Honest Dan's Trout
Honest Dan's Trout combines two incompatible genres of the arcade era - __Tetris-style puzzle & Brick breaker__.
This is a high score game, meaning the game continues until you lose the game.
Lose Conditions:
- running out of balls
- running out of space
- running out of time
Focus only on the puzzle board, and you'll run out of balls.
Focus only on the block breaking, and you'll run out of space and time.
_Watch in frustration when:_
- the ball destroys that wonderful four-liner you were about to hit.
- a new puzzle piece falls and throws your ball on an unexpected trajectory.
- you lose track of the ball while focusing on placing the puzzle piece
- you focus on the ball too much and block up an otherwise perfect puzzle board.
_Feel like a boss when:_
- you move the puzzle piece into the ball to change it's shape to perfectly match your needs.
- play such an accurate ball game that you can stack up and clear 4 lines in one go (known as a "trout").
- you find yourself in a really long game as your performance keeps extending your remaining time.
- you get the top score on the online leaderboards.
__CONTROLS:__
Mouse: Move Paddle (left and right)
Left-Click: Shoot ball (on restart)
A, S, D: Move puzzle piece Left, Down and Right (respectively)
Q, E: Rotate puzzle piece Anticlockwise and Clockwise (respectively)
Thanks for taking the time to play my entry. Creating this was quite the journey, after having to scrap my first project at the end of day 1. I'm glad I stuck to it, and despite lacking some polish and shine - I hope you enjoy your time playing Honest Dan's Trout.
__NOTES:__
WEBGL Version: Scoreboards don't work on web version, as my scoreboard system uses http but itch uses https.
Both Versions: There is one known bug where the ball stops moving. It is rare, please excuse it if it happens.
_The Theme: With regards to the incompatibility - my definition of compatible is ability to co-exist without any problems or conflict. From my perspective, both of these games-types cause problems and conflict for the other. You struggle to make lines because the ball destroys your existing lines and pieces as they drop. The dropping pieces also interfere unexpectedly with the movement of the ball. Also you are not able to simply clear the blocks and win like in breakout, instead the high-score approach of tetris forces you to try and keep blocks. You need to make rows of blocks to extend your remaining time - thus increasing your potential high score._
Comments190
I'm not sure I actually have any criticism. It's simplicity is kind of its strength. Perhaps in the future it might be a good idea to occasionally add a random power up to drop? at the same time I don't think it needs anything like that though.
Anyway, Good job, dude. It was a stressful weekend but you should definitely be proud of what you got done.
With regards to the incompatibility - my definition of compatible is ability to co-exist without any problems or conflict. From my perspective, both of these games-types cause problems and conflict for the other. You struggle to make lines because the ball destroys your existing lines and pieces as they drop. The dropping pieces also interfere unexpectedly with the movement of the ball. Also you are not able to simply clear the blocks and win like in breakout, instead the high-score approach of tetris forces you to try and keep tiles and you need to make lines to extend your remaining time - thus increasing your potential high score.
-Rao
Thanks for your feedback! I'm hoping to stream playing LD games Wed eve and Friday eve - so I'll go through and try out games of those who gave feedback when my queue is empty!
This game is hard. Only can use left hand to play Tetris. It could be nice if we can also use "space bar" as rotate, so I don't need to keep moving my finger to rotate.(But I also think that's why this game is challenging. It want you to do lot's of things at the same time.)
I played so many times and only cleared 3~5 lines. That ball destroyed everything!
@TSK those were the days.... where if a game didn't load you'd blow into the underside of the cartridge rather than check twitter for announcements from the devs!
I ended up not really looking at the bar, and just playing the tetris part.
I really like it, and the graphics are just so clean.
One of the best games I've seen so far.
The binds for move/rotate are a bit hard to learn though. You should keep ASWD for move, but maybe rotate blocks with right mouse. I really think having the ability to rotate both sides isn't necessary, as it's really handable on one-side rotation
I rated 4.5 / 5. I think the music can be more polished
Here's our game, which is also a Tetris mixed with another genre : D
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/blocksnblaster-1
I personally don't think those two themes are too "imcompatible" - other than the fact that the game has a lot going on which is not certainly everyone's cup of tea.
But overall, it is still a very good game as a marathon game and extra props for all the polish that has gone to this!
Regarding incompatibility, you're entitled to your opinion - though I'd ask you to consider my perspective that I listed at the end of my entry description. For convenience, here it is: "The Theme: With regards to the incompatibility - my definition of compatible is ability to co-exist without any problems or conflict. From my perspective, both of these games-types cause problems and conflict for the other. You struggle to make lines because the ball destroys your existing lines and pieces as they drop. The dropping pieces also interfere unexpectedly with the movement of the ball. Also you are not able to simply clear the blocks and win like in breakout, instead the high-score approach of tetris forces you to try and keep blocks. You need to make rows of blocks to extend your remaining time - thus increasing your potential high score."
@tigerj thanks for giving it a go! I wish leaderboards worked too, but as mentioned - dreamlo leaderboards require payment for SSL leaderboards, and itch.io don't allow access to not HTTPS things via WebGL.
Thanks all: @Adam Wallberg, @BauBau, @Dragojt (glad you found it hard :D!), @Yozamu @Richnou @folex70 (It would be hard to port to mobile due to many controls needed, and also I'm not sure how licencing works since this plays similar to tetris), @Iluvatar!
@HPMNK interesting feedback, cheers. I thought about the controls for some time. I considered right click, but this posed two problems: 1) the mouse is no longer just for the paddle control, and 2) right clicking in browser I was concerned would bring up a context menu. Regarding the rotations, I almost went with R or Space for rotate, but was concerned proper tetris fans would not enjoy one way rotation only. I should have made space / r do a rotation regardless, but it's too late now! I'll be playing games this evening on stream so I'll try give yours a go then
When do you plan to stream ? I would definitely look at that, to catch some pictures for my game : )
Cheers
Awesome job.
@Blinkenlights don't forget a wedge of lemon. Belissimo!
@recursor @Hi Im Greg @acoto87 thank you for feedback :)
@joltjab I've written a few times in info etc, unfortunately the highscores only work on PC version! sorry
I really liked the game,simple, fun and addictive! Nice combination of cool arcade games! God I got frustrated after a while when my perfect lovely lane got rekt by the ball.
Great fun game Dan, would be nice to be able to customize parameters like nr of balls or tetris difficulty!
I watched some bits of the stream while you were jamming for Ludum Dare 41.
At the beginning you were unsure about how it was going to turn out, but you kept going and working on it.
And I must say it turned out to be amazing!
The things I loved
I really liked the multitasking aspect of the game, having to keep an eye on the ball and the tetris blocks! After a few runs I could keep the ball alive while still focussing on the playfield. It felt rewarding mastering this skill! Not many LD games make me replay them several times, but yours did! I even tried different play styles (focussing on making rows one time and destroying blocks the other time). It turned out to be more rewarding to make rows instead of breaking blocks (which the score table already indicates), but hey I had to try.Getting to compare your score to other via the leaderboard was really fun and encouraged me to get a better score.
The game was not only fun and challenging to play but I also really loved the art. Everything looks clean and fits in the theme. Furthermore, it is also really easy on the eyes!
The things I would have liked (if I had to name some ...)
It may be just me, but when I was playing the game for the first time I didn't notice the time at all; all of the sudden I died. A warning sound or the background music speeding up at 30 seconds would have given me a great rush to try and stay in the game!Next to this there could have been some extra buttons in the UI, like a 'play again' in the game over screen or 'leaderboard' button in the main menu. But who cares in a 72 hour game jam.
I am also quite sure I lost 2 lives in 1 go once, the ball seemed to bounce on the bottom of my paddle somehow. Wasn't able to reproduce this though, so it probably won't have happend that much.
End note
Loved it. These 2 arcade genres together make for a really fun and challenging game. Graphics are clean and fit together. The game overall gives a really polished impression.Great job man!
Keep up the great work,
InsertCoffeePls
Keep up the good work dan!
What if the tetris pieces fell upward? Just to make it look more like a breakout level.
Either way i had fun :D
At first I didn't know you could move your tetris because I jumped straight into the game.
But once in, I enjoyed both of genre mixing together and trying to score as much. I still need to play it more to register a decent score :)
Well done.
I got 16240 on my second try in the web version, but the fact that it didn't save to online leaderboards was not really nice.
On my third run on the PC build, I managed to hit the infinite state.
I could have gone forever (until my hands started to hurt REALLY bad), but I have other things to do today and other games to rate so I stopped at 40k :smile: (not at all Warhammer reference). Maybe if a challenger arises (@david-boeger?), I will give it another go to confirm my title (ping me in that case :smile:).
