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Batattack!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Spectator Appeal | #7 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Engagement | #10 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Visuals | #10 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Overall | #10 | 3.222 | 3.222 |
| Overall | #11 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Sound | #14 | 3.083 | 3.083 |
| Ease of Learning | #15 | 2.833 | 2.833 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Fun gameplay and as usual I love your work's aesthetic! I had a hard time conceptually understanding what was happening... Am I jumping off windows by hitting them with a bat? 😂
I wouldn't say it matters except that I think I would have figured out I was supposed to jump up the building a little quicker. I wonder if you should just start falling. The initial jump and hit is pretty tough. I would also give more of the invincible windows longer before turning the player loose on the single use ones.
Doodle Jump with timed presses!
Overall I think it looks good and the sounds and visual effects feel great. The core loop is simple but fun, and is a good score-chaser.
I was a little disappointed that a lot of the controls basically never come up. Swing and Jump are both pretty much only used once per run, which feels a little clumsy. I feel like this could have been just Left, Right, and Bounce
The gameplay itself is a lot of fun, but there's definitely a slightly degenerate strategy. When playing without this strat, I found the static scrolling of the screen occasionally frustrating - you can pretty easily outpace the screen scrolling, and when you do there's no recourse once you end up too high to react to the next window. It's just guaranteed death, which doesn't feel good.
Another comment mentioned that the timing is very tight, and I actually pretty strongly disagree, and this ties in to my high scoring strategy. I actually think the timing is extremely forgiving - not necessarily because the window for a bounce press is particularly large, but because it is large enough that you can simply mash the bounce button and you will always hit the bounce as long as you're near a window.
To show the disproportionate power of the strat, on the attempt I discovered the degenerate strat I got 7 million points, then on a subsequent run I got over 20 million using it the whole way through.
Basically, after realizing that being high on the screen was a major liability as the speed increases, since it limits the time you have to react, I also noted that there is a large and forgiving window below the screen which does not kill you, but still clearly shows your position. Since mashing the bounce button consistently gets a bounce without the need for timing, at high speeds hovering intentionally below the screen while mashing is optimal, since you maximize your reaction space to the window coming from the top. You simply position under the window as quickly as possible and mash constantly. It then just becomes a test of how quickly you can reposition under the next window, which is always possible, rather than any test of timing. Since you gain height relative to the screen very slowly once you're moving at high speeds, it's very easy to lower yourself again if you get too high on the screen at this point.
I'd also like to note that the score display in the lower left appears to just be wrong. On my high scoring run, the score shown in the bottom of the screen was less than a third of my actual score on the game over screen. I have a screenshot of the leaderboard showing the score mismatching, but itch isn't playing nice with image uploads right now, so lmk if it's helpful and I can send it to you over discord or something.
Overall, great job! I had a lot of fun playing this one.
Holy moly what detailed feedback, thank you!
I actually was hoping that the multiplier (which, to be fair, is not explained in the game at all) would discourage button mashing. In fact, from your strat, it seems to have done the exact opposite lmao. I didn't want the timing to feel too unfair, so that anyone would feel at least a little satisfied after playing. I may have gone too far in the other direction. I'll need to rethink either how the multiplier works or make the off-screen distance less forgiving.
I hear you on some of the controls being used. I considered starting off right away with bouncing, but wanted to give players a place to practice and ramp up before the real game started. Again, this stemmed from anxiety from not trusting the player, and I agree there could have been a better way to use some of the rarely used inputs.
The score displaying wrong, yeah, it's essentially counting up way too slowly. With how quickly the score can go up with the multiplier, it takes forever to pace and catch up with the final score. It's really a quick fix, but one I didn't get around to in my rush before the deadline.
I'm glad the game was still fun to play! Appreciate your input once again.
If you can figure out the timing to hit the bounces, you can get a pretty satisfying chain off, but the timing is incredibly tight with not much feedback on whether you need to be earlier or later.
Really fun, really charming game! I think you struck a really good balance between timing and movement mastery. Great art and music too. I'm a big fan of how you still have a little time to recover if you go off screen, it rewards the player for being able to "read" the playfield so to speak, and I like that a lot. It's pretty challenging, but I think that makes the game more fun to try and master. Great stuff dude!!!!!
Thanks man. I'm glad the off-screen mechanic came through. In early testing, it felt really satisfying to "crawl" back up onto the screen (and it would be a fun crowd pleaser) so I was hoping to replicate that.