Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → Ultimate Tennis Championship 2K22
By hajpappan
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 917 | 3.35 | 23 | |
| Fun | 580 | 3.47 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 917 | 3.07 | 23 | |
| Theme | 927 | 3.45 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 1234 | 2.57 | 22 | |
| Humor | 1015 | 2.35 | 19 | |
| Mood | 1302 | 2.55 | 20 |
A very simple twist to an old classic, very nice job! I'm not that patient so my best score was 19090. At certain times, I think I would have liked an ability for the ball to drop faster? However, I think everything "landed" perfectly. Glad to have you finish the game jam!
Great to hear that you finished this one! It took me a bit to get used to the physics, but it ended up being fun to play!
It's the opposite of PONG, if that makes sense. You play as the ball, with a very hyperbolic flappy bird type of controls. It's deceivingly difficult, because you need to time your jumps really well to not go soaring off at a 90 degree angle. It's quite fun though, and I think the particle effects are a nice touch. I couldn't shake the feeling that if I timed it perfectly, I could keep the ball on the bottom of one of the paddles. I could only keep that up for a couple seconds though.
I really like how each click just modifies the balls vertical speed instead of replacing it. Leads to some very deceptive feeling "hops" when near neutral speed that turn into gigantic leaps with just one extra click. There was a kind of patience and planning ahead (figure out where your ball's going to have to be on the return trip, rather than just looking at the next one) that felt satisfying to execute for me.
I like those particles you put on the ball as it speeds up too, the sound effects are very satisfying and subtle stuff like the way the paddles shrink after the ball collides with it are all really nice touches. You mentioned your aim to keep scope small and how you got to put extra polish on as a result and I think the result was very nice.
The actual ability to get high scores feels a little arbitrary to me, though. With how the ball speeds up, I think all it takes is a low-high-low sort of pattern and you won't be able to make the return rally regardless of how quickly you try set up a plan be in the right spot at the right time - you just sail over the second low paddle because there's not enough time for gravity to do its work. If you get lucky and have paddle heights relatively close to one another then scoring higher is much easier/possible.
I don't know what sorts of restrictions are in place for paddle heights as the ball speeds up (if any) but maybe having some rule that increased horizontal speed limits the random range that the paddles can move to. Or maybe even more precisely, the bigger the different in heights after one paddle's random move, the smaller the difference has to be on the next random movement to try to make it unlikely players get an unwinnable pattern.
Could be that I wasn't really figuring out the best way to play, though. The highest I got was a 28980, but it really was just off of a very lucky series of middle-of-the-screen paddles.
Anyway, I had a fun time playing with the game and shooting for a high score. Nice work!
Wow! This game is very difficult. I died perhaps 20 times before i had a single rally back and forth. Eventually it gets easier, but not by much. I like this submission, small scope but very compelling concept.
I find the game really difficult so didn't play long, but I like the idea a lot !
I really like the idea of pong, but you're the ball! A bit hard to control at first but I had fun
making the top border a death zone makes it a lot harder to survive once you have a shift from a low paddle to a high paddle, but a fun yet simple experience!
super difficult, my high score was 3000 or so after 10 minutes, but a really unique and fun game regardless, nothing to complain about really
Hahaha, that's undoubtably the worst control scheme I've ever seen for a pong game. Flappy Pong. Delightfully frustrating, well done!
The ball was extremely hard to control at first, but after a while I got the hang of it. I found out that clicking around 3 times per hit was the best strategy, at least for me. After I hit the score of about 10000 the ball became a bit harder to control, though the visual feedback was nice. I think you made the right decision to create a very small game and focus on polishing it. Good job!
Nice little game! At the beginning the ball so unpredictable but after a few tries I got used to it and the game turned out to be quite enjoyable.
This was great and unexpected! Good job! Being the ball is such a cool perspective and I thought it was well executed.
Hey, great little game! I read your description. Good job on keeping the scope narrowed. I know that's something a lot of people struggle with, and being able to focus and get past that hurdle is a good achievement. Congrats!
the game is really fun i liked that the ball increased speed the more you hit the paddle (: