Skip to main content

On Sale: GamesAssetsToolsTabletopComics
Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(1 edit)

I have some similar feelings to diabolodev. My bias is maybe that I was a big fan of super monkey ball 2 as well. I think smaller levels with strong themes and obvious challenges are just a lot more fun than the longer adventure style gameplay. I don't like the checkpoints with gameovers. I think there are a lot of kind of useless parts to levels when you go for the longer maps and it just feels like filler you have to walk through.  Level 03 feels overly gimmicky and not clean,  bouncing off a ring, or having an enemy push you off a ramp is not a great experience (from what I can tell this is what you have to do, though they all died at one point when I played the level). It felt like different enemies all pushed with different forces too depending on the level, in general it's just a really weird mechanic. I'd much rather there be a static element like a piston that fires periodically than have to fight to get an enemy exactly in the right place to push me. Overall I do feel like the ball is too floaty, but changing that now probably means redoing every level (Designing with Physics: Bend the Physics Engine to Your Will (youtube.com)). If you do have the opportunity to redo levels to be smaller, they should be much easier to test and swap in and out. 

A smaller piece of feedback is in levels with dynamic objects, you should try and have them move during the countdown time as well or it looks too static (the floating rocks in this case) 

I think this type of game is by far better played on controllers unfortunately, maybe if you have a wooting with partial key presses it could be better. The camera rotation is another big pain point, that I think arises from this. Since you can only start moving in about 8 directions, there won't be an amazing auto rotation system you can make

I had a lag spike before the results screen showed the first time, and I didn't realize how to continue. 

In the first level a couple things weren't overlapped amazingly so I bumped up a bit on what looked like a flat section too

Putting more into helping the player feel exactly what speed they are going at would help too. The sound that plays while you roll takes quite a bit of speed before it plays (I was trying on controller) and some intermediate sounds could help. I think the strengths of the game currently are the sounds themselves are good and the style is mostly cohesive.

Lastly the menu transitions are cool but could be sped up a tiny bit imo

gameplay without sound:

(1 edit)

Hello, thank you for your review of my game, and thank you for providing gameplay as that helps me a lot with inspecting how players approach my levels. As for some of the points you made I feel like some gameplay mechanics were misinterpreted, for example you do not need to use the enemy to launch you off ramps, while enemies can be used to do movement tricks it is not something that is required of the player at any point. The purpose of the hoops are to gain extra points and are also not required to reach certain areas. You also mentioned a lag spike upon level completion, although when I watched your gameplay there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. The freeze frame is an intentional effect, which I think you misinterpreted. I also noticed in your gameplay that you did not use the blast attack at all even when your meter was full.

Other than that I do think a lot of your complaints are sound, for example the camera is something a lot of people have been having issues with, and it doesn't help that there are some bugs surrounding that mechanic. Although you mentioned you played on controller so I'm curious as to how you moved the camera as controller support has not been properly implemented at this time. Did you just use both the controller and the keyboard for when you had to move the camera?  I do also feel like some of the physics and level design could use some tweaking although I'm not sure how much physics tweaks would affect changes in the current layouts. There does seem to be some errors with enemy knockback as well, particularly in level 02. It seems like the four enemies in the beginning segment of that level knock you back further than they're supposed to and I haven't been able to figure out why this happens.

Anyways, thanks again for playing and leaving feedback.

(1 edit)

I didn't know about the blast attack while playing. I just pressed q/e on my keyboard yes. It would be nice if the second stick let me move the camera if you are hard set on not having an auto camera system. My compaints aren't sound related I was just suggesting a single potential point of improvement for the issue of conveying to the player their current speed

also I'm not sure your history of playing these games but you should definitely play super monkey ball 2 if you haven't. I bet if you are going to find an audience for this sort of game you should understand the sort of expectations they will have going into this

(+1)

Oh I didn't mean that you were having audio related issues. I meant sound as in they're solid complaints. As for marble games I've played. I'm definitely familiar with the Monkey Ball games although I've mostly played through the Super Monkey Ball 2 levels through the remake version. I've played many other marble games such as Marble Saga for example, and while those games certainly have influence, I'm not really aiming for this game to be like this. I'm mostly doing my own thing compared to other marble games but it's definitely more similar to titles such as Pac N' Roll and Marble Blast instead of Monkey Ball. It's still more of it's own thing with the enemies and bumping mechanics differentiating it from most games in the genre.

the remake kind of gets the feel of the game quite wrong sadly from physics to sound

Yeah, I understand. I've played Deluxe a bit but I don't think I got to the SMB2 levels on that.