Ludum Dare #46compo

Wasmball

by itsarjunsinh

Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.80

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.25

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.73

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.15

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★1.95

Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.50

Mood★★★★★★★★★★1.50

WASMBall/AwsmBall

Genre: Hypercasual

Save the capsule from the projectiles! Just click or touch the screen to jump. It works on phones too.

> Note: The webpage will be blank for a moment as it loads the 1 MB game. This is a web assembly export.

Admittedly the game is barebones but this was my first game jam, my first ECS Project* and my first Unity Tiny project with my first ever manual collision detection system. So I'm happy with the result. I will participate in the next Ludum Dare too!

P.S. I picked Unity Tiny because I'm intrigued by the underlying lightweight engine.

One of the best things I did was exporting the game and testing it after every new module. I was able to release the final build without wondering if something was broken during the last moments.

Comments19

nicksmaddog20 Apr 2020, 03:16

Nice concept. It would be cool if the difficulty ramped up as you progress. After a while, it's easy to get into a pattern to avoid the projectiles.

Greytyphoon20 Apr 2020, 03:18

Congratulations on your first game jam! This game is admittedly very barebones, but it does work as expected and fluidly. It's also good, mindless fun!
It would definitely benefit from some kind of highschore mechanics, so I can see how good I did on this try! Maybe make the red balls arrive faster after a while too?

This is not an innovative game, as it's basically Flappy Bird without the illusion of horizontal movement. It's also not moody or humorous, so I would recommend, on your next participation, opt out of those categories if you don't need them, it'll give your game more accurate ratings. :)

Oh, and props for making a web-based game that I can play without having to download anything!

a1gemmel20 Apr 2020, 03:18

Barebones, but you admitted this. This game would benefit from a timer or scoreboard. Does the difficulty increase? I got to 2 minutes on my 3rd play and it didn't seem to be getting harder. I do like how the changing velocity of the red balls gives you a sense of constant near-misses. With the constant graphics movements, the first time I looked away from the screen my apartment was contracting and expanding. Trippy.

madbookstudios20 Apr 2020, 03:20

Simple gameplay but still effective. Reminds me of one tap mobile games. Would have been nice to hear some music or a different model than the yellow pill. Great foundations!

itsarjunsinhauthor20 Apr 2020, 03:34

@greytyphoon Thanks for the feedback. I was going to implement variations in projectile spawning (a barrage of red balls - much faster from one direction, red balls coming quickly from all sides sequentially etc.) but a silly bug in the last few hours ate up the time for it.
I barely finished the UI and restart state in time. And regards to highscore, Project Tiny (which requires total Unity ECS) doesn't have a UI solution yet. In one of their samples they used images (of digits) as scores.
I wasn't sure what moody meant in this context but now I know. And yeah, for quick tests I prefer web games too.

itsarjunsinhauthor20 Apr 2020, 03:42

@a1gemmel @nicksmaddog Thanks for the feedback. The difficulty doesn't increase. If you're interested here's the story why I missed out on it: In the final hours theplan was to implement basic UI and then resume work on the mechanics but just before that I finished limiting the player within the view bounds. That however caused a bug which resulted in the player jumping at a non-constant rate. I looked in the wrong places for a long time before realising the bug was because of incorrect operator assignment (instead of increment). This fiasco ate vital time. Bonus: The Project Tiny's Web Assembly build's UnityEngine.Random() is broken, so if you go to play again, the seed will be the same.

itsarjunsinhauthor20 Apr 2020, 04:15

@madbookstudios If I had been more productive, I would've replace the capsule with some kind of humanoid to give the illusion the character is being attacked. Great foundations, indeed. I might make this into a proper mobile game.

PolyPickle20 Apr 2020, 05:07

@itsarjunsinh Fun little game, great first step into game dev! Hope its the beginning of an enjoyable! Here are some fun improvements you can consider:
- The number of balls doesnt really matter since they all hit at the same place/time. Maby throw in a random ball at a random location for more difficulty?

itsarjunsinhauthor20 Apr 2020, 05:18

@polypickle You're right. The plan was to spawn the balls with a delay between them, so they would be placed at different locations but I ran out of time. I can work on it now and make it a full game.

Willops20 Apr 2020, 05:55

Cool little game, I think you have a really solid base here for a great arcade/mobile game! It might help to make the player accelerate downwards as he falls to give the player slightly more control over his movement, but other than that just adding some depth in the challenges the game throws at the player would be great!

Quinn_Patrick20 Apr 2020, 13:28

This is what we call a minimum viable product, and for a game jam, that's not a bad thing! The physics were really cool. The way the balls slow down before reaching you makes it feel fair, and the delayed movement of the player increases tension. If you added a score feature and a little more variety, along with some window dressing to make it seem less basic, this would be a really solid game.

GameDoodles20 Apr 2020, 14:42

Simple, fun, and generally solid. Would love to see music, sfx, and some more art in an expanded version. Nice work!

tupto20 Apr 2020, 14:50

Simple concept, easily accessibly. This is the sort of game I could see my mum play on her phone

Ruoyu20 Apr 2020, 18:23

Simple gameplay and it can be developed into a hypercasual mobile title with a bit more production efforts (graphics, sfx)

Kudos for choosing a new technology for game jam and being able to finish it in time! I always wanted to get into ECS but never feel productive with it and always keep going back to MonoBehavior.

itsarjunsinhauthor20 Apr 2020, 18:53

@ruoyu ECS is great. It's like a logically broken up MonoBehaviour. However, Project Tiny is not there yet at the moment but I like the idea behind it.

itsarjunsinhauthor20 Apr 2020, 18:55

@tupto @gamedoodles Thanks for the feedback guys. I will most likely make this into an arcade phone game.

zondarg20 Apr 2020, 23:27

Simple but fun one button game. Some sound or music would be nice though. I liked it!

LetiGuaxinim21 Apr 2020, 02:03

cute game, I would spend some time playing, you could improve by leting gravity works! like the pill falls faster if you are not pressing for a long time, and randomize bore the red balls. 7/10

Igoreshka21 Apr 2020, 18:52

Nice gameplay, awsm ball (bad joke) :sweat_smile: Simple idea, but looks hypnotic :slight_smile: