It is a casual game called BallPop. I’ve been working on it in and out since around mid-december and finally reached a point that I’m secure enough to publish it.
I’ll be publishing my source files on my blog soon if anyone is interested, as well as explaining some of my code. I’m not an expert programmer, but beginner-to-intermediate level programmers might get something useful out of it. Also, since I’m not an expert programmer myself, if anyone is interested in giving advice on my code as soon as it gets published, that would be appreciated
Also…if you enjoyed the game, I wouldn’t mind if you give it a nice rating
I enjoyed it for what it is. I hope to see further improvements. It proves fun and relaxing. All i needed was something to let me know how i was doing like a score or something or a counter.
I love such games. I play these for hours and hours
Now before I go into the actual crits, I just wanna tip my hat to the things you achieved. A solid game that turns out to be really entertaining at this stage of development, already. Great work ! And you wanting to release the source files, is of course totally generous and awesome, too.
Now if you’re looking out for some more constructive and serious crits on the actual game - art and gameplaywise, read along. If not, just stop NOW
From a gameplay point of view, I wish there was more room for combos and supercombos. I find it was rather rare to have 2 or more balls from the same color connected. You’d have to wait quite long to see that happening. I think that’s just a matter of tweaking some parameters, but I really think this would make the game more popping !
I find it extremely motivating to do these combos in a row - bamclickbamclickbamclick. Because right now it was more of a singleclickingbuttonmashing action going on, that is much faster fatiguing and exhausting and less motivating.
In the “How to play menu” the balls spin too fast. I really really wanna read the explanation text, but the spinning is making my head hurt
As for the actual playing modes. It only has unlimited time mode available. Why not offer at least the same amount of game modes than similar games ? 1 Minute and 3 Minute game mode ? 100 clicks game mode ? That will give the players more challenges, as well as the new levels and achievements you already mentioned in the comments on the kongregate site.
Unfortunately, the art is really letting this piece down quite a bit. It’s not upfront bad, but it’s really dark and threatening. The black background is alright, that can be done, but you really gotta make the balls pop out more. They shouldn’t be so dark and shaded as well. They need to be bright and contrasting, if you wanna go with the general dark background. Because otherwise the fun and casual aspect is kinda destroyed.
Here’s some examples, but I’m sure you’ve seen thousands of match3 games already ^^
Same goes for the menu. It’s not bad per se, but not the most intriguing and inviting either. The green and yellow is just not too pleasing fitting to the colorful game.
I’m torn between the 2d - 3d question. I really like how the balls rotate and all, but I don’t like the aliased edges around these, but I don’t know if these are due to the 3d movement and could resolved by using 2d images with alpha or not. That is something I find another letdown. Is there nothign you can do to solve the aliasing ?
Nice game. I think the same. Combos are very cool and the player become more motivation to play this game. A friend create a 2D Game with this. You can test it and find more ideas: http://www.x-pressive.com/ClickClack/en/index.html