I admit I used to be a somewhat competitive Tetris player, so the game was pretty easy after I got the hang of the ball.
I never managed to score a trout, not even a triple.
I find it beautiful how it all just worked. The way I had to make the ball not hit the lines I was about to complete, but make it hit the blocks that clear a line, how I could reshape (or even remove) the tetriminos I didn't like, how I sometimes had to dodge the ball with my tetrimino, how there were in total 3 losing conditions, but they all felt very natural. There was quite a lot going on, but everything was so intuitive! So, great job on that!
Also, your Tetris implementation was pretty good. Compared to many clones that I have played around the net at least.
The multitasking aspect was very nice, and very natural too.
So yeah, it was super, super fun and I love the idea and implementation.
Let me give you several comments about some minor issues I had.
- E for rotating should have been W. I found it quite annoying.
- I would prefer for the tetriminos to have colors, preferably according to the standard Tetris color scheme. I see that it doesn't fit the retro style you were going for. I didn't like the overall aesthetics.
- I didn't like the way the ball bounced off the bar. It kind of "snapped" to a position several pixels from where it should be
- When I had a broken tetrimino falling, I couldn't rotate it near a wall even though I should have been able to, because the checker assumed that the broken off cubies were still there and should not get beside the wall
- Of course, some difficulty rise after a while would be nice. But I may be the only one to have this problem.
- Super minor issue - how the shades on the blocks were not all in the same direction.
So yeah, that's all. Best game I played so far this LD. Also, sorry for sweeping the competition, I guess I may stay at the top for a while :smiley:.
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
Only downside to me comes from the difficulty difference between both games, breakout being much, much more difficult and demanding than tetris (since tetrominos get destroyed by the ball so easily)
Really well done!
It was not easy at all. Seriously, I had to up my game substantially, but also get extremely lucky. Before, I jokingly said a trout should give 5k points. But no, I think it should give about 15k points more realistically, because no competitive player in their right mind would try to accomplish this for the points. It took me longer to get the trout than it did to get to the top of the scoreboard, and quite frankly, I had to get a lot better at the game too.
@Lyrcaxis thank you dude :)
@Corbak you aren't the first one to not know that! I've watched two people play this who didn't touch the dropping pieces for the first minute or so! Not sure if I should directly tell people, or just make the arrow keys control things too?
@BoltKey really sorry about your experience with web version high score. I did have a note in bold under the web player trying to warn players, but understand most people will not read that. Can I ask what you meant by infinite state? And glad you could master it, I think a real version of the game would have some increased difficulty or different difficulty modes perhaps - it's nice to see there are people who are really good at this who enjoyed working out the added challenge that breakout added to tetris. I'm really really pleased to hear you felt it was an elegant combination - I feared my idea would be too simple for a game jam, but really pleased I went with it now. Thanks for the feedback also - I thought Q and E would give players control of both directions, is this not something competitive tetris players tend to care about? I could add it so W rotates clockwise in addition to the existing controls perhaps. Fair enough about the colour preference. and Yes the blocks shading is off as my implementation was based around rotations and I didn't code anything to compensate the sprite rotations. It surprises me about the rotation point though - are you positive about this? My implementation basically turns it, checks if any active parts of the piece are out of range / colliding, then reverses the rotation if so. Perhaps I checked out of bounds before I checked the block was active - I'll check the code some day :) How do you feel powerups would add to it? I considered making negative powerups that you get as you get more score, like faster ball, bigger ball, double ball - as all would make it more difficult. but then not sure if it would be too much.
@Talops indeed there is a difficulty, yet to really mess with players I designed it so you must focus on tetris to get more time / better score, meaning you need to neglect the more challenging aspect :D sorry!
@Brent dreams can be crushed, but you can always dream again. My mother never understood when I told her I wanted to grow up and be a trout, but I never stopped dreaming.
@OhFiddleDiddle very nice comment, thanks for letting me know
@JuicyBrucey Thanks for your feedback juicy! I wish not to argue, but just to present my perspective on the theme. It is fine if we don't agree on it, but wasn't sure if you saw what I wrote about incompatibility in the game description section - will paste it here for convenience: _With regards to the incompatibility - my definition of compatible is ability to co-exist without any problems or conflict. From my perspective, both of these games-types cause problems and conflict for the other. You struggle to make lines because the ball destroys your existing lines and pieces as they drop. The dropping pieces also interfere unexpectedly with the movement of the ball. Also you are not able to simply clear the blocks and win like in breakout, instead the high-score approach of tetris forces you to try and keep blocks. You need to make rows of blocks to extend your remaining time - thus increasing your potential high score._
@King Kujito
The blend of simplicity and that classic Tetris looking UI were fantastically put together. This definitely felt like I was playing it back on my gameboy as my mom was yelling to clean my room
Audio
The music was really well done and fit perfectly. It never felt too repetitive, and and was the calm needed to counterbalance the stress from that ball screwing over my line clears. The sound effects were spot on for the style.
