@nothke probably not what you want to hear lol
Here's my money (bought shakedown). This is really not the game I want, this is for you to think about releasing infinland someday.
I'm a patient man, several years in the future is fine. :P
Wow, you made such a gem.
Nurikabe is my favorite pen and paper puzzle of all time.
Turns out I had recently bought an old Gameboy Color to relieve the Tetris I remember from my childhood on real hardware, you wouldn't believe how happy I was when I goggled "Nurikabe for Gameboy" and found this game!
I loaded it up on my EZFlash and have been playing it every day on real hardware.
The reason I think you deserve a lot of praise is that you basically made a perfect UI for Nurikabe (something that a lot of web and mobile versions fail at).
It might seem simple to passers by, but I see all the little details that just work to make the experience really "tactile" and wonderful, such as the way you can hold a button and "drag" with the d-pad, the cute graphics and the sound effects.
Great attention to detail. Thank you so much for making this.
I have been a fan of radar theater for years now and I always recommend it to people as an example of how great experimental games can be.
This is the idea of radar theater elevated to a somewhat more refined game. I'm currently only on the Intermediate level and I'm having a lot of fun trying to predict the outcome of the fights.
I think it could benefit from a few QOL improvements however.
1) make it visually explicit that the arena has some sort of wall around it. I kept trying to zoom out when on the pre battle screen.
2) I would change the UI layout of the pre-battle screen, putting the stats along the bottom so that it could show all the bot stats side by side for easier comparison. (if this is too much work, then having a hot key to cycle through the bots would be a lot friendlier than having to click all the time)
3) Don't zoom in automatically upon hitting select, you always want to see the battle unfold, not zoom in straight away.
Great work on perfecting your creative idea =)
An extra feature that kept popping into my head is, how cool would it be if instead of just individual bots, there could be teams of bots composed of different units. That way, synergies could really start to develop making some teams much more than just the sum of their stats. Like the immunities being given by a circular shield behind which the other team members could also be protected.
Here I am in 2022 playing this game on a Blackberry Q10 with a real keyboard (via retroarch). You have just replaced my favourite tetris version of all time that I play almost daily (Tetris 2 + Bombliss NES Japan excusive).
"From below" has just the right mix of modern tetris rotation system with the DAS precision of classic tetris.
This paired with the charming retro graphics is just an irresistible combo.
Only slight anoyiance is the speed up music when you have a high stack. This is a classic design i could personally do without :-)
Thanks for making this precious gem of a game.
That's such a cool idea. Different robot characters each one having a mechanical "hand" with a different power. You could even make it into a local vs mode where each character sends different types/patterns of garbage to the opponent acording to their power. Would be a nightmare to balance all the characters though!
Lovely sokoban puzzles =) I had a few minutes of fun thanks to you =)
Feedback:
Just bought the final version of this prototype today on steam (released 15th March 2021). Here is the link if anyone fancies it https://store.steampowered.com/app/1375480/Bunnys_Flowers/
1: Actually, you force me to agree. I see now that it is the right option. I too have experienced the "death by pause screen" of PES Vs matches.
2 and 3: yeah they are minor issues anyway, I totally understand they can be harder to fix than it looks =)
Regarding the 4 players matches I was doing some preparation trying to test if I could have 3 controllers + 1 keyboard.
I have been using Keyboard and a xinput controller that is detected as an Xbox 360 controller. And that works fine.
But for 3rd and 4th player I only have Dinput controllers available.
With the D input controllers, the game detects them fine and after I configure all the inputs I can play the game, and control the players however the game interprets R1 trigger (the button I set to sprint) as "go to Pause menu" in the Dinput controllers. So on these controllers whenever someone sprints it goes to the pause menu.
Is there some kind of debug log or settings file I can fwd to you to help troubleshoot this?
I have played a few more vs matches with a 2nd buddy and here's a few more items of feedback:
I'm trying to setup a 2Vs2 meet up this weekend, lets see if i can gather the people =)
Wow, loving the improvements!
