[NOW AVAILABLE!] Ball on a Stick - Ridiculously Simple 2D mobile game

KnightsHouseGames · April 27, 2016, 6:08pm

Ball on a Stick
Purpose built time-wasting app for Android

NEW Trailer:

This project is a collaboration between myself and one of my friends. Our goal was to make the most simplistic game humanly possible, while still making it fun, and making it look nice.

The Ball and Stick genre has been around since the dawn of humanity. Our ancient ancestors used sticks and round rocks (Which, if you think about it, are balls) to build the most basic nessessities of life, from weapons to buildings. Fast forward to the American Revolution, and it was lead balls stuffed into hollow metal sticks with gun powder in one end that helped the Americans ward off guys in funny red jackets who were taxing their tea. After all that blew over, balls and sticks started being used for other things, most important of which being amusement. And thus the Cup and Ball was invented.

This invention took the world by storm, being known by other names such as Kendama and Bilbo Catcher. Among the wealthy in France, it was use like awkwardly texting is today for when conversations ended.

Appropritely then, perhaps, this game is being designed for Android. Now when conversations end awkwardly, and you have no one to text, you can cope with your awkwardness and boredom like the wealthy french nobles used to, but with a new twist.

As the name implies, the game consists of a ball and a stick. The ball is balanced precariously on top of the stick, and using the gyro in your device, you carefully tilt your phone back and forth to tilt the stick. The goal of the game is to keep the ball balanced on top of the stick for as long as possible.

This is a game of concentration and patience. And competition. The game saves your times, and we hope to get a leaderboard built for this game as well, so you can test your ball balancing skills against others with nothing better to do!

And with nearly 30 balls to choose from, there should be something for everyone!

The game is currently in testing phase. We hope to have it out by the summer time.

KnightsHouseGames · May 23, 2016, 9:29pm

New Update: http://www.danandresgames.com/blog/2016/5/23/ball-on-a-stick-52316-progress

KnightsHouseGames · June 1, 2016, 10:24pm

So the project has run into a very minor snag at the moment.

We are trying to implement Google Play Game Services into the project, and now theres an error somewhere thats causing the game to not able to be run on our test device. So while we try to figure this out, we can’t test. We are still working on art assets, so the project isn’t totally halted.

This being said, if anyone knows about problems relating to implementing Google Play Game Services and how to fix them, your help would greatly be appreciated.

KnightsHouseGames · June 5, 2016, 4:08am

Problem solved.

It took us a few days, but we figured it out with a little help. Our project builds now, and it looks like Google Play Game Services are now available to us (mostly). So now we can test again and begin fine tuning our new additions, as well as get started with adding Google Admob (we’ll see how that goes, lets hope we don’t go 2/2 in package breaking)

It won’t be too much longer until we are ready for release, we’ll continue to keep this thread posted with updates

KnightsHouseGames · June 12, 2016, 6:19pm

New Update: http://www.danandresgames.com/blog/2016/6/12/ball-on-a-stick-61216-update

Now with Pictures!

KnightsHouseGames · June 27, 2016, 8:30pm

We’re dropping Google Play Game Services, and have added a random terrain generator!

New Update: http://www.danandresgames.com/blog/2016/6/27/ball-on-a-stick-62716-update

KnightsHouseGames · July 18, 2016, 9:16pm

It’s been a little while with our heads down working, but we’re now in Beta

More details here: http://www.danandresgames.com/blog/2016/7/18/ball-on-a-stick-71816-update

KnightsHouseGames · August 5, 2016, 5:13am

I’m proud to officially announce the release of Ball on a Stick!

Trailer:

Download Page:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.KnightsHouse.boas

Blog:
http://www.danandresgames.com/blog/2016/8/4/ball-on-a-stick-official-10-release

I don’t know if this thread just graduates to the Made in Unity Forum or if I have to make a new thread in there for this

iamthwee · August 5, 2016, 6:49am

LOL loved the trailer. You got a great idea bro.

iamthwee · August 5, 2016, 7:00am

Is there any chance of doing a mac 64 build? The game looks like you got a killer concept.

KnightsHouseGames · August 5, 2016, 7:09am

Thanks!

I couldn’t help myself, I just love me some old school style live action comedy trailers

I assume you mean iOS? I’d like to do an iOS version, but the iOS Dev license is expensive and I need to borrow someone’s mac to publish. If I can afford it though, I’d definitely try

iamthwee · August 5, 2016, 7:11am

Actually I meant a mac desktop build, will it take a long time to port the control for a desktop build? Where you could use the mouse cursor instead of the gyro?

KnightsHouseGames · August 5, 2016, 8:07am

That…is not something I thought about?

I’ll think about how I would handle something like that

tswalk · August 8, 2016, 9:29pm

ok, look… i watched your trailer (and i don’t know why i did)… but you show 10 seconds of game play (at the end!!!), of a nearly 2 minute video?

no wonder you are not getting any interest… “no one in their right mind is going to do that”… so I’m obviously not in my right mind, or am i because I’m going to be honest and give you a thumbs down on presentation.

I should not have to wait more than 3 to 5 seconds maximum before I start seeing game action that interests me… you have at a maximum 3 to 5 seconds to grab someone’s attention today… that’s it. nothing more, if they don’t like what they see in that time frame you’ve lost them.

I would start by creating a trailer that “gets me interested” within 5 seconds… or move along.

not trying to be mean or harsh, just honest.

iamthwee · August 8, 2016, 9:35pm

^^ Completely disagree, with a game so elementary simple - balancing a ball on a stick, the cinematic trailer was excellently done, lots of humour and well executed. If I just saw the gameplay I wouldn’t have watched till the end.

tswalk · August 8, 2016, 9:36pm

start your video at 1:35, show like 3-5 seconds of the game, then have the dude throwing the friggn’ stick, then close it with your company tag.

with the content you currently have, that ‘trailer’ should only be maybe 15 to 20 seconds.

if you can come up with another 5 seconds of interesting game play “from your game” to show tack it on after the dude throws the stick (i dunno, maybe that would be funny), then end with your company info.

any “indie” developer that is trying to market their stuff by first showing 10 seconds of their animated company logo is going to loose interest.

“just get to the action” and wrap it up… this isn’t about you, it’s about your game.

… i also thought that because of the live footage at the beginning that somehow this was going to be a AR game… which IMO would have been a better idea somehow, but then people need to make their own “T” sticks… so ya, probably not. IDK.

tswalk · August 8, 2016, 9:39pm

are we suppose to ‘balance’ the ball using the gyroscope of the phone on the stick?.. I have no clue, and did not get that at all from the trailer…

maybe that should somehow be shown instead of 1.1 minutes of a guy making a stick… show a guy “playing” your game so we get the idea… I’m just reaching.

tswalk · August 8, 2016, 9:46pm

ok, throwing the basketball at the net with the stick in it did make me giggle for a second… but,… ugh, why am i spending so much time with this

tswalk · August 8, 2016, 9:53pm

btw, he had posted here: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/is-the-ios-license-worth-the-money.424871/#post-2744855

so I was making a general critique is all…

KnightsHouseGames · August 8, 2016, 9:55pm

As someone who loves short trailers, It does annoy me how long it is, but I feel like the build up to the joke wouldn’t have worked if I had cut anymore

Basically, the trailer is supposed to be my version of this

Or this

I kinda just wanted to do something to make my trailer different from the hundreds of other trailers out there. I mean, honestly you can get the jist of the game just from the screenshots, and the title. What you see is what you get with this. Theres no real way to make this kind of gameplay exciting, so I figured I’d do like old game trailers used to do and make it live action and entertaining. A funny commercial that tells you nothing about the game is meant to make you want to know more, to wonder what it’s really about. And with this, you don’t have to wonder, you can just go download it for free.

Though, to be fair, I could have put the company logo at the end instead of the beginning, I guess I just did it because so many other trailers do it that way, especially cinematic ones. Or made it much shorter.