cogcomp 2021-10-04 19:14
Brilliant game idea! As you've already figured out, it takes a while to get used to the orbital mechanics, but that's just part of the fun. Clean and simple graphics. Really liked this. Well done!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Orbitris
By bootak
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 89 | 3.87 | 47 | |
| Fun | 155 | 3.67 | 48 | |
| Innovation | 5 | 4.39 | 48 | |
| Theme | 356 | 3.33 | 48 | |
| Graphics | 256 | 3.46 | 48 | |
| Humor | 329 | 2.44 | 36 | |
| Mood | 289 | 3.19 | 41 |
Brilliant game idea! As you've already figured out, it takes a while to get used to the orbital mechanics, but that's just part of the fun. Clean and simple graphics. Really liked this. Well done!
Really cool idea. Despite being counter intuitive, it was fun and interesting enough that I was determined to keep playing and get better.
I enjoyed a lot your game. I think the concept is great. the only thing was the lack of music to put you in the mood. But it's one of the best concept I played so far. Thank you for making the game
Fantastic spin on Tetris. It is extremely difficult, especially if you're impatient (like me!), but the design is solid and the visuals are spot on. Great trajectory from start to finish.
@cogcomp thank you for playing! Yeah, I watched people play this game, and most people were trying to decelerate pieces, which is not great for aiming. So I really wanted to include some tutorial into the game, but ran out of time.
@refrax295 Thank you! I hope "Tips & Tricks" section was helpful.
@fractale Thank you for playing! Oh man. Every LD I am determined to compose some music or get some help with it, but each time I end up producing silent entry :) Oh well, I'll try next time
@myles-doupe thank you for playing. Yeah, I noticed that game cycle is kinda long (20 or more seconds for one piece - unthinkable for ordinary Tetris!), but didn't come up with anything to speed things up. So yeah. It requires some patience to enjoy this. I hope it's still somewhat playable and fun, at least as a weird no-one-asked-for novelty :)
Really cool way to remake Tetris! Really hard, but really cool! Tutorials very very appreciated, but still takes some learning to get it xD
Very original concept, but way too disorienting for me. I suck at this hahaha! Would've liked some sound as well. But still I'd love to see it more polished and intuitive, especially in order for it to get a broader appeal (I, too, am an impatient person lol)
@turkey Thank you! Yeah, it takes some time to learn how to place pieces.
@vectrex28 thank you for playing! I wish I had more time to think of some ways of making this more intuitive and "casual" probably. This is a thing with all orbital mechanics games I saw on LD so far: they're fun as a novelty, but usually hard to play, and the only way to improve UX is to ditch the orbital mechanics :)
An interesting, new approach to Tetris)
Very innovative idea, cool spin (:wink:) on Tetris. Really addictive:)
I like the idea, I think the game works much better with your tips and tricks, like you say adding a tutorial would have been a big help. Even so early on I struggled to get the pieces where I wanted them, which I think loses part of the fun of original Tetris. Really good game overall though.
A very interesting spin on Tetris! I really liked the trajectory mechanic and visuals - and the tips & tricks section definitely helped! It sometimes felt a little uncontrollable where the pieces slided after landing, but more often than not I didn't even know myself what I was aiming for exactly :P
I had fun playing, great job!
@bassilij thank you! Wanted to make orbital mechanics game for a while, and after I got my first planet spinning around the star, I somehow landed on idea of making weird Tetris out of it.
@mrbell270 Huh, oh, your version of the pun is better, can I borrow it for the header? :D Thank you for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed this!
@laurenceogden Thanks! I'm glad you found my tips helpful. Yeah, first time I tried to play my own game, I had a feeling that something is wrong. After some getting used to it, I found this concept okay-ish, but yeah, still far from the original addictive Tetris. I was trying to think of ways to improve gameplay, but found none.
@freeworld Thank you! Yeah, sliding was one of the ways to make this game easier. Sometimes it is counter-intuitive, but overall I think it makes more good than bad.
@bootak You totally can :)
@mrbell270 Thanks!
