[Complete] Ball v5

[ifritgames]

Ball v5

Type: Puzzle / action, Written in: HTML5 / javascript, Version: 5.0

 

In Ball you can find light action if you choose to, it even has a kid mode setting, but it can also test your ability to think fast and solve a puzzle while controlling an ever moving ball in real time.

 

You can move the green ball with keys, mouse or touch. You have to collide with other balls to blow them up. If they had higher charge levels than you, your charge will drop, if they had lower or equal, your charge will increase after the collision. If your charge is depleted, the game is lost. The goal is to destroy all the other balls.

 

Play the most recent version here: http://ball.clay.io

 

Changes based on reviewer feedback: 

- A simple graphical explanation / tutorial comes up when you click play for the first time. You can redisplay this explanation later with choosing the help option in the menu.

- When exiting the game with the mouse, moving will not cancel the counter, so it now works in a coherent way over the 3 types of controls: touch, mouse and keys.

- Changed the way the game handles login and leaderboard processing, now the players have more control. The highscore menu only displays "show highscores" if you are logged in. Before logging in to the highscore system, it will display "save scores" instead. After you click on save scores, the logon popup is displayed.

[boostk]

Not very clear what you're supposed to do, but I figured out that I'm the green ball with the health symbol inside?  Not sure what to do next, looks like there's depth here but no tutorial explaining the game & how to play!

[ifritgames]

Not very clear what you're supposed to do, but I figured out that I'm the green ball with the health symbol inside?  Not sure what to do next, looks like there's depth here but no tutorial explaining the game & how to play!

 

Hey Boostk!

 

Thank you for giving Ball a try, and also for your helpful comment. I have built in a simple graphical explanation / tutorial what comes up when you click play for the first time. You can redisplay this explanation later with choosing the help option in the menu.

 

Ifritgames

[CapybaraCreations]

Hi, I've tried your game and from my experience here are some thoughts:

 

- BGM music is good, it's not intrusive, not too loud, seems great

- win sound however really scared me

- not sure if using clay.io is the greatest idea, creating account scares people off

- please add some space between menu sections because they are not clear!

- Tutorial or help, is way tooooo long, no one will read that, I guarantee it.

- Player ball could be a tiny little bit faster, also, it would be nice if player spawned at a centered position

- the leaving system is really not intuitive, figure another way out of this problem

- losing sound is too different from other sounds

- I have no idea what those letters and numbers near Like button mean

 

These are just thoughts, I tried to point out which things seem wrong to me.

[ifritgames]

Hey CapybaraCreations,

 

thank you for trying Ball, and for the extensive review as well!

 

- BGM music is good, it's not intrusive, not too loud, seems great

- win sound however really scared me

- losing sound is too different from other sounds

All the sounds and music was made by one of our resident artists, as one package. He especially created them to work together in the game, and I usually dont question our musicians artistic decisions, but I ll pop him a note with your remarks.

 

- not sure if using clay.io is the greatest idea, creating account scares people off

Valid point, I will change the games behavior to optionally allow you to save your highscores, and only if you manually choose this option, the clay.io popup will come up.

 

- Tutorial or help, is way tooooo long, no one will read that, I guarantee it.

So the representation and style was ok, but you would rather see shorter sentences in the speech bubbles?

 

- Player ball could be a tiny little bit faster, also, it would be nice if player spawned at a centered position

You evidently didnt play with more balls, higher speed of the player ball would be a disadvantage there. It really evens out, if you set a small number of balls to destroy, and you have a big screen you might indeed find the players speed too slow. Try the same with 200 balls on screen, and you will realize soon enough that the players speed is sometimes too fast.

 

- the leaving system is really not intuitive, figure another way out of this problem

All our testers loved this feature after I implemented it, I was really surprised that you didnt like it. How would you change it?

 

- I have no idea what those letters and numbers near Like button mean

First, I didnt know what you mean. I was like, hey didnt you see a like button before? But then it hit me. You have found the secret developer check numbers! You have entered the backdoor of our game, and hacked right into the core where only developers dare to go! I will remove the display of these numbers, better safe then sorry...

 

Thanks again for your extensive report,

 

Ifritgames

[CapybaraCreations]

You should try to "bake" tutorial into actual gameplay, then it can stay as it is.

About leaving system, well it's a nice idea, but it's not intuitive, I found out that to use it I CANNOT move the mouse, I can press space once and the process will go, however, if I want to use the mouse, I need to HOLD the button to do this. Sometimes when clicking, window will pop up and immediately close, sometimes clicking wont even bring the window.

 

About playing with 200 balls, why do you assume people will play it like this? The first thing they notice is that you can play with 10 balls. And their first game will be with 10 balls in 95% of the case. About 70% wont even know that they can change the amount of balls.

 

Also the text in the menu was really confusing for me at first, I didnt knew what "Play for score: 16" means, I thought "wtf, shouldn't it say just PLAY or something like this? Can I change this number? No there is no option for it... Oh I get it, if I change the number in the option BELOW, this number will also change, strange...". You see my point right? Try and give this game to a random child who never saw this, and DON'T say a thing about it, see their reactions.

[ifritgames]

About leaving system, well it's a nice idea, but it's not intuitive, I found out that to use it I CANNOT move the mouse, I can press space once and the process will go, however, if I want to use the mouse, I need to HOLD the button to do this. Sometimes when clicking, window will pop up and immediately close, sometimes clicking wont even bring the window.

Ah, I understand now, thank you for the clarification. I will think about how to do this better when you try to exit with mouse controls. Possibly fixing it in a way, that even if you move your mouse, the process will not stop.

 

Also the text in the menu was really confusing for me at first, I didnt knew what "Play for score: 16" means, I thought "wtf, shouldn't it say just PLAY or something like this? Can I change this number? No there is no option for it... Oh I get it, if I change the number in the option BELOW, this number will also change, strange...". You see my point right? Try and give this game to a random child who never saw this, and DON'T say a thing about it, see their reactions.

You are bringing up the points I myself was thinking about, while I was creating the game! And I have created the kid mode setting for exactly these reasons! So if you give the game to a random child, you switch it to kid mode and the game will not display "Play for score: 16" anymore, but it will display "Play" instead. There are more child friendly changes after setting the game to kid mode, for example you cannot loose and your ball moves with maximum speed all the time, regardless of charges.

 

You can choose from 3 difficulty modes in the settings menu:

Kid mode would allow your child to play with the nice colorful balls daddy used to play with,

Normal would give you regular difficulty puzzles, and

Maximum score would give you the toughest puzzle there is for each amount of balls you set with the number of balls menuoption

 

About playing with 200 balls, why do you assume people will play it like this?

You are right, I am guilty of making this assumption, possibly because this is how our team played it. After our testers got through their first few games, they were racing against each other in the highscore table, putting up more and more balls to the screen.

 

Ifritgames

[CapybaraCreations]

 

 

You are bringing up the points I myself was thinking about, while I was creating the game! And I have created the kid mode setting for exactly these reasons! So if you give the game to a random child, you switch it to kid mode and the game will not display "Play for score: 16" anymore, but it will display "Play" instead. There are more child friendly changes after setting the game to kid mode, for example you cannot loose and your ball moves with maximum speed all the time, regardless of charges.

Remember that sometimes childs can understand more from the game than adults. Also childs won't know about setting the game to "child mode", and even if they knew, they would break the rules and play "adult mode". Also, as you can see I'm an adult and I didn't understand this menu at first : /

[ifritgames]

Remember that sometimes childs can understand more from the game than adults. Also childs won't know about setting the game to "child mode", and even if they knew, they would break the rules and play "adult mode". Also, as you can see I'm an adult and I didn't understand this menu at first : /

I agree with you, this is why its always hard to position game UI and difficulty. Make it too simple, and players might not see the depth, make it understandable only with thinking, and players might not be able to easily grab the ideas behind it.

 

This is why I am so grateful for all your reviews, as they give me the opportunity to see my game through other peoples eyes.

 

Ifritgames

 

P.s.: I have changed the mouse exit behaviour based on your suggestion, it will not be cancelled by movement anymore, only clicks drive it.

[brainlab]

It took a while to figure out.

[ifritgames]

I just put it here, that someone from here have reached 252 points. Whoever it was, I want to say one thing: Impressive!

[ifritgames]

Hi, I've tried your game and from my experience here are some thoughts:

...

- not sure if using clay.io is the greatest idea, creating account scares people off

...

Base on CapybaraCreations remark, I have changed the way the game handles login and leaderboard processing. Previously there was a login popup displayed after you won a game for the first time, and the game wanted to save the highscores.

 

Now you have more control over this. The highscore menu only display "show highscores" if you are logged in. Until you are not logged in to the highscore system, it will display "save scores" instead, showing that you have the option to save your scores, but its not happening yet.

 

After you click on save scores, the logon popup is displayed. At the same time I have restricted login to registered users, because the leaderboard api wasnt working for me for guest logons, and now you explicitely choose to save your scores anyhow, in contrast of what we had before, when the popup was displayed for you regardless of what you wanted to do.

 

Ifritgames