Not bad, though it can be slow at times, waiting for the ball to finishing bouncing and rolling around. If that part could be made more engaging, perhaps with graphical effects to highlight the ball's movement or additional coins or something, then the game would be a lot more fun.
Good choice on the music. This was one of the songs I considered for Braids NEON. :)
The music is interesting, but it doesn't seem to fit the slow feel of the game. Some more work on the look and feel could improve it a lot - either make it faster or emphasize the slow, creeping movement. Right now it feels kind of boring.
Wow, this is great! Have you considered using this kind of system to generate adaptive background music for a game? I'm curious what you did to keep the timing consistent. I've played around with dynamic music a bit myself, so if you want to share some of your insights that would be cool.
The main suggestion I have for this is to make the editing interface more expressive. Right now it's either trial and error or memorize how each sample corresponds to an arbitrary number. Maybe if there were a graphic for each, or at least if it played the sound when you mouse over the square.
Multiplayer is really a different experience - it's very cool to get a taste of that. Now I can imagine how amazing it would be with more anthropomorphic avatars and a more in-depth game. Are you going to make a tutorial on multiplayer sometime? :)
IndieFlashArcade: as someone who has received much "harsher criticism":http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic.php?id=580806 on my own game, I would recommend that you wait to reply to comments until you cool down and can see things in a wider perspective. Angry or sarcastic retorts don't help you! And they don't help the person you're replying to either. Remember what you're here for - maybe it's to get an audience for your game, or to learn to be a better game developer, but either way, trying to defend yourself against disgruntled players will only hinder you in that goal.
Respectfully,
axcho
Very nice game. Interesting, easy-to-understand gameplay, great graphical style. Reminds me of Spore. :) Would it be possible to make a Flash game that's even more Spore-ish? Hmmm...
The physics are fine, but I think this game would be a lot more fun with a different overall mechanic. Since all the objects are stationary, the game becomes like a non-fun version of float, where you can hardly move at all because you take up so much space relative to the playing field.
I think it would be more fun if the fish moved around on the screen, and if the junk that slows you down was more temporary, appearing on screen and then sinking quickly. That way it would be more of a matter of reacting, while the interesting planning stuff goes on in relation to some actual moving objects. Also, you could have a few spiky fish that hurt you if you touch them with your head (but not with your tentacles). I haven't tested these ideas out, but I'm pretty sure they'd make the game a lot more fun.
Hmmm, looks just like a reskinned Double Wires. Even the way the legs move is exactly the same. I'd also question the use of Marvel's favorite piece of intellectual property.
What could make this good is if you were actually swinging along buildings, and didn't look dead. Coming up with an original character wouldn't be a bad idea either.
This whole thing just seems like the product of an obvious idea and a lot of laziness. Not cool.
Playing this game gives me a better sense of what it's like for non-gamers trying to play a normal game for the first time.
Maybe when testing the learning curves for a game, it could be useful to make the screen spin around or reverse the controls or something.
Well. I don't know if I should be flattered or offended. :) (at the least you could have kept the pixels intact)
But disregarding the visual style, I would say that the main problem with this game is that it feels stagnant. There is no gameplay progression: no measure of time by adding balls, or speed, or even by keeping score. It also lacks music, which would provide some time-based structure, as well as an incentive to survive in order to hear the rest of the song.
The ball-grouping is a good idea, but I think it deserves more experimentation before you decide to just include it in a game. Right now it seems to make the game less fun - more sluggish. The way the balls tend to clump together reduces the pace of the changing spatial relationships that would keep the right brain fully engaged.
All in all, there is really nothing in this game to make you want to keep playing.
neutrino64, I can assure you that he did not copy from a tutorial. This guy makes ragdoll games - at the least he could have just reused the code from his Ragdoll Avalanche.
But the worth of the game is not in how easy or hard it is to code - think of tetris, for example. It's about how fun it is, how elegant the design, how well polished it is.
In fact, I would be inclined to rate it higher because of how simple it would be to make. Though getting all the parameters so finely tuned might not be so simple. ;)
Haha! So Kongregate got popular enough for you? :D
This is seriously one of my absolute favorite flash games. The design is just about perfect - nothing to remove. Though I think it would be interesting to play with fancy visualizations and graphic effects.
What I love about the game is how it seems to completely absorb the right brain and leave the left brain energized and free. In other words, it takes a lot of concentration, but only with one half of my brain, so it stimulates a ton of verbal thinking while I play.
Yes, that's a great book! :) But my question was more about how to design a game that will be easy to learn without instructions.
I've noticed that many physics-based games, especially my own, suffer from a very difficult learning curve, likely because the developers have spent so much time testing the physics that they forget how hard it is to learn to play in the beginning! Any advice?
My own Braids NEON, for example, and the game Hovercrafty are both physics-based games that are way too hard to get the hang of. On the other hand, there are games like Red that are really easy to learn. Why is this?
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