[HN Gopher] Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor ...
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Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist
Hi HN ! This is an open source project I've been working on for a
while. It's actually the third breakout-like game I've built. I
really like the simplicity of the concept, having just one input
(the puck horizontal position) and a simple gameplay that gives a
low skill floor. My girlfriend and I played a lot of the excellent
LBreakoutHD, an open source breakout game that follows the
traditional formula of having multiple lives, scoring points by
breaking bricks and catching the good upgrades that spawn randomly
and fall down, while avoiding bad upgrades. She liked this game
because it is non-violent, and doesn't make her sick like the first
person 3D games. There are some issues though, it gets boring to
break the last bricks, it's a bit unfair or slow sometimes, and the
run length is too long with 30 something levels to clear for a high
score. I wanted to make a clone that would be fix those issues. I
first tried to introduce more strategy by making the upgrades
visible from the start, instead of them appearing randomly. You'd
then strategize what to break first to earn more points. That first
version is playable (https://breakout-v1.lecaro.me/) but a bit too
complex. I then wanted to simplify the gameplay, but make the game
multiplayer in split screen (https://breakout-v2.lecaro.me/).
Instead of bonus and malus, each brick drops some coins, and you
need to catch them with the puck. This worked pretty well. You can
play with the keyboard (A/D and LEFT/RIGHT keys) or mouse or both.
The bomb explosions will blow coins around, including the coins of
other players, and if you lose your ball, then a gap opens between
your screen and the guy next to you, to give him a chance to lend
you his ball. You can play using your phone as a controller by
scanning the QR code, but make sure everyone is on the same Wi-Fi
and that the the firewalls are down. For my last version
(https://breakout.lecaro.me/) is focused on the game feel and
juice. It is about breaking bricks and catching coins, like the v2,
but you can now pick upgrades at the end of each level. Your score
unlocks more upgrades and levels that are added to the pool for the
next runs. There are currently 31 upgrades and 91 levels to unlock.
Please have a try and tell me what you think. The game should run
well on Firefox, safari and chrome on mobile and pc. It is
available in F-Droid and on the play store, The source code is on
GitLab. All links are in the game menu.
Author : lecarore
Score : 212 points
Date : 2025-02-26 12:42 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (breakout.lecaro.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (breakout.lecaro.me)
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I like it, couldn't stop playing! I will play some more later
| today on possibly have better feedback.
| lecarore wrote:
| Nice, thank ! Looking forward to interesting perk ideas (though
| I already have a backlog of those) or level ideas.
| sphars wrote:
| 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.
| lecarore wrote:
| 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.
| airstrike wrote:
| 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
| lecarore wrote:
| 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.
| vessenes wrote:
| 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.
| lecarore wrote:
| 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.
| xnx wrote:
| 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.
| lecarore wrote:
| Yes, will do, this is definitely the top thing to change
| Willingham wrote:
| 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!
| lecarore wrote:
| 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.
| vessenes wrote:
| This is super fun, and it works on mobile. Thanks for making it!
|
| If you want some ideas for multiplayer, see if you can dig up
| "BattleTris" - it was a brown university cs student game that
| allowed networked Tetris play in the 1990s. I could be wrong but
| I think Bryan Cantrill was one of the people who made it. Anyway,
| my memory is that it had a lot of fun ways to mess with the
| opposing player, and you might find some good ideas in it.
| mh- wrote:
| I don't recall ever playing BattleTris, but Tetrinet is one
| that got passed around IRC a lot in the 90s. It was a blast.
| Seconding the notion that their gameplay is a good source of
| inspiration.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TetriNET
| teach wrote:
| TetriNET was fantastic. My students played SO much of it in
| class after they finished their assignments for the day. We
| even made/used custom skins to improve visibility and thus
| gameplay
| lecarore wrote:
| Yeah,the side by side "collaborative" multiplayer where you can
| mess with others was fun, but I decided making it fun in single
| player was a better first step, and multiplayer could come
| after. I can also more easily test and iterate on single player
| games. Finally, no need for a backend server if the game is
| just a static html file :)
| Apreche wrote:
| This is actually a good game idea. If you keep working on it and
| polishing it, it could be a hit.
