The goal of the game is to stay alive for the duration of the level timer while also acquiring as many points as possible. The butterfly cannot cause damage or hit point spheres itself, so she must rely on the manipulation of her birth ball to do her dirty work.
The game was done by me (with audio by my friend and the butterfly mesh/animation by another friend) in about a month and a half over an eight month period. Just thought I’d post it here to get some thoughts from people who are familiar with Unity.
I gave it a quick whirl. Nice use of particle effects! The butterfly is a bit tough to control for me. I think you have up,down,left,right translate motion relative to the board. I think I’m used to having the controls be absolute for the 3rd person character. So up will always be forward, down will always be backward, etc.
The controls were something that received a lot of attention, but I still couldn’t get them quite the way I wanted but I’m glad to hear that you were able to adapt to them eventually.
Although I guess it more or less what makes the game challenging, the controls are hard and at least for me the motion behaviour isn’t really easy to get a feel for.
Visuals look nice however the magnet ball is not that forgiving got frustrated really quickly…perhaps if you have time make the ball not so heavy and give the controls more to the player and less to inertia gravity
Are you aware of the space bar functionality for “magnetization”? Holding it down allows you to utilize your momentum to redirect the ball quickly (ideally).
The somewhat unique controls should have some degree of difficulty, but if you’re frustrated with them given the existence of the magnetization then I’d think something went wrong somewhere. One of the things I did through the development of this game was get constant feedback from new and “old” players (who had played other alpha builds) to try and make the control scheme unique, interesting, and somewhat difficult but not often to the point of frustration. I’ve generally found that the people who have the biggest issue with the controls are those who haven’t discovered the space bar functionality – the key map that flashes on the screen whenever you start a game is designed to get players to experiment with the five available keys to figure out their own unique strategy, but I’m wondering if those flashes don’t display long enough.
tried it again and used the space bar helped with the controls a bit but not to the point where I really wanted to get immersed and give it a proper spin which is a shame as I like the concept…but thats just my opinion others might love the controls…
Very nice game. It has a lot of charm and is graphically very well done. The controls were most definitely a bit tedious to start off with, the reason for me I believe is my perspective. I was thinking I’m controlling the ball with the butterfly, which is in essence true… but once I learned to go with the flow it became a lot easier. Don’t fight the ball. Think of the butterfly as being the point to create a swing radius for the ball. Wherever direction the ball come out of a swing, Is the direction you will want to move. Its all about momentum.
Loads of fun, a game for people that want a challenge you will eventually master because you kept at it.
Reminds me a lot of a game I was making for XBLA, except a bit more tedious. Would be a lot easier to control with some analog controls such as a 360 controller or mouse. Also, the ball is a tad heavy.
I like how the tether between the ball and the butterfly can be used like a fishing net to sweep things.
The “flash” showing controls is too short. Most people won’t get the “magnetize” the first couple of tries.
I suggest your first level have “training wheels” and not allow the player to fall off the edge. Then, you can experiment with arena shape and openness.
What’s the deal with the purple blue flying saucers? What do they do exactly?
Overall, the start of what could be a really cool game. I hope you keep at it and update it.
