[*COMPLETE] Bon Ball

[Blyka]

In an effort to get some rest from other projects and revitalize my creative energy, I indulged my long-standing desire to create a simple (but hopefully fun) game in under a week's development time. The result is a new submission to the Sky Pirate Arcade: Bon Ball!

Bon Ball is a simple game where you take control of Bon Bonne's rolling head to navigate five levels in order to collect as much zenny as you can to achieve a high score that can be submitted to the online score board. Despite the simple goal there is a decent degree of depth in how score is obtained, so there's room to improve your skills if you want higher scores.


As life would have it this game was stretched a couple days beyond a week's development time, thus ruining my goal (though it wasn't the project's fault so much as life throwing far more crap at me to deal with than usual, thus postponing work). In actual time spent working on the game it should have been done in a week or less, so I say it counts.
That said, this game isn't quite up to snuff with my usual polish standards, but for the simple score-racking game that it is I ended up being quite satisfied with the result.


Anyway, you can download it from the Sky Pirate Arcade: arcade.legends-station.com/?sp=bonball
Or from Blyka's Door: blyka.legends-station.com/?page=game_bonball
And here's a couple of screenshots:



Hope you enjoy!


Updated 2014.09.04: v2.0
Completely overhauled the game by making the bombs simply damage you upon collision instead of sending you back to start; your Life guage now behaves as energy instead of retries. Likewise, the timer is simply used as a bonus for completing the level quickly and no longer kills you upon running out. Other improvements include:
-Wall collisions are now perfectly smooth
-Bon can now roll backwards
-Better performance
-Various other tweaks; bombs now stand out better in Level 4 & 5, 960x720 window size support, etc.

[MegaTuga]

This should be in MML3 ssince they seemed to have that idea... XD

It's actually a very fun game! Good job! (again)

[Avegodro]

Man I've played the heck out of this game! Then I keep rolling into the bombs. ;D

Thats when I know its time to stop playing...

Not being able to go in reverse and the game freezing when the music loops are my only qualms. Other than that this game is addictive.

Excuse me I have to try to get a new high score now.

[Blyka]

Thanks much for the feedback thus far, those here and those on the scoreboard! Much appreciated as I feel like this game kinda flew under the radar or something, but so it goes I guess. Glad to see reception is positive, at least.


There's been a couple of comments in regards to particular gameplay aspects, so I thought I'd reply to them in general:

1) Lack of backward-movement
Kinda surprised this has so many complaints as it only takes four quick taps of left or right to turn around, so I never thought it would be an issue.
Mostly done for the more original gameplay mechanics and a bit more challenge in moving swiftly; otherwise I think moving would be more like any standard top-down game and it would become an easy zenny hunt with less attention to skillful motion.

2) Turning method
Originally I intended to have a key-hold effect for smoother turning (and more than 8 directions at first even) but I found this to be far too imprecise; bomb collisions would have been less worrisome than getting turned around, I think. So, I went with single-press, 8-directional turning, which ended up being a big part of the game with maneuvering through bombs and zenny paths. I think it's fun when you're able to pull off such maneuvers perfectly, myself. :14:


Anyway, thanks again everyone. Hope to see some more score competition someday as there are much higher scores to be gotten. :26:

[Deleted]

This is such a simple, yet fun game to play. I liked how we must roll Bon around to collect zenny. It kinda reminds me of the Bon Bonne soccer game, but it won't make me feel guilty of kicking the tot around.

If I may ask, would you be making any more fan games?

[Blyka]

Jul 10, 2011 15:15:02 GMT -5 @steffie said:

This is such a simple, yet fun game to play. I liked how we must roll Bon around to collect zenny. It kinda reminds me of the Bon Bonne soccer game, but it won't make me feel guilty of kicking the tot around.

If I may ask, would you be making any more fan games?

Thanks, glad to hear you enjoyed it.
I actually wasn't aware of the Bon Bonne Soccer (or related games) concept from the DevRoom when I made the game; mostly, I just wanted to use those rolling-head sprites for something. XD

For more Legends fan games, currently just Tuttle is in the works. Or will be again, once I get a couple of non-Legends series fan games out of the way first, which I hope to have done in the next few months.

[Blyka]

So, after witnessing unexpected lag on a player's computer sometime ago, I set out to improve Bon Ball's performance and ended up overhauling the foundation of the game enough to warrant a jump to v2.

The primary change is bombs now simply damage you upon collision instead of sending you back to start; your Life gauge now behaves as energy instead of retries. Likewise, the timer is simply used as a bonus for completing the level quickly and no longer kills you upon running out. It's still game over if you run out of energy so you have to be careful, but I think this behavior makes the game much more fun, accessible, and less apt to cause rage quitting.

Other improvements include:
-Wall collisions are now perfectly smooth
-Bon can now roll backwards
-Better performance
-Various other tweaks; bombs now stand out better in Level 4 & 5, 960x720 window size support, etc.

As before you can download it from the Sky Pirate Arcade or Blyka's Door.

Enjoy!

[Dashe]

Heh, I finally made it to Level 5 and beat the game. Good going with the changes and the whole "making things easier" deal. It definitely makes everything a lot more approachable and enjoyable in the long run. I mean, really, now that the timer's not an issue, we can actually explore! Awesome!

[Blyka]

Sept 16, 2014 14:32:30 GMT -5 Dashe said:

Heh, I finally made it to Level 5 and beat the game. Good going with the changes and the whole "making things easier" deal. It definitely makes everything a lot more approachable and enjoyable in the long run. I mean, really, now that the timer's not an issue, we can actually explore! Awesome!

Glad you enjoyed the changes! I was a bit worried the removal of both the instant-death collisions and timer might make the game too easy with no real sense of pressure, but yeah, accessibility is the key word here. Fun is far more important than challenge these days, and anything as touchy as Bon Ball v1 is just asking to be rage deleted.

And thanks for your comment and score submissions; I was right in figuring no one would care about an update by this point, so all the more appreciated. Just something I wanted to do for my own satisfaction before the door shuts on GM game updates.

[Lumigado]

I like this game! It's fun. Although I wish you could access the zenny chart at any point...