Controls
The controls were good, but one thing I found frustrating was that if I hold down S to move the block down, it detects that I'm holding it down and continues to move it down. Where as with A and D, if I wanted to move multiple spaces over, i had to press them repetitively instead of holding them. This felt off to me from what I'm used to with Tetris games. I'm mostly think of the current Puyo Puyo Tetris on the Nintendo Switch as I can't remember exactly from the earlier entries (NES/Gameboy/Arcade), but in those, holding the movement direction (left or right) will keep moving it in the direction instead of having to press it over and over. I kept doing this instinctively and it was messing me up.
Overall
I really enjoyed this overall and will keep playing it after LD ends, just because I want a better score.
@randomhuman Thanks for that man, and the logo looks tacky but I wanted something that was a bit retro :D I agree about the music, upbeat music wouldn't be right in this mash up!
Also, the dropping of the pieces seemed much faster than in previous version, that helped a lot.
(sorry for no sound)
Amazing work!
@Rebecca Kremer appreciate your feedback and was really good to see you experience it on stream! hope you continue to stream after ludum dare, we have a nice community of game devs active and I think people would like your personality.
And thanks @rebecca-kremer for sharing this entree in your post, otherwise I might've missed it
Destroying a line doesn't seem very interesting. I mean i was hoping of a big reward i could see for that (because it's very hard) but nothing like that appared. Maybe because i was insaneley focused on positioning my bars to avoid the ball and i saw nothing.
Realization is neat.
great game to train multitasking
@visumecadroide shame you found it too hard, but it was the intended design. Once you get your brain handling both aspects of the game, it is very rewarding surviving longer. I did consider some big fancy graphical "trout" when yuo get 4 lines etc, but you compare to the inspiration of tetris, there is only a small sound when you get 4 lines, and nothing for a single line. I decided to follow that style, but as a result for players used to "modern" games, I can understand why you thought it was boring. These sort of games aren't about entertaining people with visuals and sounds though, its about overcoming a challenging and letting your concentration, precision and focus have time to shine.
@Jin9310 and @ooku super kind words, thank you very much
One on best entries on LD41 that i played so far :)
Can you say what engine this was created in? And which soft did you used to make music and sounds?
You can check out our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/educational-beat-em-up-punches-delivered-with-math
I also have a game about Tetris, it's important for me to hear your opinion
@MaximBegunov @Tayrnarion @krammetje @arron-fowler thank you!
@Darkwing00Duck I will give it a go when I play a few more LD entries and leave you some feedback
@Bartosz Hey, thanks! The game was coded using C# within the Unity game engine. I used PyxelEdit to do the art. The music was composed and created in ableton.
@Houruck thank you
Good going!
@HagamosVideojuegos thanks so much, so pleased you thought so!
@Tim Ruswick Thanks bud
Feel free to check out my web "game" Story Collab, I'm in dire need to ratings!
It is pretty hard to operate the mouse and keyboard at the same time for something like this, but you get used to it quickly.
The challenge of the game is obvious and exciting. The scoring seemed well balanced to me. I can only imagine the skill it takes to actually get a trout.
Great Work :)
@huminaboz Thank you man, I really enjoyed it too, was more satisfying than I envisioned when designing it :)
@Lost Dutchman Software Let me know what they think! I'm not sure the rules on trying to monetise this on app store etc, since its based on two existing well-known games.
@veztron thanks for that! I had to add some small variance to it to avoid the stale mates. You can still get some long horizontal loops, but I liked them - a rare chance to focus just on the "tetris" element, yet you still need to time the moving of the pieces down to avoid knocking the ball out. Oh and I've never got a trout. 2 people have recorded theirselves getting one and sent it to me :D
@Maakep really pleased you enjoyed playing it
@rkoshino if it continues, please see a doctor. Otherwise - glad to hear it :D
Very interesting and well done. It's just about impossible to clear a line in Tetris when the ball and paddle continually dismantles the line you're trying to build, plus any time I tried to focus on manipulating the falling Tetris block, I only lost track of the ball and died quickly. So this is a very challenging game. It would be interesting to see it played as a 2P co-operative game, where one player controls the falling block, and the other manages the paddle, and they work together.
I quickly fell into a play style of ignoring the falling blocks and just playing Breakout, essentially. But you cleverly prevent this style of play from working by introducing the time limit mechanic, which forces the player to try to complete lines in order to play for longer than 2:00. But since I can't even keep the Breakout game going that long before I lose all my balls, it doesn't limit me -- yet.
It seems from your scoring that it's about 2x as rewarding to clear lines as it is to destroy blocks 1 at a time. But given how challenging it is to actually clear a line, I almost wonder if the reward should be more like 4x or 10x.
My own LD41 game, InvadTris combines Tetris with Space Invaders, and I think it's interesting to compare and contrast these two entries. I invite you to give it a play if you haven't seen it already, and let me know what you think.
Well done !
Here is our game if you want to try it !
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/me-da-miedito-la-oscuridad-i-get-goosebumps-in-the-dark
Suggestions/nitpicks:
* more space at the bottom would be nice as the ball can be somewhat unpredictable
* would be nice if the blocks collapsed after the ball creates a space inbetween
* when the player moves the paddle into the ball at the last second it results in the ball going down away - being able to save the ball at the very last moment would probably feel baller (teehee)
And also a very well working combination of tetris with another game. I also used tetris (+ J&R) but unfortunately the whole thing is not neary as polished as what you guys managed to do.
Good job, one of my favourite entries of all LD's i have seen :)
Splitting attention is a good skill to master over multiple plays, so that works really well. I liked the hint of extra balls every 1000 points (maybe a nice 'extra ball' message in the middle of the screen?)
Only thing I kinda missed is the tetris side-slide when on the bottom row to just fit a shape in - but that is minor details.
Nice entry!
Regarding the gameplay - I'd encourage you to try playing again and think about the conflicts with the two "approaches" you highlighted in your review.
*1) Play just Arkanoid and have no Tetris pieces to play:*
This is correct. They give you the lower amount of score, and never extend you time. The game is labelled as a "high score game", so essentially if you play this way - you're choosing not to try and score well or extend the time in which you have to score. I'd say the game is designed to encourage you away from this game play, since it's a high score game and it is expressed on the UI and the "how to play" that you get more points for lines and extend your time.
*2) Play tetris and avoid stuff with arkanoid ball*
Well, that is kind of the point of the game. The difficulty is, the nature of arkanoid means it is near impossible for you to avoid stuff with the ball. Meaning, it conflicts your ability to make tetris lines and to do any serious planning. When Tetris lines are the way to score more points and extend your timer, then it is about managing the conflict the combination of these genres give you. You have to be selective about what blocks you break. You can use the arkanoid ball to change the shape of the puzzle landscape to fit pieces in. You can change the shape of a tetris piece as it falls so its more useful. You can use the falling tetris piece to deflect the arkanoid ball to protect your puzzle landscape from being spoiled.
So on the question of how does the combination serve gameplay, I'd argue that infact the combination makes you think different about how to play two classic games that you are likely already familiar with. I'd remind you that the theme was about INCOMPATIBILITY. By definition that means that two things coexisting causing problems or conflict for each other. I'd argue that trout encourages you to play the games differently than you normally do, because the problems and conflicts they casue each other. A by product of that is a different type of game play and strategy, which requires not only mastery of the two original base mechanics, but the ability to react to the problems they cause each other. I am happy with the two concepts I have combined and believe they produce interesting gameplay and decisions for people to make.
I do wonder how much time you gave my game while doing your review. Part of your analysis on gameplay is based on a rare bug that I had highlighted in the game description page. Perhaps you should have restarted the game if you had sensed something had gone wrong, to allow yourself to spend time experiencing the game as intended.
I kept sabotaging my own strategy and it was driving me nuts. It's really challenging to complete tetris lines and the one time that I managed to get it right was amazing.
Thanks for that game and keep it up the amazing work! If you have some free time, please check my Compo entry, its a mix of RTS and Bullet Hell. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/last-stand
Cheers!
(Starts at 38:00)
Unfortunately I'm very bad at coordination games.
Nevertheless, I have played this game for a long time and had joy.
If you have still some time, I would love it if you could test our game.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/astropover