The camera is tilted instead of looking straight down, and my phone needs to be flat to be in the no movement neutral position. This is unpleasant in to ways: How I'm sitting right now makes it hard to look at my phone while it's flat; it would be much nicer to be able to set my neutral point so I could play with the phone mostly vertically. The combination of flat phone and camera angle is awkward, as when you're looking straight down at the flat phone it looks like the level is tilted, and the ball should be rolling. If you're sticking with flat always being neutral, the corresponding camera angle should be from directly above, imo.
After trying the phone and dying, I ended up playing on the desktop with the arrow keys, much more pleasant.
Your light is coming from a direction where the magnitude is the same in x,y, and z. This means there's no difference in shading between three of the visible faces. (Or, you're using shaders which does this for some other reason.) This may be an intentional choice on your part, but I think it'd probably look better with a light angle which gives more definition to the geometry. Especially the level text suffers from this.
On the last level, is the spinning obstacle at a slightly offset pace from the first moving platform? When I first saw the level, they were very poorly timed with the obstacle sweeping past where you'd go to get on to the moving platform right as the moving platform came closest. Waiting a bit seemed to slowly improve the situation, and I eventually got tired of waiting and just went for it. Still unsure if they're actually in sync or not.
I died the third time on the last level, and called it quits when it put me back at the start. A very harsh punishment.
Awesome! Make it a daily Wordle-style game! I need something new in my morning routine.
I think having a universal 3-life max is very harsh. I died on level 9 and was sent back to level 1. No way am I going to do the first 9 again, so I won't find out what was on 10.
I think it would be more casual friendly to have infinite repeats in every level, but you could have a total count of deaths, for people who care about their score.
Tempest had the best implementation of this. Every 3-4 levels was a checkpoint and with 3 lives as long as you cleared at least one level, you can start at your last checkpoint. If you died 3 times without completing the level, you have to start at the checkpoint below.
One of the first big games on the original iPhone after the App Store was shipped was “super Monkey Ball”, a port of a popular console franchise. It was basically this but with fancier graphics, many more levels and mechanics and cute characters. I remember being amazed how well it worked with the phone’s accelerometer and how good it looked back then. Hard to believe that was ~15 years ago already.
It is cool, but having to redo from the first level after 3 drops kills the fun for me. Of course some would like that aspect, but for me as a casual fun game it's a no.
I felt the same way at first, but it's ten levels, so you'd be done in one session if you could redo every level infinitely. This extends the fun a bit.
After 10 levels, it could be the same levels again, but with a time limit that gets shorter for each cycle, or something else to make it harder, like wind that blows the ball off course and changes direction all the time.
Marble Madness vibes. One of my favorite nostalgia games.
I think having 3 lives per level with it resetting just that level might be better for starters, then the 3 lives for the entire game being a “hard mode”.
Very cool! An issue I immediately had is that it seems to be coded for a horizontal plane being zero. This means I must hold my phone looking down at it, which isn’t how I want to hold my phone.
One idea is to sample orientation for a little bit at start, then consider the average to be zero. Then have a button that zeroes motion to whatever it currently is as a backup.
That way I can play your game without getting up from bed just yet.
My neutral position is tilting away from me, even. Not ideal but fun game either way. Reminds me of Oxyd: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyd (I've only played the nineties mac version)
I feel like that would make intuitively finding the zero point hard. At least with the zero point being horizontal, all you need to do is look at the world around you and see which way things fall.
You can always have a “bubble level” showing you the orientation. Anything is better than requiring a player to orient themselves very specifically to play at all.
You can get the ball off the ground if you turn your phone upside down. Then you can just sort of fly over the places where you'd normally fall. Takes maybe a minute or two to complete all the levels.
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The camera is tilted instead of looking straight down, and my phone needs to be flat to be in the no movement neutral position. This is unpleasant in to ways: How I'm sitting right now makes it hard to look at my phone while it's flat; it would be much nicer to be able to set my neutral point so I could play with the phone mostly vertically. The combination of flat phone and camera angle is awkward, as when you're looking straight down at the flat phone it looks like the level is tilted, and the ball should be rolling. If you're sticking with flat always being neutral, the corresponding camera angle should be from directly above, imo.
After trying the phone and dying, I ended up playing on the desktop with the arrow keys, much more pleasant.
Your light is coming from a direction where the magnitude is the same in x,y, and z. This means there's no difference in shading between three of the visible faces. (Or, you're using shaders which does this for some other reason.) This may be an intentional choice on your part, but I think it'd probably look better with a light angle which gives more definition to the geometry. Especially the level text suffers from this.
On the last level, is the spinning obstacle at a slightly offset pace from the first moving platform? When I first saw the level, they were very poorly timed with the obstacle sweeping past where you'd go to get on to the moving platform right as the moving platform came closest. Waiting a bit seemed to slowly improve the situation, and I eventually got tired of waiting and just went for it. Still unsure if they're actually in sync or not.
I died the third time on the last level, and called it quits when it put me back at the start. A very harsh punishment.
I’d recommend instead forgetting that your phone has an up. Hold it in landscape and rotate it as needed to get the angle you want before tilting.
I think having a universal 3-life max is very harsh. I died on level 9 and was sent back to level 1. No way am I going to do the first 9 again, so I won't find out what was on 10.
I think it would be more casual friendly to have infinite repeats in every level, but you could have a total count of deaths, for people who care about their score.
Dead Comment
[0] https://supermonkeyball.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Monkey_Ball_(i...
Replaying a level is boring
I think having 3 lives per level with it resetting just that level might be better for starters, then the 3 lives for the entire game being a “hard mode”.
Those are the exact words I head in my head while playing as well. I'd love to see a remake on modern devices.
Great fun :-)
You’re welcome
One idea is to sample orientation for a little bit at start, then consider the average to be zero. Then have a button that zeroes motion to whatever it currently is as a backup.
That way I can play your game without getting up from bed just yet.
Not sure I learned anything about Knot Theory from playing this, but that was fun.