CGDC4: Spin Ball
By Jay
|
October 6, 2007
Comments (22) | Views (3,623)
The next entry up is from Rey Gazu of Argentina. Rey has also participated in our previous competitions with the prize-winning Cyberpunk from CGDC #1, and the remarkable Time Raider from CGDC #3.
Spin Ball is a unique arcade style "game" of swinging a spinning ball around to destroy various enemies that differ in their weakness. The rest is for you to discover. Please leave your kind feedback and constructive criticism for Rey (or 'Gazu' as we call him in the JIG IRC channel) in the comments.
Game link: https://jayisgames.com/cgdc4/?gameID=22
too much info to fast... i like the physics.. but it happened so fast i couldn't actually get into the game... i might need another 20 or so tries..
Wow. This is mesmerizing, but it's HARD. I keep getting electrocuted. And I haven't figured out how to break the white O_o squares. (The expressions on the squares are all really cute)
And I have to remember not to click or I'll inadvertently turn my ball into an ice cube when I don't want it to. :p
One nitpick is that the line between the ball and the cursor keeps boinging around like elastic, so it's hard for me to control it that precisely. Maybe I just need more practice.
So far, my high score is 112. Whee.
Must be a nice game. If only it would load... :(
Loads for me. In fact it's an impressively small SWF so it loads really fast. :-)
The game's not really my thing though since it needs good mouse control and my mouse setup just isn't up to the required standard. I keep sending my cursor outside the Flash window, which is usually fatal!
this game looks the part and i thought i would enjoy it, quite an interesting concept. however, i just found it too complicated and it took me a good five minute to actually understand what i was suppose to be doing!
lots of things appeared without me actually knowing what was going on and it was too late to react, perhaps a walkthough as you played the game would have been more useful.
once i got into it though i did enjoy it and i thought it had great potential.
also the ui intergration isn't quite right, i can't switch games!
Sounds fun, but what should I do?
I love this game; it's definitely one of my favorites! I've seen 9 different types of enemies so far (counting colors individually); I wonder how many there are in total.
Very nice game! I find myself playing again and gain to beat my high score!
It gets really tough once turrets and mines start spawning and shooting at you!
Now it's loading for me too. Thought it would be like this, as the note at the end of the end of the revision says the mirrors must be very busy.
It must be me, but I don't seem to be told the aim of the game: what to do with the balls once i spun them. OK, there are those white orbs and color squares, but what am I supposed to do? try to destroy them? Dodge them? Or what?
There are some in-game instructions, but not much explanation of the enemies.
You have to swing the ball around on the rope and hit enemies when they are vulnerable. Whether or not an enemy is vulnerable depends on the state of your ball and a few other things. You can heat up your ball to red by dragging it along the bottom quickly, and freeze it while it is blue by left clicking - but then you lose control of the frozen ball for a while.
Hitting certain enemies that are not vulnerable can damage your ball. You lose when your ball dies or when the maximum of enemies is reached.
The enemies I have seen are as follows (spoilered if you want to find out yourself):
Red, blue and white squares are vulnerable when your ball is in the hot, normal and frozen state respectively.
White circles are vulnerable when not surrounded by a dotted line, and damage you if you hit their dotted line.
Red and blue circles with spikes damage you if you hit their spikey side, and are otherwise vulnerable to the hot and normal ball respectively.
It's a neat game that makes maneuvering the ball trickier with the string-pull mechanic. The graphics are clean and the enemies have subtle visual clues to their vulnerabilities.
There are some in-game instructions, but not much explanation of the enemies.
You have to swing the ball around on the rope and hit enemies when they are vulnerable. Whether or not an enemy is vulnerable depends on the state of your ball and a few other things. You can heat up your ball to red by dragging it along the bottom quickly, and freeze it while it is blue by left clicking - but then you lose control of the frozen ball for a while.
Hitting certain enemies that are not vulnerable can damage your ball. You lose when your ball dies or when the maximum of enemies is reached.
The enemies I have seen are as follows (spoilered if you want to find out yourself):
Red, blue and white squares are vulnerable when your ball is in the hot, normal and frozen state respectively.