| lecarore wrote:
| Thank you. I enjoy playing it during my programming breaks, and
| fixing issues as they go, to the point where it often derails
| me from real work. All that to say, i'll keep working on it :)
| ww520 wrote:
| This is pretty fun. I enjoyed it.
|
| Here's an issue. The mouse freezes a bit at 3rd level, leading to
| missing the ball. Not sure if it's GC issue or input handling.
| lecarore wrote:
| Ah yes, that must be a GC. I optimized the render function to
| not allocate, but i can do a lot of progress when it comes to
| reusing objects for particles and coins. I'm a React dev by
| trade, we're used to creating objects without a thought.
| trumbitta2 wrote:
| Cool! I can't figure out how to play with the keyboard though.
| Only mouse pointer works for me.
| trumbitta2 wrote:
| v2 works instead
| lecarore wrote:
| Yeah, playing with keyboard it would be hard to be precise
| enough and fast enough. i'll work on that thought.
| samiv wrote:
| Hi, cool and congrats on making a game! I also have a breakout
| clone in the works but with the twist that I'm doing my own
| complete 2D game engine for the game.
|
| - The particle effects when the block is broken is a bit
| disturbing and distracts from the gaming experience since they
| make it harder to see the ball. And since this is just a visual
| maybe you want to fade them out or something.
|
| - The size of the blocks seems out of whack with respect to the
| paddle and ball
|
| - The little effect when the ball hits the paddle is a neat idea!
|
| Here's what I have myself:
|
| https://ensisoft.com/demos/break/game.html
|
| Made with this engine
|
| https://github.com/ensisoft/detonator
| xnx wrote:
| Agree on all counts.
|
| Blocks can explode in place, but shouldn't rain as much (or
| any) debris that gets mixed in with ball and coins.
| lecarore wrote:
| You mean the small particles that fly away for 150ms and fade
| away after you break a brick ? You could disable them (and
| many other effects) with "menu/basic graphics" if you want,
| but this never prevented me from seeing what's going on
| clearly.
| xnx wrote:
| My mistake. In addition to the same colored coins falling
| out of the bricks, I thought there were same-color brick
| pieces.
|
| I like the way the changes you made look already! Has a
| better feel to it.
| GordonS wrote:
| Just tried your version on Firefox on Android, but it seems to
| go into a reload loop (I keep seeing the Detenator loading
| page), then the device becomes unresponsive and Firefox
| crashes.
| samiv wrote:
| Ah, web dev, always a pleasure.
| lecarore wrote:
| I like the explosions effect and the sound effects of your
| game. My engine is very basic, its main goal is to be small,
| fast and simple, the whole game fits in 100kb compressed. I'm
| not sure if you realized that the goal of the game is to catch
| the "particle effects when the block is broken" (aka coins).
| They didn't look enough like coins before for this to be
| understandable. The size of the blocks depends on the level
| size. At the start of the run you get levels with a few huge
| bricks, at the end you get levels with tons of smaller bricks.
| I'm confused about which "little effect when the ball hits the
| paddle" you are talking about, it might be something related to
| the perks you got.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Fun game!
|
| A couple of small translation issues I spotted: "Keep pressing
| here to play" should really mean "tap repeatedly", I think you
| should put something like "Press and hold here to play"; the
| other was one of the upgrade descriptions said something like
| "slower the ball" which I'd write as maybe "slow down the ball".
| lecarore wrote:
| Both good points, the message now says "Press and hold here to
| play" and "Slower ball: slow down the ball". English isn't my
| native language.
| jtxt wrote:
| Very fun! Works great on iPhone. Neat that I can stop by just
| lifting my finger to take a breather. Fun multipliers! More to
| discover!
