Towerball

by morre
Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.05
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.75
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★4.35
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.80
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.85
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.56
Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.86
Journal★★★★★★★★★★3.00
Polish★★★★★★★★★★4.05
Technical★★★★★★★★★★3.70
There, I’m finally finished with my game for LD12 :>

____EDIT, 12:20 GMT+1____

Here’s an updated zip. The game is the same, but it has a slightly improved XML file for the compo game loader:

Towerball, CGL XML updated

_________________________

The final version is here: Towerball

There is also a webstart version.

For instructions, check out the readme.

7-levels in total, one featuring a somewhat dodgy owl. It’s really hard to do art on a 1/5 scale in an overly simple map editor! :)

Here’s a couple of progress screenshots to show how things have been coming along:

* Sketch

* First version

* Cleaner

* New look

* GUI

* Level editor

It’s been loads of fun doing my first entry for an LD 48h competition – I will quite probably be back for more!

screenshot

Comments16

wonderwhy-er
Very well made game :) Well polished and fun to play. Has sounds too. Only it was not very friendly for my notebook :( Run at it with 1Fps :( But on PC it was 60FPS... Does it run without OpenGL? If so then it explains the problems but I suppose that my ATI Readon on notebook is not friendly with OpenGL...
dstrysnd
This runs far too slowly on either of my testing machines to be playable.
Endurion
Pretty hard. But a nice idea. Reminds me of E-Motion.
I always get one exception at the start: Failure to find pixel format.
For anyone where the game fails to load resources: Java still can\'t cope with spaces in paths/filenames. You may need to copy the whole folder off the desktop.
Hey, nice clean graphics, pretty textures. Good sound .. effective and not annoying. A fairly unique sort of game .. a bit like minigolf, but moving up inside a tower. There is some considerable effort in level design here too. Took me a little while to get the hang of it, but once I did, it's a pretty fun little game. +Polish points for a level editor, even if it is tricky to use :). I did notice a bug, where you can accidentally fall _inside_ the bottom tower in level 6.
matrin
Cool game. Can be quite dificult to get those extra points. There is a bug: whe my ball stoped near a vertical wall, it jumped to the other side, and i was locked iside the wall.
I just had to keep playing this until the levels looped. The sounds were minimal but used excellently. The game itself is well designed and well executed. Its the little features such as the radar and the limited dampening ability which make this so playable. It took a while to get the hang of, but after that initial period the controls became quite intuitive - I was able to judge the right power for different platform heights and learned to apply the dampening in short bursts. I did find one bug - occasionally the ball would pass through a corner and fall inside the walls. But all in all a very good entry - well done!
Fun, well made, solid all around. :) I was yelling in frustration at the stupid ball not going where I hoped it'd be going more than once. (Yelling at my screen in a good, enthusiastic gamer kinda way, that is.)
Notch
Interesting game. Getting power and score from hitting walls was nice, and the dampening was really useful.
But far too often, the balls fell slowly back down to the bottom, making all progress I\'d made void, which is annoying.
Codexus
Very cool game! It would need some fine tuning to make the game play more interesting but it's fun.
nilsf
It's quite fun, a little hard at first but not so much as to be frustrating, a good challenge level IMO.
Hamumu
Really hard and frustrating... the dual ball thing just makes it so tough to figure out what will happen, so I kept ending up back at the bottom. But it's well done in every respect, just very hard (and don't forget frustrating). My greatest victory was getting up to the last platform in the 2nd level, but I only had 2 power left, so all I could do was weakly gasp at the exit.
jolle
I don't think I played anything quite like this. The closest thing I can think of is miniature golf, and that's not the same at all.

It's pretty hard. Or rather frustrating, in that a small mistake towards the end can undo all the work. And it's a bit hard to control things.

Clean and sharp visuals and sounds.

Got to level four. Then the blue ball managed to end up on the wrong side of a wall, and after next shot they dropped to infinity, I suppose. Had real troubles with that level so figured it was a good place to stop.
lexaloffle
A great game and an original concept. I don't think you needed the whole wall-touching thing. It's good fun just trying to get to the exit. You could be less stingy with the damper supply though!
jhauberg
Dude! This came out great.

I\'m slightly annoyed at the time it takes for the balls to chill out and let me shoot again though :)
Easy to learn, difficult to master. Well presented and polished. I can see me coming back to this time and time again.
Very cool. The presentation is great, with nice and non-annoying sounds. Difficulty is too high early on imho (I haven\'t had the patience to try and retry my way past the first level yet).

Other games by @morre

Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord