Readit Newslecarore commented on Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist breakout.lecaro.me/... · Posted by u/lecarore
Renan, this is absolutely captivating!
I randomly downloaded it from F-Droid a few days ago, and I've played it a lot (100% unlocked and 66k high score so far, still looking for even more strategies though).
I wanted to bring to your attention a bug that can abruptly end a run: the Respawn perk may cause the ball(s) to keep floating in the void, with no bricks left to hit (it has happened twice, I suppose it's related to Respawn but can't be 100% sure).
Also, I've read in a few comments about features and stuff: I think they're not really needed and even potentially harmful. I love the game simplicity.
What could be improved, in my opinion, is that:
1. The onboarding feels weird
It took me a while to understand how the game really worked. As an example, the metrics for getting upgrades and choices is not explicitly stated in the app, I had to figure it out myself (although I later found some details on the mechanics after digging your website and other sources like HN). A quick optional tutorial may be helpful.
(Other things that were unclear to me at first were the combo and miss indicators. I've notices that the web version does a much better job at signalling misses, I guess probably F-Droid lags behind as usual.)
2. Players can't choose the initial perk
Random is great, but if I'm going for a specific strat I may have to reset a bunch of times to get something I can work with. Which brings us to...
3. Players can't easily reset the run
If I want to restart, I have to (1) find out what perk I have and (2) literally lose the ball. It would be nice to (1) know in advance the starting perk and (2) have a reset button or option in the menu.
Last but not least, there's the game balancing aspect. I feel that some perks are really detrimental to your score, which makes some strategies are clearly superior and others just not viable unless you're optimizing for some other metrics (i.e. you're speedrunning, so time becomes more valuable than coins).
An idea would be to refine the combo increase/decrease and/or upgrade system and/or the ultimate goal of the game, i.e. making top score categories for "most coins", "less time", "least bricks broken", etc.
All in all, the game is already great as is – so I hope it won't change too much.
Thanks for your efforts!
Hi Mick,
1. I'll improve the onboarding, but it's a balance between too much text and too little. I think i'll "unlock" some things like the default perk, extra upgrades by playing better, etc.. after a while, and explain them at that time.
2. You can click menu/unlocks/perk name to try the perk, but only for one level. Maybe i could instead start a normal run with that perk.
3. clicking the score at the top right lets you see what perk you have and restarts the game. The button didn't work at some points, but in the latest version (web) it definitely works. Again, it's a "missing tutorial" issue, more than "missing features"
4. The game indeed has a dominant strategy, I haven't reached 66k high score at all, but I can see some perks work better than others. I was thinking about a challenge of not using a perk. So, high score without multiball. High score without hot start. This would make alternative strategies more interesting to develop. Another option would be "hard mode", where the bricks take more hits, perks are rarer, missing resets the level score, missing a coin reduces score... some new level of challenge basically.
I think all those points can wait a bit though, except the ball stuck one, where i'd love to have more details. If you play on web, you can turn game recording on in the menu, and share the video of any odd behavior. This bug is at the top of my todo, but I also have a job and it's not easy to reproduce, so it might take a little while to fix it.
lecarore commented on Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist breakout.lecaro.me/... · Posted by u/lecarore
I'm glad you have no stats, especially for hours spent playing!
I have a better feel for it now, and still really like it. Although it can be a bit jarring to have crazy upgrades and clear a level in 3s, only to have completed the run, and be back to 60s+ level 1.
I worked out the extra levels thing you mentioned (it was probably always 7 but felt shorter because of the fast pace!) and I hit 10 levels on a few runs, but the text was wrong a couple times eg. '+1 level lvl 2 - 1 more brick replaced by a bomb'.
The new coins are cute, although I also liked the spray of colour on the old ones.
The repulse is fun, although I had one ball bouncing left to right a few times, before another one shifted it, but could imagine a stuck ball had it missed.
6149 my top score so far. Do those scores/stats persist between plays, otherwise I might never be able to close the browser again!
Right, 'one last game' to see what wind is all about.
The stats are kept in localstorage, but i forgot to ask for permanent storage, i'll add this to the todo.
lecarore commented on Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist breakout.lecaro.me/... · Posted by u/lecarore
This is amazing. I started playing it with my morning coffee and somehow it became 1pm...
Despite what other people commented, I really liked not really knowing what happens with some (most?) of the updated and having to try them to understand what they do and how to combine them. The last part is especially true: it was just SO SATISFYING when I realized that a perk I hated became my favourite once I was able to pair it properly and catch waterfall of coins :)
One thing I still don't get at all are the white and red ball "paths" that briefly appear from time to time. I don't get what they represent nor how are they triggered, especially as it doesn't look like the ball will actually do that exact path after it hits the puck (if I don't move it). It's a little annoying for the red one, that resets your coin counter, because I can't understand if I can avoid it somehow or do I have to take it as a "random debuff".
Thanks. I guess one perk i could add is "3 random perks" where you have to figure out what you got haha. The flashing lines you see are signaling that you missed the bricks and didn't hit any. That will reset your combo. If you manage to never miss in a level, you'll get and extra upgrade and choice. If you miss less than 3 times, you'll just get an extra choice.
lecarore commented on Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist breakout.lecaro.me/... · Posted by u/lecarore
Hello,
This a tremendously good game, very clean in all ways that matter. Merci beaucoup!
Below is me wilding out a bit, feel free to ignore. The take home message is: great game, thanks!!
I do however wish for two things down the road:
More focus on the run
A) some kind of tracker for where you are in the run (level 2/10)
B) a perk that lets you chose (2-4 choices) what level to go to next (so you can pick ones you like OR search for hidden combos)
C) a perk that lets you prolong the run with 1-3 levels (making it easier to score higher and also to look for hidden combos)
.
Some complexity to the unlocking system
Since you say you are inspired by Vampire Survivors I think there is a lot of space to have more complex unlocks.
Like having levelled a perk to 3 unlocks another perk, 2 level 2 perks can combine to a different perk. 3 specific perks combine to a new one, etc
Completing a set of levels unlocks a final level in the same theme.
Unlocks based on misses per level and/or run.
Unlocks based on coin-catch percentage, obviously 100%, but also others.
Even time based unlocks (completing all levels in a run under X sec, completing every level slower than the previous one, or Mario style time unlocks, so ending on 11, 22, etc)
Merci for the feedback.
A/ I had a current level display before, but now the menu is in its place. I guess once you pass level 1 i could display your current level instead of "menu" at the top right. I also want to show the score and multiplier, i'll have to do hard choices. B/ Yes, letting users pick the next level is a great perk, it's a bit of a code change but not that hard, i added it to the possible new perks list. C/ This perk already exists (menu/unlocks/+1 level) but you need to score a bit to get it.
I've played a lot of nova drift where the is a lot of complexity to the upgrades system in-run. In previous versions of breakout 71 you would permanently unlock perks level by level but that was a lot of code and not contributing much to the fun, so I got rid of it and you for example just unlock all 3 levels of "extra level" at total score 13000 (all run scores summed).
I did restrict some perks about ball to ball interactions (ball_repulse_ball, ball_attract_ball to having first picked the multiball perk) because otherwise they'd do absolutely nothing.
The misses, coin catch % and level clearing speeds are already tied to an in-game behavior of having more options and being able to upgrade more than once after a level, so I don't know if I'd also add another thing that depends on it. Keyboard users (where it's really hard to not miss 50% of shots) will be mad :)
I never heard of Mario style time unlocks, that sounds like silly fun. You get something for finishing the level in a sepecific amount of seconds, no matter how many minutes?
lecarore commented on Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist breakout.lecaro.me/... · Posted by u/lecarore
here i have updated it to latest.
https://arcadenest-games.itch.io/rogue-bricks
I'll give it a try. Itch quarantined your page, i'm not sure why. I don't care because my gaming pc is airgapped but you might want to look into it. When clicking download i got this :
WARNING: This Page Has Been Quarantined
Our system has flagged this page for additional review due to potential suspicious behavior from the page owner.
If someone has asked you to download from this page and you don't fully trust them, or their behavior isn't what you recognize, then we don't recommend downloading this file until our team has reviewed the page.
Password-protecting files or pages is a technique often used by scammers in an attempt to block virus and other security scans from detecting malware. Do not trust password-protected files unless you fully trust the uploader.
Learn more about the "Try my game" Discord scam.
lecarore commented on Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist breakout.lecaro.me/... · Posted by u/lecarore
I didn’t have to disable mobile mode to move my fingers over the browser navigation from the app and still control the puck. It’s very replaceable. I like the statistics. Perhaps one that shows a histogram over all games and where you rank for score etc? But top tennis is generous.
In the meantime i found the best way to play on iphone safari is to tap aA/hide toolbars. The histograms shown are your top 10 games. I limited the list because after a while the earlier games and 10 seconds run just pollute the histogram by stretching the interval. A separate list of just the score could be nice, but i don't know if it's so interesting to know you player 30 or 40 games better than the current one before, right ? The goal being to reach high scores, i thought i'd show how they compare to their best version of themselves. There's no global leaderboard because i don't want to maintain such a server and the game is trivial to cheat in.
lecarore commented on Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist breakout.lecaro.me/... · Posted by u/lecarore
Certified 5 minute banger while I waited for tests to run.
That's the spirit, I actually also play it while tests runs. I used to play nuclear throne for such short intermissions, i liked how quickly it started up, the lack of filler, variety and limited run length. I just tried to get a similar feel from a breakout game.
lecarore commented on Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist breakout.lecaro.me/... · Posted by u/lecarore
Cool! I can't figure out how to play with the keyboard though. Only mouse pointer works for me.
Keyboard play is now supported. Use left/right arrow to move puck, shift+arrow to move it faster, space to start/stop, M for menu, S for score menu, and up/down arrows and space/enter/escape to navigate menus.
The '+1 choice permanently' is maybe '+1 choice until run end', I knew it sounded too good to be true hehe It would be nice to see which level I am on between levels since that influences choice. 11,531, but more than 10k score from a single level in a few seconds, but it was seriously overloaded! Might be worth to merge 50 coins into fat coins when that happens? The +1 level shows level count only sometimes. mouse/paddle gets stuck sometimes, not sure on this one, maybe out-of-play could pause? until back within the play zone. I got a catch rate 119% I think I had a level with caught more coins than 'out of n' sturdy? bricks was a fun pick with 3 balls, oopsi!
In summary, still hooked.