baldurs 2021-10-04 16:52
First game to play for an extended period of time
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Ball of Chaos
By omegafalcon
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 219 | 3.94 | 27 | |
| Fun | 314 | 3.80 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 169 | 3.90 | 27 | |
| Theme | 412 | 3.88 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 651 | 3.72 | 27 | |
| Audio | 310 | 3.72 | 26 | |
| Mood | 580 | 3.56 | 26 |
First game to play for an extended period of time
Pretty good game but sometimes it's a bit frustrating.
Well done, this game is pretty innovative and requires the player to think in order to pass some levels; the only problem that I have with this game is the other ball mob; it's really annoying. You can hugely improve this game by adding some other songs to it. Overall I have to say nice job :D
This is probably the best game I have played so far. You had an interesting idea and explored the heck out of it. I was expecting like five levels, but there were so much more. A few of the levels seemed to be beatable in a "non-intended" way, but most of the game was well-designed. It did run quite poorly on my ancient laptop, though, which made it difficult to play, especially on the later levels where you are being chased. Overall, though, very good game!
Cool concept, you carried it out well. I was surprised at the complexity you were able to create from a simple concept.
I will say though that when you introduce two or more elements changing at different rates it becomes prohibitively difficult. Like instead of just playing the game I was just having to memorize when to press the jump button. I spent like 5 minutes on that level with the spike corridor on the top left and once I got to the next one with three changing elements I just gave up.
As this is kind of a rage game I think it would be cool to see a death counter or level counter or something.
This is awesome! It's amazing how many levels you managed to make and the main mechanic is surprisingly manageable. Good Job!
@ethanzech Thanks for the feedback! Yep, the later levels involve a lot of remembering when to move. I made the earlier levels specifically with only 1 value changing cuz I have a pattern of making jam games too difficult and I suspected I was doing the same with this game xD. You did good tho, the 3 value one is the last level
Very good concept but the levels with the shadow ball were frustrating. Having to split my attention between my position, the gauges, trying to get where I needed to go all while also having to keep track of where the other ball was going to be and then planning all around that proved to be a bit too much for me. Longer or more levels so I could have gotten a better intuition of the various gauge configurations would have helped, but given the time constraints it's understandable why that didn't happen.
@unpronounceable Thanks for playing. Yea, I might expand the game after the jam to have a more gradual difficulty curve
Great idea and fantastic execution. So frustrating. Stupid ball made me say some not nice things about you :joystick: Brilliant idea. Thanks for sharing!
Just saw this on a stream :) Fun game and good mechanics that tie in with the theme. I found it difficult but fair, the timing on the different forces was well done to make levels challenging. Good entry.
Simple but great idea. You need some time to get the hang of it but I enjoyed playing it.
Nice game! Good core idea, well grounded in the theme, with an impressive number of cool twists on it. The presentation is also really nice, and the sound/music really added to the feel. I also liked the non-tutorial tutorial, definitely a fan of that approach and you did it well.
I struggled a bit with getting frustrated, so I really appreciated the VERY fast restart time. If I could tweak one thing about this game, it would be to adjust your check for whether I am grounded or not. I kept getting cheated out of the ability to jump in this situation:
BallOfChaos-CantJump.png
Here I am standing, but I cannot jump (tested several times by hammering the jump button). I can't see the code but my guess is that you use a raycast down from the center of the player to check whether to allow the jump, but you could fix this by checking multiple rays at the edges of the player. You could also consider some coyote time, as I suspect a more generous control would add to the experience by making all failures feel like my own fault instead of control malfunctions.
I don't mean to sound overly negative because I really liked this one, I just thought it could be even stronger if you smoothed a few frustrations off.
Very nice well-rounded entry!
@pkenney Thanks for the feedback!
There is coyote time but you are right that I used a single raycast which is the problem. That kinda also diminishes the coyote timer since it starts as soon as your center is off the ground.
I noticed it when someone said there jump wasn't registered on stream and I actually made a fix for it already (used boxcast instead of raycast).
The thing is idk if updating the game would be against the rules. In my fix, I also made tiny fixes to 2 levels, so not sure if that's considered too big of an update.
What do you think, think I should be fine publishing the changes?
I may not be the best to ask, since I do compo where the rules are a little more strictly followed.
That said, here's how I'd think about it if it was my game: The bug-fix rule is for discovering "oh no the game can't be played" right after launch, and not for tweaking controls to smooth out the experience. So I wouldn't ship that fix under the bug-fix rule. But I might push a "post-jam" version, make the differences clear, and leave up both versions.
Just my two cents, though!
Props for already finding and fixing it though. Boxcast sounds like a good solution... I may use that instead of double-ray next time!
this is hard!)
Шар ХАОСА! Отличный эксперимент!
This was one of the more polished entries I've seen, well done! The mechanic is simple (and on-theme), yet each level brought a fresh take on it. I applaud games like this that have simple controls and surprising depth. It got really hard near what I think is the end (I made it to the level where there are three bars before I gave up), but the ramp up to that difficulty was smooth.
The visuals were clean, yet stylish, and the audio was good too. However, I did have a minor issue with audio where the sound of the anti-player entering was loud even if the volume was turned down.
I would suggest updating this page to add at least one picture of the game and perhaps some extra info, just to attract more people to play it.
@jaker Thanks for playing and for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
You did well too, the level with 3 bars is the last one! Also, thanks for bringing up the sfx volume on the shadow ball, I see I forgot to connect it to the volume control
It brings back old memories of commodore64 games. Great entry. Probably the upForce meter's background could be a a different color. Or with some white border. At first I thought it could be fill up the whole screen.
A really fun little game with interesting mechanics, fitting audio and nice level design.
It can be a little frustrating at times but it's okay.
Keep the good work up!