Sometimes a joke refuses to remain just a joke. Sometimes it becomes an inspiration, and the inspiration becomes an obsession, and soon you’re finding yourself dropping everything else to pursue that crazy idea.
On the other hand, sometimes you just have a whimsical impulse to make a goofy spinoff game.
Thanks for your patience, everyone. Much love from me and the kobolds.
Game 37: Dragondot's Extreme Beach Volleyball,
I make no guarantees about the hidden characters being remotely fair for 2-player matches.
wow! I’m not sure why, but this is one of my favorites so far! It might be the challenge… I’ve been playing for about 10 minutes and only managed to win once against kobold. I did find hobgoblin to much easier though, but I got totally obliterated in the next match. I’m looking foreword to beating this one eventually. Keep up the good work!
Well that was pretty awesome. I beat the game with a kobold. It was pretty challenging. I love the little shout outs to characters from your other games
Great presentation! I love the transition effects between levels with the wave sound. That works perfectly. Also, when there’s a winner, you do this shine effect across the golden letters. It’s pretty snazzy.
My one gripe is that you can’t hit the volleyball near the apex of its trajectory. For some reason, you get no momentum out of it. It becomes a cool game where you have to attack before or after that point. It throws off the intuitiveness of the gameplay though.
I like the homing attack. Adds depth, makes it a tad easier for those smaller characters. There also seems to be some character specific moves. Kobold, at least can spike when it’s perfectly inline with the volleyball. Pretty neat.
Difficulty curve is pretty steady except for the last level. I was able to figure out what move that kept destroying him. On the other hand, the second last competitor was relentless.
Very solid, Nathan! I can tell your break really paid off =D
-John
P.S. I think this game has one of the best presentations on this website. Really smooth and slick
-John
Man, is there any chance of an easy mode? I played this many times but can’t score more than a handful of points.
yrs–
–Ben
The kobold has a really low max-power rating, which might account for your lack of energy when hitting the ball at its peak (especially if you hit it with a dash, which is likely given the kobold’s poor reach). I might bump it from 3 to 4. Gonna let the “public beta” reports come in for a bit, then tweak characters a little based on feedback.
Wow, this is really awesome. Great fun so far! Some observations vs AI.. (spoilers ahead..?)
* The game seemed pretty much impossible before I figured out the “pinpoint smash” as I call it. I played a ton of rounds of dragondot vs kobold and was unable to score a single point. After switching to Hobgoblin I managed to score off some basic charge hits before I accidentally found the pinpoint smash, which made things much easier.
* Earlier levels of AIs can be “psyched out” for a near guaranteed free point when it’s your serve. Serve from as far back as possible and then immediately run forward as quickly as you can. The AI will follow you forward and miss the serve.
* Is it even possible to win against the Phoenix? I’ve been rallying back and forth with it for about 10 minutes now and haven’t scored a single point. I’m playing Hobgoblin still.
Found a fun trick with Dragondot that kills every AI except phoenix. Wait till a ball is hit to you somewhere between haflway and 2/3 of the way towards the front. charge in the air, and hold back while hitting the ball, then keep holding back. The AI will run back and won’t be able to get to the front in time to hit it back. This works no matter whose serve it is and will allow you to flawlessly beat every AI except Phoenix (Yes, EVERY AI. Including Wavespark.)
Phoenix is a real bastard, but I finally beat him. It’s spike hits or go home, apparently.
Wow, this is very fun, and polished as others have said. The only one I seem to remotely have any chance with is hobgoblin, dragondot misses a lot of shots. But when I’m dragondot, kobold creams me every time, no matter how good I feel like I’m doing. So, if I understand the controls right, if you hold the “hit ball” button and let go, you will home toward the ball, but there’s a limit to how far you travel. I like that.
Getting a super shot or “pinpoint smash” as Chris called it is really hard, but the computer does it all the time! I guess I just need more practice. I think you have to hold Z and have it charged right as the ball comes in contact with you without you needing to home in on the shot, is that correct?
God, as if I wasn’t spamming your comments enough. I honestly didn’t expect to be playing the game for this long. Certainly attests to how fun it is.
Characters and difficulty.
I have no idea how to unlock the secret characters. It doesn’t seem to be related to beating the game, as I’ve beaten it with all of the standard characters and gotten nothing. So, this will have to be confined to the vanilla ones for now.
Overall Campaign:
vs Kobold: Fairly difficult as dragondot due to dragondot’s overall mediocreness in all categories. Hobgoblin has an advantage here due to its powerful smashes allowing it to outrange the kobold with spikes. The cheap-o strategy I mentioned earlier may not work 100% of the time against the kobold depending on your character.
vs Hobgoblin: Painfully easy no matter who you’re playing as. It’s simply too slow to present a challenge.
vs Dragondot: Fairly easy, although prone to some nasty spikes. Easily falls to the previously mention cheap strategy, however.
vs Giant: A fairly good challenge for all characters. Its huge attack range means it can sometimes parry cheap-strategy attempts. Dragondot and Kobold will have an easier time. Hobgoblin will find this a difficult battle.
vs Phoenix: Easily the hardest opponent. He parries everything except a spike to the very back of the arena and an occasional self-score. Kobold will find this easier than others, but I’m not entirely sure why. The phoenix seems to fumble more often vs kobold attacks. Its speed is also useful for catching near-net spikes.
vs Wavespark: I’ve genuinely never had a chance to observe its tactics. All three characters will find wavespark easily falls to the cheap strategy without a single issue.
I’m tenatively calling kobold the easiest to play as until I’ve seen the hidden chars.
Okay, due to a stupid mistake the credits don’t actually show up when you beat the last round. >_< Spoiler: To unlock the extra characters, press “!” on the title screen.
I’ll see if I can make the AI less susceptible to cheap tactics and more susceptible to good play in general.
Oh, and to execute the “perfect hit” thing, release a full charge when the ball is within your character’s reach (without needing to dash to it).
Working on tweaking the AI. Test your skills against the ninja kobold of doom here. Press backspace to toggle debug info.
Just knocked out the round 1 Kobold as Dragondot, 5 to 1. Pretty fun match, although I’m fairly experienced at this point. The match pretty much played out like a slightly easier version of the phoenix fight. Which is to say, very long, futile rallies back and forth punctuated by a score from launching the ball to the back of the arena – this seems to be the new AI’s “weakness”, if you could call it that. The old cheap exploit is certainly gone, at least.
—–
After writing that I went on and tried going through the whole campaign as kobold, although I’m guessing it wasn’t balanced with that in mind. I’m pretty sure Phoenix is impossible to beat in this incarnation, at least as a kobold. I’ve been rallying back and forth with it for at least 10 straight minutes with no points on either side. Yeesh!
I intend to dial things back a bit (give the AI less-than-perfect reflexes) once I’ve gotten the AI tuned appropriately to have sound strategy.
I found.. something.. with dragondot vs phoenix. Not sure if you could call it an exploit, but it seems extremely vulnerable to spikes off its serve. I managed to score a ton of free points that way.
I also wanna mention that Dragondot vs Wavespark is very satisfying from a balance standpoint right now. It’s a pretty intense battle, but it feels fair. Lots of scoring on both sides with those nasty near-net spikes that Wavespark does.
More comment spam!
I’ve beaten the game with two of the three hidden characters now and have some comments. I know, the AI is still wonky and being worked on! But I can’t resist. :p
Giant: Pretty crazy powerful. The giant is capable of spiking from right in front of the net to the very back of the screen, something that not a single one of the AIs was able to block. I’m pretty sure it’s an free point, although admittedly getting in position to do it is a bit risky.
Wavespark: Very fun to play as. Tricky to get the hang of its inability to hover, but WILDLY and TERRIFYINGLY powerful once you know what you’re doing. Its ability to volley / spike a ball from the very top of the screen is extremely deadly. In fact seeing the AI do that would be terrifying, if slightly unfair.
Phoenix: Completely incapable of scoring against the AI in its current incarnation, except through AI bugginess. The ability to hover is nice, but its incredible lack of power really does it in. I’ve tried playing near-net like the AI does but can’t seem to mimic its shots, and the enemy AI kind of instablocks those kind of shots in its ninja incarnation.
Man, this is a very good game.
This and Wavespark is the games that “makes” me come back to the site just to play these or see if there is a new one.
Many of these concepts seem good and is sort of different takes on gameplay that is both fun and interesting.
I will try to get some digital money so I can support your work
Keep up the good work and imaginative mind.
Hey Nathan, I originally thought this game was dumb but now I love it and spent like two hours beating it. It’s awesome. Great job! Not as great of a time-waster as your space laser absorbing game, but what could be?
Just a few suggestions if you’re looking to improve the AI and skill level:
1) The fact that there is no “continue” option kind of encourages players to look for serve exploits instead of improving their overall skills. I was having a lot of trouble beating Phoenix, but once I figured out how to easily score on Kobold, Hobgoblin, and Giant off of either my serve or their serve, it seemed a little pointless to even volley with them–I would just let the ball drop if I messed up.
2) One of the things that makes it easy to exploit serves is that the AI never holds the ball before serving, always serves from exactly where the ball lands, and always waits the same amount of time before serving. So to beat Hobgoblin, once you’ve scored on him once, you can just sit in front of the net and time your jump so you spike his serve all the way to the back. He can’t do anything about this and ends up in the same position on the next serve.
3) Not sure what other iterations of the AI you have gone through, but it might be tied a little too strongly to what the player is doing–for example, if you go to the back of the arena and charge up, Giant seems to get really confused and usually misses.
And a few things I really like:
1) This is actually kind of a rhythm game with your catchy music and the rhythmic nature of volleying back and forth. I didn’t realize until I had turned the sound off, but it’s way harder to play without the music. I think that’s why it’s so jarring when Giant uses his huge range to hit the ball right after you’ve hit it over–it throws off your rhythm.
2) I like how playing against the AI characters actually feels different–Giant is basicall immune to spikes because of his huge range, you have to play right up against the net for Phoenix, Wavespark is like Kobold on steroids. Pretty amazing that you’ve gotten so much variation out of six different sizes of flashing spheres.
Anyway, great job! Definitely up there with your best.
So are we going to be seeing an Extremely Angry Beach Tiny Birds Voleyball game on the iphone soon?
; )
Hey man, I was making games with circular critters before games with circular critters were cool.
; P