| lecarore wrote:
| Yes, I'm and android user, but my girlfriend is on iphone, so I
| better make it work there too. Not going to pay the apple tax
| to publish a free game on the store though. have you noticed
| that you could disable the "mobile mode" in settings, and then
| move your finger over the browser navigation, and it still
| controls the puck ? Fullscreen didn't work last time i tried in
| safari but this gives you a bit extra space and time to see the
| ball coming.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Very fun. But I don't understand why the UI got much worse
| between V1 and the latest version? You had tool tips, audio,
| better visuals, and everything in V1.
|
| Anyhow, great job.
| lecarore wrote:
| The V1 tried to combine real time gameplay and strategic
| thinking, so i added tooltips, highlights, etc.. to try to make
| that work. In v3 the two things are separated, and I tried to
| focus on mobile gameplay, with the desktop version being
| basically a scaled up mobile screen. There should be audio in
| both, what browser are you using ? The v1 had performance
| issues because of the use of a lot of css combined with canvas,
| the v2 is pure canvas and performs much more smoothly on low
| end devices. My focus for v3 was to make it fun and challenging
| for me to play it, while still being approachable for my
| girlfriend, who just wants something chill to play with and has
| no interest in high scores.
| cl3misch wrote:
| Wow, very addictive loop! I instantly played a couple of rounds.
|
| Fyi, the perk to self-destruct the last block didn't seem to
| work.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I noticed that too. Was very disappointed the last brick wasn't
| destructing. Otherwise fun!
| FlyingAvatar wrote:
| I think it's an off by one error. When I got to level 2 of
| the perk, it ended when there was 1 block left.
| lecarore wrote:
| Yeah, a < sign when it should be a <=
| lecarore wrote:
| You are right, thanks, should be fixed now. It was a
| `remainingBricks < perks.skip_last` instead of `<=`. I never
| pick that perk so I didn't realize.
| koinedad wrote:
| I like the idea, makes it much more engaging. Some things were a
| little confusing like the coins concept. Also sometimes the ball
| trajectory is a little wonky, not sure if that's just me. Nice
| work!
| lecarore wrote:
| Yes, I need to make the coins look like coins, roll around and
| sound like coins. I'm still not sure of how to convey the
| multiplier/combo idea. For the trajectory, the engine is
| homemade and well, let's say the laws of physics have been
| simplified.
| slig wrote:
| The stereo sound effects shows the amount of care you put into
| this game. Thanks for sharing!
| lecarore wrote:
| I made this game for my girlfriend, so it's literally a labor
| of love, haha. I'm glad you noticed the stereo effect :)
| FlyingAvatar wrote:
| Love the concept.
|
| My $0.02 of feedback: The number of lives being inside the puck
| as a number is distracting and makes the game look less evolved
| than it actually is.
|
| I would prefer a visual indicator on the side of the game play
| area.
| FlyingAvatar wrote:
| I realize now this is a streak counter not a number of lives,
| which I think is even less intuitive.
|
| Having lives, coins and streak counters outside the play area I
| think would be better.
| lecarore wrote:
| So, the coins counter, aka score, is at the top right. The
| combo is on the puck, it's an important number because most
| of the strategy is about increasing it and catching the extra
| coins that fall. I agree that it's not the best place to put
| it on desktop, but there are fewer options on mobile. I'll
| see how it feels to put it at the top, or even replace the
| score with just the combo display.
|
| You start with just one life by the way, but if you pick up
| more they'll be shown as hearts at the top right near your
| score.
| beej71 wrote:
| Fun! I really like the idea that you can have a simple game with
| simple graphics that's really compelling.
| lecarore wrote:
| Thank you, the simple graphics derive from trying to keep
| everything procedural.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| There is an issue with mouse control (I'm playing with a mouse
| pad but the problem should occur with a regular mouse too): When
| you move the mouse fast it gets out of the control area and then
| small movement don't respond anymore until the mouse gets back
| into the control area which usually results in an overshoot.
