Seems I’ve had polar coordinates and touchscreens on the brain recently, as well as Danc and Raph Koster’s thoughts on building fun one skill-atom at a time. So here’s a simple little arcadey game about defending ice cream from fireballs. No, I don’t get it either. But it seems to work. Try it out!
This game’s title was provided by Nathan Wilson.
Game 46: Dessert Stressed,
Solid work, Nathan. It’s fun and original. I’m glad when you pull the chill shot back, the line showing where the shot will fire is darker than the line that shows where you’ve pulled back. Makes aiming easier. Still makes sense to have that darker line there cuz it helps you line up shots.
I love the warning system that emanates around the ice cream as well as the fireball that are about to hit your ice cream. Very handy.
I felt the hitbox of the ice cream was a little unclear. It seemed like it should be the white circular blob of ice cream when really, it’s the faint blue circle around that. That felt a little unintuitive.
I mentioned in the progress report that this gameplay remind me of Fruit Ninja. One design choice you can “borrow” from them relates to your bonus system. When you get a combo in Fruit Ninja, it says +5 fruit combo meaning you get 5 extra points for doing the combo as opposed to killing those 5 fruit individually. This motivates the player to get more and more combos because it’s clear that they equal a higher score. I know that that mechanic is pretty much assumed among seasoned gamers, but it isn’t around new gamers (who you might be targeting on an appstore per se) Anywho, if you added a +1 on the screen whenever you got a 2 combo, that would make it explicit how combos specifically affect your score and would motivate you to get them.
Solid work, Nathan.
Peace,
-John
Another very clever game! I like it. The kind of game I won’t play more than five minute but I’ll keep in mind.
I like the mechanic of different orbitiing trajectories. It’s cool that the slower they go, the better aim you can get at them, but the faster they hit your ice cream cone, and the faster they go, the harder it is to hit, but they’ll hit your ice cream cone slower.
Best score so far, 28.
Best score 110!
I don’t know if this is purposeful, but it is possible to hit the fireballs “before” the place where you clicked. You can essentially click anywhere, then move the mouse over the fireball you want to hit and release. If this wasn’t intended, it’s quite a powerful little trick, my high score using it is 258 (without it I’m firmly in the 15-25 range).
I agree with Nathan up above, the orbiting has some really awesome aspects to it.