Planetary bowling – postmortem

This is my second time participating in Ludum Dare, and I managed to finish another game!

Plantary Bowling is a game where you fling super-heavy asteroids at planets in order to throw them off course. Play it here.

After the theme was announced I immediately started working on the physical simulation of star systems. On the first day I had only the idea that smashing planets together (thus “connecting” them :) ) could be fun, but I wasn’t really sure what the game mechanic was going to be at that point. At the end of the first day I had a somewhat convincing simulation of a star systems going, but the thing wasn’t really a game yet.

During the second day I added the mechanic of shooting asteroids at the planets. Now, the game finally had a goal, which is to push all the planets out of the play area with the asteroids. This opened up many possibilities, but unfortunately I had only little time left to implement these ideas.

The game could be more fun with a better control scheme and a physical simulation better adjusted for it. Currently you can actually pass the levels without doing anything, because the simulation is unstable enough that the planets will eventually drift out of the play area on their own if you leave the game running for a while :D

I also envisioned a two-player mode, where you would attempt to beat the levels with as few asteroids as possible and your score would add up between the levels, but unfortunately I didn’t have time to implement it in the end. I think the concept of the game has a lot of potential, so I may keep working on it after Ludum Dare though :)

Either way, I’m happy that the end result is playable, and amazingly it can even provide some fun for a little while!