|
| It makes the game feels unresponsive when you lose control of the
| pad because of this. It also breaks immersion because you must
| know where your pointer is instead of being the pad.
|
| Couldn't play more than a few levels because of this.
| lecarore wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I recommend turning on full screen in
| the menu, until I figure out how to add mouse lock .
| GistNoesis wrote:
| Full screen doesn't solve my problem (firefox ubuntu).
| lecarore wrote:
| Ah yeah, of course, sorry, I didn't think it through. i'll
| add the mouse lock option soon
| zeroq wrote:
| 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.
| onychomys wrote:
| 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.
| lecarore wrote:
| That's be an option soon :)
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Also need (great if): spacebar launches ball, L/R arrows moves
| bar.
| lecarore wrote:
| 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.
| lecarore wrote:
| 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.
| sejje wrote:
| The simplicity of controls makes this really good on mobile.
|
| Works great on my device (Android, Firefox).
|
| Thank you!
| lecarore wrote:
| Glad you liked it. It's meant to be a fun way to pass time on
| mobile, and my main browser is Firefox, so I tested it there,
| of course.
| mycocola wrote:
| It's pretty fun, but not in any way part of the survivor-genre.
| lecarore wrote:
| Right, I wasn't really sure about that title either. I didn't
| play vampire survivor, but I saw footage where the game stops
| completely as you level up, you get to think and choose an
| upgrade in peace, and then the frenetic action start again. It
| inspired me to add this mechanic to the game, instead of the
| quick thinking required in traditional breakout, so that's why
| i mentioned it. I don't think I can change the title here, but
| if a mod could remove the vampire survivor mention, it would
| make the title more accurate.
| chefandy wrote:
| Nice work. Here's some crit from someone with a game design
| degree if you're interested in refining the visual design. If
| you're happy with it as is as a your own little project, feel
| free to summarily disregard this comment!
|
| Through the comments of the folks here, you've surely noticed
| that some people aren't really 'getting' some of the stuff right
| off the bat. One of the toughest things about games is the visual
| communication aspect of it. Notice how little explanatory text
| most games have now -- even the more low-bit style ones? Choosing
| coins as a mechanism is a deliberate communication strategy--
| it's a game mechanic near everyone is familiar with so they don't
| need explanation for how it works. A game's (or any interface's)
| visual components must be approached with the same mindset. A
| designer's job is to take a step back and ask "what makes a [coin
| for example] look like a coin? What are the visual signals-- from
| the most obvious, such as a metallic texture and being a round
| disk, that make people think it's a coin? How do they tell it's a
| coin and not a blank punch-out from a steel electrical junction
| box? If I take a bunch of pictures of coins into a photo editor
| and reduce the resolution to something extremely pixelated,
| what's the lowest res I can go to while still realizing it's a
| coin, and what about those coins are the few remaining pixels
| conveying?"
|
| And deeper beyond that is figuring out how you can convey things
| like slowing the ball down without having a little icon. The
| cognitive load required to parse which icon you're looking at and
| the implications of that is a bit much while trying to play a
| fast-paced reflex-oriented game. It doesn't seem as hard as it is
| when you're the one that chose the icons and configured their
| behavior, but especially in a deliberately casual game, people
| probably won't take the time to become familiar enough with that
| system to push through the initial cognitive resistance.
| Identifying objects is a bit different than labelling a button on
| a control panel because it has context, physical form, and
| animation. A turtle might be a great way to label a slow-down
| button out-of-context, but maybe instead that brick could look
| gloopy and sticky? Conversely, maybe a speed up brick might be
| arcing or the shape of a lightning bolt, or vibrating like a
| revving engine block? Maybe you could have a little starburst
| where the ball teleported from and to when it teleports to
| visually orient the user better and on the trigger blocks include
| some of the graphical elements from that to identify it?
|
| Like I said, if you're happy with this as your personal project
| I'm not trying to say there's anything wrong with it! But if
| you're looking to refine the playability for broader audience,
| the visual design would be a great place to start.