Love the idea but I was already awful at regular tetris! I think this could be worked into a really fleshed out idea. Great job on it!
Really cool game idea and execution. It's super tricky and I definitely get the "unstable" feel from it. I feel like someone out there could master it. I wonder if being able to reverse the directionality could make it a little bit easier to handle.
Interesting take on tetris.
With some n-body physics added this might become really unstable (in a fun way).
Very interesting game, but maybe a bit complex, it took a while to understand what was going on, but I do appreciate the innovation, haven't seen other entries like this today ! Well done.
**Note** Fullscreen mode didn't work and using the arrow keys just moves the window, so I recommend using wasdf
This is a really clever concept! I appreciated the tutorial that you posted for how to more accurately place pieces. Still challenging, but when are orbital mechanics ever easy? :)
I'm not sure if this is the type of game that you were trying to make, but I could see having a limited amount of fuel to do minor course corrections when attempting to place a piece helpful. In any case, nice work!
@dnabro thank you for playing! Third day, still no ideas how to improve this and make learning curve less painful and more fun.
@strega Thank you! I think I've ALMOST mastered it during these 3 days :) I can aim pieces pretty good, but still can't strike more than 4 lines at once (which is theoretically possible). Yeah, reversing the direction could be helpful, thank you for the idea
@mrnannings thanks for checking this out!
@a-bond Yeah, this would allow to create solar system out of tetraminos, and perform some sick gravity assists :D
@javasaurus thanks! Yep, fullscreen is broken, that's my first time using emscripten + raylib, I'll figure out how to fix this next time. Yeah, I had to add WASD to usual arrows because of the issues with scrolling.
@kalevrk Thank you! Yeah, I was thinking on the combo of limited fuel and non-circular orbits to make game cycle faster. Maybe I should experiment with it for the post-compo version. Thanks!
This is one of the truly unique concepts I've come across. Any time is a good time for a tetris spinoff. I really appreciate the small size executable.
My only complaint isn't really for the game itself. The window is just really tiny and can't be resized.
Such a unique game, how you made a masterpeice in 48 hours is insane.
Had a blast playing your game despite its difficulty, it's a really interesting one, well done!
I like the spin you decided to take with Tetris.
I like the artstyle and the whole idea.
It was fun trying to align the pieces properly.
Although not humorous, It is somwhat moody and atmosphereic.
The game was a little hard to play though.
The HTML5 version dosen't want to go fullscreen, It only goes to the top left corner.
Overall, great game. -WitekWitek
Nice game, I like your SPIN on tetris :)
This was really weird but surprisingly fun to play. Tucking pieces into gaps is stupendously difficult, so my usual strategies for playing tetris didn't really work that well, but I kept trying. Certainly a very unique entry.
Really nice game idea...
I have seen lot's of "Tetris" Clone/inspiration/... in my life (and I just made a sort of one for the LD49 ...) but yours is really original and different from all the others. Well done !
On the other hand, very hard to play... :-)
I'm really bad at this, my biggest success was finally managing to clear a single line. :D Great idea though, haven't seen any tetris game like this before.
Just wow! Amazing idea. Art style is nice and simple. The only thing missing are some sound effect, but I know - time limit :) I really like it!
One of the more unique takes that I've seen on a Tetris game. Very cool!
Very cool concept! I got it fairly quickly with the help of the explanation, but it was still challenging enough to keep me interested.
I was a bit sad that fullscreen did not work properly, it would have been so much better as the current view felt a bit too small. And of course a bigger view would help a bit for the times when I managed to lose the pieces without really understanding how I did it :smile:
Screen Shot 2021-10-09 at 1.26.43 PM.png
Once you *get it* it becomes a fun sort of meditation, unlike the chaos of original tetris.
For anyone confused at the basic strategy, one thing to note is your actions affect the opposite side of the orbit. If the orbit were a clock, what you do at 3 o'clock affects the orbit near 9 o'clock, and what you do at 12 affects the orbit near 6. This may be an over-simplification but it helped me. In other words: if you accelerate while on the top of the orbit (12 o'clock), the bottom (6 o'clock) of the orbit will enlarge. Or if you decelerate while on the right side of the orbit, the left side will shrink.
