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Nice, I like the perk system. Played a few rounds. Quick thoughts:
At first I didn't know that the coins were coins, it just looked like brick particles for visual effect. Maybe having a current coin counter or visual difference would've helped.
Speaking of coins, there's a couple times when the ball and coins were too similar in color, making it hard to find the ball amid a mass of falling coins. Maybe this is by design, but some contrast between coin color and the ball would help.
Both valid points. I colored the coins for two reasons : they are pretty and the perk "coins stain bricks" means that if a red coin hits a blue brick, that brick becomes blue (which helps with other perks like "picky eater" and "color pierce"). I think there could be a short text that changes once you perform the action, so "click to start", "catch the ball", "catch the coins for score", and "clear all bricks", then it would be gone once you finish the first level.
The game is great and clearly a lot of thought has gone into polishing! Congrats
FWIW it also took me a couple of levels to even realize how I was getting coins. A yellow glow around the coins or some shiny effect + clinky sounds would go a long way. The -2 +2 etc. callout numbers could also last longer on the page and just grow in size as they fade out? They were also quite hard to spot
By lecarore 2025-02-2620:13 The -1 numbers are when your coin multiplier drops, that part isn't really explained or intuitive. i'm not even sure of how to call it. It's the number of coins that will spawn when you break a brick, and is displayed on your puck. I guess if i displayed " 2 x " on the puck and made coins look like coins, everything would be a bit easier to understand.
By Willingham 2025-02-2616:331 reply I rather enjoyed that I got to make the discovery that the particles were coins, moreover, I enjoyed dropping STRAIGHT into the game without having to read anything or press any buttons. Lastly, this worked flawlessly on my iPhone, bravo to the work you did to make that happen!
By lecarore 2025-02-2620:23 Thank you. Making coins looks like coins doesn't require adding text, so i'll definitely do that. And yeah, it's not so easy to convey upgrades effect without text, but at the same time at that point you kind of want a bit of rest so reading is ok. I really dislike game that take forever to load and show pointless menus before letting you play.
I had this same thought; maybe just CSS to make them glow / glint a little? Or make the edges golden? I agree there could be a bit of juice on the coins. Or possibly the noise could be a little more clink/coinish.
Yes, i'll make coins look like coins, sound like them, and roll around. Then if you pick the "coins stain bricks" perk, they'll be colored like before, but by then you should already know what they are.
By smusamashah 2025-02-2715:34 I like the colors of the balls and kind of appreciate they don't look like coins. May be try showing a number going up over the paddle when a coin is absorbed
Yes. Coins should all be gold and spin on edge (so they don't present as just circles). Colored halo or trail can match the origin brick color.
By genewitch 2025-02-2715:35 As a counter, it made sense and looked fine, they have weight and fall like they ought. Also having something interefere with the ball makes the game more difficult, but you added meta progression as well as per-run progression.
As a huge fan of incremental games, I liked it. I just don't like brickout, haha!
Amazing! Well executed idea and great example that less is more. :)
Consider: (a) locking mouse (b) hiding cursor (c) fullscreen mode
Here's an example if you don't want to search docs: https://mdn.github.io/dom-examples/pointer-lock/
As other mentioned UI needs a few more iterations, but it's ok. I don't think you need to track coins during the run as you don't spend them to buy upgrades - which is not obvious and may require a change in how you communicate things - but on the other hand it's yet another thing tickle your lizard brain and generate additional dopamine boost. A life counter is a must.
Take a look at Electron or Tauri.
This is enough to put it on Steam. In current state it's a very solid freebie, and with some additional work you could charge an entry tier indie fee.
Thanks for the feedback. Fullscreen is offered in the menu when "document.fullscreenEnabled || document.webkitFullscreenEnabled" is true. I've noticed it doesn't show in safari mobile, but you can trigger it by click aA / Hide toolbars. I'll look at the pointer lock, i could easily unlock it once you pause the game with a click, so it wouldn't be too intrusive. For the score, i'm thinking to put the score multiplier there instead, i'll experiment a bit. There's a life counter, in the sense that you start with 0 extra lives, but if you pick the extra life perk, you'll see 1 heart per life next to your score. The game being 100Kb, you can probably guess I'll pass the electron option, but Tauri could be considered. First, I'll just make the web app offline capable. Also, I'm pretty sure that "save page as / Web page, complete" would work on desktop and give you a usable app (YMMV). I personally dislike Steam (mandatory updates, slow UI, DRM, monopoly, online requirement), and never buy any game there, so it's not a priority to publish there for me, but I might put it there once I have enough interest and price if 4 euros. I'd rather have a good app on the web first, and deal with the various store's rules and painful UIs later, I'm doing this for fun after all.