| lecarore wrote:
| You're right, thanks for that feedback. Changing the looks and
| sound of coins is now on top of my to-do list. For your second
| paragraph, are you talking about the V1 ? This is where you
| need to quickly identify all sorts of pictures to realize what
| you need. I added tooltips and all, but then thought that it
| would be better to separate the quick action reflex time and
| the strategic choices, which is what happens in v3 with upgrade
| choices between levels instead of timed pickups. The coins in
| v3 look even less like coins, though.
| haunter wrote:
| Release this on Steam for $4.99
|
| Promo it to some Twitch streamers and bilibili/huya streamers in
| China
|
| Instant success
|
| I legit think someone will copy this sooner or later if you don't
| do it.
|
| (Generally I think any "well known"/traditional game combined
| with rougelite elements can be a huge success nowadays)
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I learned about chess960 the other day. It's a variant Bobby
| Fisher invented because he was bored with "theory" (ie wrote
| memorization of openings and positions) and wanted a fresh
| experience. Its basically just chess but you put the back rank
| (non-pawns) in random positions. As a result you have to (or
| get to) reason through things from first principles each game.
|
| I guess this is just the random aspect of a rogue-like, but it
| struck me as very similar to roguelikes. The fact that the
| experience is different everytime makes things more playable
| and sparks a certain sort of joy when the randomness variables
| compliment eachother in effective ways which you can design a
| game plan around.
|
| > I think any "well known"/traditional game combined with
| rougelite elements can be a huge success nowadays
|
| This is basically the entire thesis of slay the spire and why
| its massively succesful.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Its basically just chess but you put the back rank (non-
| pawns) in random positions.
|
| I feel compelled to note that you can also put the front rank
| in random positions without changing the game.
| lecarore wrote:
| Haha loved that comment.
| khaki54 wrote:
| There's a variation of this http://reallybadchess.com/ -- I
| kind of like it because I don't remember all the classic
| strategies... many of these just need to be memorized.
| lecarore wrote:
| Yes, here I was mostly trying to make the game sessions
| shorter, so first you have only one life not 4 or 5, and
| second you are limited to 7 levels (+3 extra with perks) to
| score as much as possible. From that, it made sense to pick
| the levels at random each run, because we lost the variety of
| going through 30 levels before game over. Then for the
| upgrade, i just copied what vampire survivor of interrupting
| the action to leave players time to think. I'm a huge fan of
| Nuclear throne and wish more games could be started in 5
| seconds, played for 2-10minutes, and then let you go back to
| work. That's the real value of roguelikes for me, the short
| playtime (because dying after 10h sucks) and intense action
| with a bit of RNG forcing you to think.
| deadbabe wrote:
| People will copy it even if he does.
| haunter wrote:
| First mover advantage
| lecarore wrote:
| I published on the play store and got 0 downloads in a
| week. The game needs to be popular already to be noticed on
| those platforms. Same with steam, plus you need people to
| want it to even be lister. I'm not doing this for the money
| so dealing with the arbitrary requirements of various
| stores is low on my priority list.
| lecarore wrote:
| I agree. I don't mind. I didn't invent breakout. Half of the
| value of my game is that it's free, ad free, lightweight and
| very easy to access anywhere, I doubt the copycats will be
| willing to do that.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Yea you can just be like the Banksy of game design. Put out
| a free game somewhere, easy to reach, people play it and
| that's it.
| lecarore wrote:
| Thanks for your advice. I published on the play store and got 0
| download. I'll try to get a good game and a few users, then
| bite the bullet and publish on stores. I don't think I can
| prevent copy cats, and the game itself is based on another
| game. Also, it's FOSS (AGPLv3), so this is a very easy target
| for an unscrupulous copycat.
| teraflop wrote:
| Very cool concept!
|
| Here's a small but very frustrating bug report: if you click on
| "Menu", then "Unlocks", the individual unlock items are
| clickable. I expected clicking on them to bring up a more
| detailed description, or something. But it actually just
| instantly resets the game, without asking for confirmation.
