itch.io

Thanks for the feedback! We too were very happy we got it working in the 48 hours timeframe, I just wish we could have submitted it in time. In response to your points:

• We had a button that would reset the position of the claw in case it bugged out, but that function itself was bugged, so I temporarily removed it. But rest assured that it will definitely come back if we get around to doing another update! I also want to look into reworking the claw wire segments' physics properties so that button would hopefully never be needed in the first place.
• Originally we did plan on having the prizes drop down and fill up the machine! We just didn't have the time to implement it that way, but I think that could be a neat update. We were also going to have grabbable people in the arcade that would shrink down when you drop them in the machine; who knows, we might still do that at some point! I was even considering making a minigame where you could play the claw machine again, with the toys that you stole inside of it, but I have no idea how that would fit into the gameplay loop in a meaningful way.
• I was also originally planning to give you the ability to cancel out of the default motion after you've grabbed a toy, and cancel the motion if the toy is dropped partway through, but the jam's time limitation halted that effort. I haven't decided yet whether it would be better to give the player the option to permanently toggle the automatic retrieval motion, or just let them cancel out if it each time manually...
• I think it is fun to have some extra slack in the rope sometimes, but I agree that it can sometimes extend way too far. The potential solution I already had in mind was to implement a height check on the claw itself, where it would stop extending if it had not moved significantly downward within a small time threshold. But this would only apply if a prize is not detected under the claw, because we already have a raycast condition in place to make the claw stop it a prize is found right under it.
• We actually do have some shortcuts to reset the prize positions, f2 on keyboard or left bumper on the gamepad - I should probably update the controls list with this information! If we do a bigger update to the game at some point, I would hope to get it to the point where the claw could extend all the way to the floor, making it less necessary to reset the positions at all. I still think an in-game button would be necessary for some cases, but I don't know whether it would only exist in the menu, or be always visible in the corner of the screen somewhere.