For those still lost, the basic strategy is: Accelerate making your orbit radius really large, and you are moving so slowly that... You can quickly decelerate until your orbit changes from ellipse to a line seeking the center of the blocks.
I think the unstable orbits are a great take on the theme!
@strega @bootak you can reverse the orbit by accelerating to a huge orbit, then decelerating a bunch. Once you do reverse orbit, your controls reverse. Pressing S accelerates and W decelerates.
@balduvian-dead Thank you for playing! Yeah, it was written in pure C, and raylib is a really thin game library layer. So everything is statically linked into a one tiny tiny binary. Thank you for pointing out about window size, I've added option to resize a window.
@mchs-productions Thank you for the kind words! Well, that was challenging, but with some handy Vector2-related functions in raylib I was able to program the core logic pretty fast.
@helicule thank you for playing! I am happy that you liked it!
@witekwitek Thanks! As I can't really create any art, my solo games are usually look pretty simple. I'm happy that you find these visuals somewhat likeable :) Yeah, I was thinking on some ways to simplify the gameplay, but had no time to implement anything. As for fullscreen mode, I've made an update with properly working fullscreen, you can check this out.
@thegamerasd Thank you!
@chaosbrick Thanks for playing! I wrote pretty complicated logic to slide pieces after you've placed them. And while this makes gameplay somewhat easies, it is still pretty far on the hard side.
@richnou Thank you for appreciating my take on Tetris :) I wish it would simpler, but 48h are 48h :)
@future-labs-unlimited Yeah, clearing a line is great :) Thank you for playing!
@zimny11 Thank you! Yeah, time limit, and lack of experience in writing music / making SFX. All my solo entries are silent, and every LD I make a promise that I'll do something about it, but here we are, another LD, another silent game :)
@sethjmoore Thank you! I've seen 4d tetris, softbody Tetris, and many more - surprized no one made orbital Tetris before, AFAIK :)
@domantas Thank you for playing, I'm really happy you found this concept interesting! I'm sad that you were sad, so I fixed fullscreen mode today :) You can try again if you like :) As for losing pieces, I have some code that checks whether your piece is too far from the center - and, if it is - returns it back to the default orbit. However, it is possible to accelerate your piece in such a way that it is already out of view, but still has not flown far enough. In that case - yeah, you can totally lose your piece. I guess I should've check whether a piece is out of view for a certain amount of time instead.
@michael-feldman wow, that's an impressive score, congrats! I'm happy that you liked it and played for some time! Yeah, you got everyghing right about the mechanics :)
One of the better tetris-inspired games I've played. The orbital controls are intuitive and fun to use. It's a lot more challenging than I thought it would be. Great work!
Respects for having made this in pure C + Emscripten. The controls are alright and the mechanic is novel. I still suck at it :D I'm not sure I see that much unstability in it but that's up to interpretation so I ain't even mad. A really good job! :)
Tricky but fascinating game! Not easy to predict where the pieces are going to fall at first, but time after time it feels like it's masterable. Good job with this!
Super interesting take on Tetris! It took me a bit of time to adjust and feel comfortable aiming the pieces, but everything ran so smoothly that it never felt like it was out of my control, just needed a bit of practice. The whole thing felt really nice, though the lack of music was a bit disappointing. Otherwise though, it's a really solid little game!
Interesting use of orbiting mechanics + tetris. It felt unique, it was kind of hard to understand where the piece will 'slide off' to when they make contact but I feel, with practice, it can get very manageable. I would love a bit more feedback in the game, some stronger visual feedback for clearing a block, landing, etc.. Overall fun game, well done!
Really cool idea, just seems to lack that little extra something that makes it feel truly satisfying, unless I just haven't spent enough time to master it, so I don't want to jump to conclusions 😅 Cool twist on an existing game (one I like!) with a neat presentation—only wish it had some nice audio~