White circles are vulnerable when not surrounded by a dotted line, and damage you if you hit their dotted line.
Red and blue circles with spikes damage you if you hit their spikey side, and are otherwise vulnerable to the hot and normal ball respectively.
It's a neat game that makes maneuvering the ball trickier with the string-pull mechanic. The graphics are clean and the enemies have subtle visual clues to their vulnerabilities.
This game has fuzzy instructions and leaves you to figure stuff out by yourself. One note before I state everything I know about the game: you may activate the frozen ball with the left mouse button, even as the instructions said to activate it with the right button. And another bug: the background music during the game does not go away when you return to the mainscreen.
Goal:
To destroy the enemies that appear
What do the hot and cold (heat and frozen) balls do:
Hot balls destroy the red squares and red spikies. Cold balls destroy white squares. Blue squares and blue spikies can only be destroyed by the normal blue ball. The white round bulb can be destroyed by any of those balls.
Taking damage:
1) Hitting the white bulb when the elctric charge (blue electric surrounding it) is turned on
2) Hitting the spiked side of the spikie
Strategy for obtaining the hot ball:
Drag the ball on the floor by placing your cursor below the ground
I do not mean to spam, but here's my opinion on the game:
I love seeing how different people come up with different approaches to the theme. It wasn't really there the previous CGDC, but this time round there are a whole lot of different things I'm seeing. I like this one because it's unique: ball on a string.
I was thinking to myself, how nice this game would be if there was motivation to continue playing. And here I am, trying to dodge those black pentagon shooters, beckoning me to play yet another time to explore further into the game. Is it possible to destroy the pentagons? Well this does have replay value, which is great.
A minor complaint would be that the enemies spawn at random places. I was sitting still in a corner waiting for enemies to spawn, and suddenly a white bulb spawned on me, and I was dead in a second. Maybe implement an "immune period" after you've been hit?
Oh, and it'd be nice to know what the symbols on the squares represent :) Nice game Rey!
Hmm. Interesting game; I was able to figure it out enough to get 321 by my third or so attempt. It's fun trying to swing around in arcs that hit all the right-colored targets, but kinda hard when the field gets crowded. I assume the point is simply to try for a highscore, but it's not really compelling enough for me to keep coming back to it. Also, what passed for 'music' ingame was just really annoying; I wished I could turn it off.
I got to the point where there were bombs showing up periodically, and a gun that was shooting things at me, but I'm not sure how many new elements there might be beyond that. Maybe if gameplay was split into levels, where each level added something new, it would increase the sense of accomplishment for doing well, and provide some milestones for players to go for.
Aren't they just small faces? That's what they look like to me anyway.
I agree with the "immunity period" idea and the only other thing is the ice ball left click not right click thing.
But its quite satisfying to ricochet about through the face square things, the noise they make is quite neat.
I found one flaw. I had just whipped into the corner when a spiky ball appeared on top or right next to me with his spokes to the corner, and I went form full health to nada in one second. I had no chance. It should have a brief after damage invulnerability or should not place enemies right on top of you.
Otherwise simple and fun!
Nice little game. Good game mechanic.
As others have said, the instructions were a bit unclear, but it was fun trying to figure out what to do anyway.
Overall I quite enjoyed this =). Nice one.
Ali
HAHAHAHAHAH!!! *wipes away tear* oh man... I guess I should technically put this in spoiler...things..., so...
Right click while playing to see...
The first option on the drop-down menu is "Kill Griff"
I might just have to vote for this one when the time comes just because of this. man...
Griff is from RedvsBlue, and nobody else has seemed to notice this little thing... also, the drop-down menu allows you to change to full-screen and back, and enable and disable the drop-down thing that sends you back to the menu (very helpful) but does anybody know if "Kill Griff" has an effect? or is it just gag? cause I was clicking it frantically, hoping for something to happen, such as Griff dying, or Sarge using him as a shield against the zombies, etc.
You are right now my favorite game-maker, Rey!
If only there was a "how to play" screen that actually explained how to play. Following the instructions given results in much death.
Griff is also an almost perpetual visitor of the IRC channel.
That might be what Gazu was referring to. :P
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