itch.io

Hey! Thanks for playing, I’m glad to know the pacing is good and not challenging to the point of causing rage.

The ball-paddle mechanic is admittedly different from traditional pong games and -also admittedly- poorly implemented. There is a way to change the ball’s direction with your paddle with something I called “Spiking.” Spiking is when you move your paddle while the ball collides with you, and the ball moves in the direction you’re going regardless of it’s original trajectory. The mechanic wasn’t taught to the player, and (because it’s not how the ball usually works in pong) people didn’t know beforehand. The mechanic doesn’t have any “coyote time” style quality of life improvements.

The enemy variety also is due to this lack of telegraphing of their mechanics. I’ll explain them now because why not:

- The enemies with a circle on them are the run-of-the-mill pong opponent, they follow the ball, but don’t do anything to really catch you off guard.

- The enemies with a triangular looking design are like the circle enemies, however they can spike the ball in a different direction.

- The enemies with a square (the enemy that people remembered the most) follows the player, and sometimes move away from the player to make them more of a challenge.

One thing I’d love to do with the square enemies is make it so that the ball can bounce in both directions depending on if it was in front or behind the enemy, because that would make the square enemies that much more interesting, making them not only an opponent, but also a tool.

The sound in the game (or extreme lack there of) is the part I’m the least proud of for this game, because there was originally going to be sounds, but because of many domino effect-like mistakes, I couldn’t have them in the game, even though they could’ve made the game that much more juicy, (there was even going to be a roar sound for the boss).

I’m actually working on an update to the game that smoothens some of the rough edges that coincidentally cover many of the critiques you had about the game. And thankfully, you actually gave me an interesting perspective on ways to help fix these problems, which I’ll be using for the update. For instance, the undercooked spiking mechanic was one thing I wanted to fix up for the update. But then, after you brought up the more traditional way that the ball could be controlled when hitting it, I’m testing out a build that has that mechanic on top of the spiking mechanic. And hopefully if it feels good enough to use, I’ll probably keep both mechanic in the final update. I’m also of course going to do other stuff like adding sounds, music, a proper tutorial, and some juice such as that wall breaking “animation.”

And again, thanks for playing. :)