By zeroq 2025-02-2623:07 Silly me, I didn't noticed menu, I was trying to press F instead.
Mouse lock is a must on desktop, but you have to communicate it the user somehow so they don't get confused.
I understand your point about the game being 100kb, but once you decide to publish it on Steam the overhead doesn't matter. People are totally fine downloading 60Gb games, so couple megabytes won't hurt anyone. I gave you those two options because, at the end of the day it boils down to which platform you'll be more comfortable with and which will give you more usable options out of the box.
There is some work to be done with UI, but once you get there don't pass on Steam. If anything it will give you some bragging rights and another point in resume.
And like you said yourself, if you're willing to put some extra work, at 4-5 euro range it will be a steal on Steam. It may take some additional footwork to reach out to content creators to get some inital traction, but the concept is great and I would give it a chance.
I'm another vote for hiding the cursor. It's pretty distracting, especially early on in a level when there's still a lot of low-level bricks.
Pointer lock is now in the options, it also hides the cursor, let me know your thoughts. Fullscreen mode should be toggled with the F key, or in the menu.
By WickyNilliams 2025-02-2722:01 On Firefox android, I don't get fullscreen after adding to home screen. Not sure the cause. Slightly better on chrome but there's still some browser UI shown. I guess it needs to be a configured as a progressive web app. That would be amazing to maximise screen real estate
By fuzzythinker 2025-02-2619:441 reply Also need (great if): spacebar launches ball, L/R arrows moves bar.
By lecarore 2025-02-2620:02 Yes, that will come. But you have no chance to reach a decent score with binary like that honestly, it's like playing with mittens on.
I just spent an unintentional few hours playing this game; it's genuinely great.
I will say that some of the color combinations were a little punishing. White balls on a white background is a lot. Some of the perks have very murky upsides; having the ball change color isn't ever an advantage, so far as I can tell. It would be nice if the perks had mouseover explanations. Even after hours, there's still a few I have no idea what they do.
Every time I bounce a ball, there's a -1 that doesn't seem to impact the score. What's that about?
If the arcade version of Breakout had had a skill tree, Nolan Bushnell would likely be richer than Richard Branson today.
Some of the perks seem to be downgrades or maybe they require synergy.
Compound interest will tank you combo… unless you use magnetism (necessary) and viscosity (very helpful), at which point you get exponential bonus going.
The perk that gives you more bonus the more bounces your ball does seems like it could be good, but it resets your bonus when you hit the ball with your paddle, so actually it is streak destroying. But maybe there’s some hidden combo with another perk?
Yeah, there are a few footguns in here. Most bad perks are not so bad once combined with sapper+pierce+puck control ball + multiball + bigger explosions because levels finish in 2 seconds anyway
By bee_rider 2025-02-2720:39 Speaking of finishing maps in 2 seconds—it seems to me that having the number of maps be the thing that determines the run length could be sort of limiting to your design choices in powerups. Enough kaboom and the run will just blow through the screens in an instant, and your run will be over before you can fully enjoy in your overpowered nature.
It could be interesting if time was a component to the whole thing instead. Look at Risk of Rain for inspiration, the game gets harder as time goes by. You have a finite number of power-ups that you can unlock per map, so the player is incentivized to try and keep progressing through the maps at a good rate.
In your case, maybe the player could “buy” a +1 map bonus for their run using coins. The cost in coins could be influenced by the current time and the map number. Then, the player will have to choose between strategies that slow them down but get more coins, and strategies that let them smash their way through maps.
By peteforde 2025-02-2718:09 It's also worth mentioning that pierce is likely OP to use gamer parlance. It was the perk I would consistently choose over all others, for good reason; nothing else comes close to upgrading from a knife to a bazooka.
By lecarore 2025-02-274:04 Thanks, yeah i need to work on a deeper level of help for the curious players that really want to understand what's going on, without adding a wiki ^^
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