removed the colliders the player would just fall straight down no matter how you spun the planet. The player is not parented to the level, they're both parented to the same thing.

fupi 2021-04-27 12:25

@snowdrama I just disabled the colliders to test it out and that's exactly what happened, the player just fell down. Really what I think is happening is that you expect the center of the planet to pull the player in, so when it doesn't you become disoriented. It works in a way that if the player is in midair, not touching any walls, rotating the planet doesn't affect its position at all.

snowdrama 2021-04-27 13:32

Interesting I'll have to replay it and record it and look for that because I could have sworn that I was moving in the air with the rotation direction.

juako 2021-05-02 15:13

Nice idea! I really like the ship design. I think the physics need a little more work to make it a little less frustrating in some parts but overall great work!

koalatte 2021-05-02 15:21

wow, just wow. art style, mechanics, and music were on-point! the physics is challenging and the eggo is as bouncy as a ping pong ball (until now still trying to get the hang of it :laughing: ), the music really seals the deal for this game, would love a devlog on how the melodies were composed :smile: hope this gets ported to mobile one day, one of my favorites so far :smiley:

yword 2021-05-02 15:28

Wow, it is fun, nice story and really challenging too! I think it will be great to play with mobile device's accelerometer too!

fupi 2021-05-02 18:25

@juako What exactly do you think is frustrating about the physics? I got this complaint a lot but I literally don't know what makes it so confusing to people..

@koalatte I did record development footage to make a video but I have nothing to say about the music. :p Just threw something up real quick on Beepbox. Glad you liked it so much!

kovalok 2021-05-03 09:08

Nice graphics and music. Controlling the the ball was pretty difficult because it reacted very weirdly when rotating :D But overall nice job

oune 2021-05-03 09:23

I had a good laugh! The controls feel very clunky but the game is fun. Congrats! I may have left the music playing in the background for some time ... :smiley:

dest-69 2021-05-03 20:15

Great concept and realisation, but controls need a bit polish! Nice!

vixenmink 2021-05-06 04:51

Music reallly reminded me of Toe Jam & Earl meets Road Rash. I feel this would run better if it was a phone game and could take advantage of the gyro sensor. Nice job on this lil game.

fupi 2021-05-06 21:45

@vixenmink You got it, Toe Jam & Earl was the main inspiration for the music! Even though I never played it. :|

vixenmink 2021-05-07 02:11

@fupi Aww man. I hope one day you can enjoy any of its iterations. Very silly game. My fav is the second one though I really enjoyed the co-op more on the first one.

madbarron 2021-05-17 02:49

Great to see another spaghetti-and-meatballs based story! This game has a fun concept, but boy it is a lot harder than it looks! Thanks for the cool and creative game :smiley:

richardk 2021-05-17 10:07

This game was really fun! The story was interesting, and the graphics were really cartoony and nice. The physics took a bit of time to get used to, but after I got used to it, the levels were really puzzling, and was extremely fun. I think that this is a great puzzle game, and I enjoyed playing it a lot.

kaytrill 2021-05-17 20:26

This game reminds of my childhood with games in tiny plastic boxes where you have the bring the ball to its destination using just gravity. I think the game might be great for mobile with its incredibly simple controls. I would love to see more levels and see the game expended upon. However the physics are a bit janky and needs more polish. The intro video/gif is most excellent and suits this style game perfectly.

Furthermore there is a bug where the game doesn't always register a mouse release event. When you then quickly move the released mouse the game quickly spins around and is as good as instant game over.

Lastly little alien guy is far too sensitive with some of the collision detection. Giving inconsistent results in bounciness when tabbed light. Sometimes it bumps a little, the other time is goes flying to the next planet. I think the cause of this is that the little alien doesn't rotate on the same level as the planet. I believe this causes the alien to be a bouncyball.

fupi 2021-05-17 22:00

@kaytrill Thanks for playing! I got one other comment about the mouse release bug but wasn't able to reproduce it, sorry about that.. Now about the sensitivity, the closest you are to the planet's core the heavier the gravity is, is that maybe why you felt the physics were inconsistent? This physics thing is really bugging me because everyone except for me seems to think it's weird. The alien and the planet are both parented to the same root, which means they both exert forces on each other as they should, so that can't be it.

kaytrill 2021-05-17 22:29

@fupi The physics are inconsistent regardless of distance and didn't notice heavier gravity at all. Furthermore to falling of the alien is not towards the gravity (Centre), but towards the bottom of the screen.

To me the alien feels more like a pinball machine then a ball rolling. Not something I mind at all as that is what those games were about, but my main problem is with the sensitivity. To me it doesn't feel at all convincing that the ball is glued to wall slowly moving down if I move the screen. The slightest movement gives a collision hit with 40 times the energy then the rotational force I put into it. Which send the ball flying back towards start. Not something normally a problem if I wasn't busy being incredibly careful not trying to break the fragile alien. Maybe it has something to do with Unity's collision detection??? Given that the ball has a mass of 1, and the planet have a mass of 40?

Maybe a different game mode could be to complete it within a time trial instead of managing hp. Or a combination of both of them. Or a calculate a score from both of them.

Furthermore maybe for next time play with different shapes of player characters. Golf with friends shows how infuriating it can be to try something with an egg sized ball or oval.

fupi 2021-05-17 22:38

@kaytrill Yeah, the alien falling down instead of towards the planet is intentional. I didn't use Unity for this project, I used Godot, I'm worried it might have something to do with framerate, because me personally, I have zero problem with the physics. I can carefully guide the alien to the center easily and flawlessly every time, that is always the standard of how I judge my games' difficulty, so really I have zero clue what that's about. Your ideas are really good though, and sound like they might be fun, but before all that I just need to figure out what's making the physics so darn confusing to everyone.

peace-of-cake-games 2021-05-18 04:13

This is pretty darn fun! Poor Eggos, I beat them up pretty bad because of the janky physics.... personally I like the janky physics, although it made the game pretty hard it felt like the Eggos actually were in space.

kaytrill 2021-05-18 17:44

@fupi https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1025992499?t=1h54m56s here is my playthrough of the game and me writing the review live. It also showcases some of the struggles I had with the game. Hope it will be of use to you <3

fupi 2021-05-18 17:54

@kaytrill Oh man yeah! This is what I needed! :0 Thanks, gonna watch it later.

fupi 2021-05-18 18:19

@kaytrill That was eye-opening, thanks for that! From what I saw it seems the biggest problem to you were the controls. The way they are made is confusing, and you tried many times to drag the horizontal arrows up and down, which doesn't work, the horizontal arrows work differently from the vertical ones, even though you only need one of the pads to play. Even just explaining this is weird and complicated. I hope the keyboard controls in the post-jam version are enough to make the controls feel more intuitive.

As for the physics, in the video they worked as intended. The game is supposed to be played slowly and with precise movement. I think the problem is that this could have been better cued in the game itself by having training levels, with easier obstacles, and getting rid of the arrow pads, because as soon as the game starts you inherently want to fling them hard, when you're actually supposed to make deliberate micro-adjustments.

Thanks you so much again for recording your playthrough! I feel like I understand the frustration a lot more.

collin-visser 2021-05-18 19:00

Very enjoyable game. Quite challenging, but fun and stimulates the brain cells! I love the catchy music. It's cheery. The sound effects are also cool and I like the death animation haha. The 3rd level is a bit wonky. I played the mouse control version and I can't seem to tilt the planet correctly. My eggo keeps breaking. However, if I had more time I would continue playing until I won. Well done on a great game.