The music is awesome, scoring feels much more satisfying with the new effects and the 1-2 is great, really possible to create some fwd movement with the team mates now (and it also creates more chance for opponent counter attack) so I think its a great addition. The sidestep definitely feels better now (previously it didn't really feel worth it to execute as it was quite muted).
You decide if you want to keep going, but I cant help to keep suggesting fixes =)
I actually had a friend over to play some matches, both Vs and Co-Op. Both were really fun!
But specially in co-op we noticed a flaw with the camera. When you are near the side lines the camera is showing a lot of empty space around the pitch instead of keeping the most of the pitch possible in view. This makes it really hard to aim a pass into the box because you cant see your team mates! You could maybe:
Here is a screenshot of what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/qez397q
The "gooooooal" is perfect! The goal shake is way too much though =) I guess shaking the goals a few pixels backwards and quickly back to position should be enough.
Another small detail I would change would be: the "GOAL FRANCE!" text should only come up when the announcer starts screaming "goooooooooalllllllll" (Because the shout, correctly, only comes a fraction of a second after the ball enters the goal) The text should come in sync with the shout and not in the same frame the goal crosses the line like it is now.
I would also add a second "thwack" sound at the moment the ball hits the net. That way the feeling of scoring is enhanced... like : Shoot > "Thwack" > "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLLLLLL" (is like a three step satisfying sequence with its own rythm)
Another bit of polish would be when you shoot and hit the post or very close to the goal, there should be a "AHHHH!" crowd sound.
Yeah, by "bulge" was probably the wrong word. I didn't mean it needs proper physics. A shake animation for the whole goal + a nice sound effect is probably good enough and more fitting with the rest of the graphics. Definitely not fireworks or confetti for each goal (that's something that would be fitting when you win the world-cup or something).
Regarding Tennis+OtherMechanics - the Virtua Tennis series had some great mini-games mixing Tennis with many other mechanics along it's various iterations. Question is to find one that is fun for longer than just a "mini-game".
You just gave me an idea, what about a game that mixes tennis with pinball! Where you it and aim with a racket like tennis but have pinball mechanics to achieve goals and targets. The concept of mixing pinball with other genres has been proven by the excellent "Yoku's Island Express".
I totally get and support you wanting to finish the game and that all these wacky ideas are totally out of scope. (love the hats idea by the way)
That said I still have to ask: Please add a net bulge + sound effect when the ball hits the net!
It makes scoring a goal so much more satisfying. It can really complete the experience. Trust me, even if its just a simple shake of the goal frame with a simple "thwack" sound it will make a huuuuuuuuuuge difference.
I mainly program in python for work and fun, and I tried to do a couple of game prototypes using Godot Engine. I tried to build some tutorial level stuff in Unity and always found it really clunky and not fun to learn. Godot on the other hand uses a scripting language that is almost the same as python and the UI and engine concepts are so much easier to grasp for an amateur. And it just runs from a standalone exe that is like 50 Mb! The Godot IDE itself is a Godot application! Amazing tool really.
For team individuality i meant more extreme even. And I wouldn't use countries to avoid xenophobic connotations with the skills etc (sigh... you never know these days....) I meant like really imaginary 5 a side teams, like a trickster team, a slow but powerful team, you know, almost like Mario Tennis balance if you know what I mean. (If you don't know Mario Tennis I highly recommend you analyze the control scheme in that series. It uses only 2 button, and with those 2 buttons by combining double tap or tap in sequence or tap together it achieves a really deep control scheme.
The "stadium" in the video looks awesome, so atmospheric!
I had a look in your yt channel, I cannot believe you are the author of that game that google was using for the machine learning project!
And you made your own 3d engine! Serious level of skill.
Also incredible that you experimented with a top down racer! One of my favorite games ever is Turbosliders.
I'm just an amateur programmer, but for years I had these 3 games on my todo list one day: