Jesus Christ this game is good.
boymakesnoise
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Ballunatics is a four-player vertical platformer, where you compete (and cooperate) with your friends to be the first to reach the moon.
Double jump or roll your way up through a bizarre world, reaching higher than any completely round animal has ever gone. You will need the help of at least one of your friends, if any of you are going to make it all the way.
DOWNLOAD AND PLAY THE GAME HERE!
This is a Windows game and requires controllers when playing.
This game was made in Unity in 4 weeks by
- Emanuel Axelsson (Art) https://emanuelaxelsson.myportfolio.com/
- Magnus Jakobsson (Programming, Music & Sound) https://boymakesnoise.com/
The game is finished and only minor patching is expected.
The game was a bit too frustrating for me, because of a lack of feedback when hitting enemies and a lack of telegraphing from the big laser cannons. I'm thinking if they start flashing half a second before they light up, you have a more fair chance to get out of the way of them. I like and enjoy the concept of a sideways and not-sideways shoot em up, though.
Thanks! I got asked by some guy to make it into a mobile game for some publisher he was in contact with, but he wanted me to make it in unity and I don't really know that at all at the moment, so the prospect of making it under time pressure seemed a bit too daunting for me right now. Making it into a mobile game is a great idea though :)
I think of it more in terms of 4-in-a-row than a card game, and I'm unsure about it's balance after playing while against myself. Maybe it's more angled towards one player winning than the other? But as I made a card game as well for the GMTK jam, I had to check this one out, and I know it's hard to BOTH be working at getting the game to work and having graphics AND making sure it's well balanced and the rules are fair. Framing it as a game in a totalitarian communist state upped the experience a whole lot too :)
This game takes me back to the SNES days! The controls took some time to get used to, but they seems solid and consistent, so I could use them to my advantage after some time. The difficulty was just right to keep me going and feeling satisfied when i made it to another bucket :) I was surprised to find more levels after completing the first one. So I guess you completed the core mechanics early on and actually had time to build good levels after that, makes it fell more like a complete game and not "just" a jam game.
Art is great! I had an idea similar to this, nice to see it realized. In my idea you were a giant dinosaur with loud footsteps, alerting blind enemies (moles?) if they had line of sight (/hearing) and also you sneezed like every 10 seconds, so even if you were standing next to a guard and not moving, you had to stampede out of there before sneezing and being attacked by the guard/mole. Aw, well I guess that's actually a stealth game so not much of a removal of a mechanic there. You did great and you made it fun :)
The concept is really good, both stripping the mechanic and flipping the normal rules. However, I got strangely teleported to another part of the track sometimes, thwarting my plan of going as slow as possible by hitting the right tiles and pushing my enemies to the boost tiles. And the flipping of the controls could have some telegraphing before, to prepare you for the shift. In all, a great concept, but if more was left to the player to control, the player would be able to use the world and mechanics to fell in control in this game.
Really neat concept, and it's confusing in an musing way as you're trying to use the mouse for aiming, even though you can't :) The dashing and bullet-attracting mechanic work good together too. I also agree with other comments that this seems like a really good foundation for expanding with more levels with things moving, going different speeds and getting in the way etc.
Thanks for the feedback. I recognize that pattern of playing myself, but wasn't sure it was because I had played it too much while testing and balancing. I am however still convinced that with enough patience and good enough memory the game can be beat in a methodical way. But maybe time will prove me wrong :) Thanks for playing!
I was only able to submit a mac build of my game to the jam, but I now have a windows build as well. Is it possible for me to get that up on my page too, since I think more people will be able to play and rate my game if it's available for windows as well? (Itch doesn't allow for me to add more files during the rating process)
I love this game! Perfect for a jam game. Simple yet beautiful, clear and challenging. Just the right amount of challenge, just enough frustrating that I felt I had accomplished something but making it to floor 20. I don't know how to equip the bat outfit, thought. Is it even real? :) And my best level says 24, though it's actually 20?
And sometimes it feels like I can't launch into a new jump directly after landing?
Wow.
This is the most impressed I've been with a jam game in some time. Great atmosphere and polish like some other people have stated. My graphics card was struggling a bit to keep up, but I still enjoyed it immensely. The fact that you mostly succeed by stepping on the other "creatures", or by sacrificing them by pushing them in front of you in this meat-factory-like place, contributed greatly to making this a truly impactful game. And I was expecting a simple platformer :)
This was a really original idea, and I think it could get quite interesting if expanded om, for example making the each consecutive day have even more complex orders and ingredients with longer strings of 1's and 0's. I kept expecting the game to get harder as it went along, maybe having me remember the codes for the ingredients by heart for the last sandwich, I thinkthat would have made it even better.