| lecarore wrote:
| Oh boy, I can see how annoying that would be. There's now a
| confirmation popup if you click an unlock while on level 2+.
| And I agree that an explanation there would make sense, i'm
| still wondering where to put the more detailed texts, for now
| they are in the readme : https://gitlab.com/lecarore/breakout71
| whitehexagon wrote:
| Really fun, nice work. Oops, I skipped the extra life, since it
| wasn't too clear I only had one. The destroy last brick didnt
| seem to work. It said I had +1 choice for only missing 3x, but I
| only received the coin choice. And missed ball gave me a
| 'list.findLast is not a function' (brave) and didnt run at all on
| my bit older FF, but not your fault, I lose a site a week at the
| moment, and I refuse to play the never ending updates game.
|
| Anyway, what a refreshing twist on an old fav. of mine. I dont
| even know what the console was called, but my cousin had this on
| an Atari cartridge thingy. Years later I wrote my own in a 4GL
| that no one will ever have heard of, but I never captured the
| feel of the original. I think this exceeds the original, well
| done!
| lecarore wrote:
| Yeah, it's not clear how many lives you start with, but I'm
| going to guess people will quickly figure out that the game is
| over once the ball is lost. Destroy last brick was buggy (<
| sign instead of <= , silly mistake) but should work now. +1
| choice means you get 4 options in the upgrades list instead of
| 3, but you can still only pick one thing in the list. +1
| upgrade happens when you don't miss at all, by the way. Funny,
| my tests today crashed when I tried to use findLast, and I
| realized it's not as common of a function as I thought. I've
| just redefined it to let you play on FF LTS. I'm a grumpy
| Debian and FF user myself, but I have the latest Firefox
| because as a Web dev I need to reproduce the issues my users
| report.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| awesome, fixed for brave thanks. I now get to see the 'run
| finished' page, but feels strange, I played 4 or 5 levels and
| then run complete, then another 4 or 5 levels, and reached
| smiley, but looks like you lose upgrades each time. Anyway
| lvl 3 ball piercing with 2 balls was started to feel like a
| bullet shooter with coins exploding everywhere, great fun!
|
| I had one level completed that showed 0 out of 0 and 0 in 0,
| or something like that. Also an occasion where I got to pick
| 3 upgrades after a single level, felt like god mode or
| something hehe.
|
| On my old FF(esr) it fails at ctx.fillStyle =
| currentLevelInfo()?.color || 'black' (game.js 148) expected
| expression, got '.' which is what most sites these days seem
| to use to crash my grumpy old browsing.
|
| I'll give the last brick another run, thanks.
| lecarore wrote:
| Ah yes, I guess the a?.b syntax is also quite new, and as a
| grumpy many myself, i didn't feel like adding a js
| preprocessor. This syntax is used 25 times, i think at that
| point it would be more reasonable to write my game in
| typescript or something else kids do these days haha. The
| run should complete at level 7, unless you extend it with
| the "+1 level" upgrade up to three time. If you stop at
| level 4 or 5 it means you dropped the ball, or there's a
| bug. And yes, once the run is over, you loose all upgrades,
| however some new ones are unlocked and added to the "pool",
| same for levels, so you'll see interesting new things in
| the next run. The "pick 3 upgrades" should happen when you
| play very well and clear the level in 30 seconds without
| missing any coins and without ever shooting nothing (well,
| then you'd get 4 upgrades actually). If the game bugs out
| and ends the level immediately, it will effectively
| consider you did all those things. I don't have telemetry,
| so I have no idea what could have caused this. Can you tell
| me the OS, browser name and browser version ? I'll give it
| a try on browserstack. Or maybe even better, open the dev
| console and see if there's some funny business happening
| over there
| drizze wrote:
| def package this and put it on the App Store before clones eat
| your lunch. Would happily pay a couple bucks to play this on my
| phone offline.
| lecarore wrote:
| Thanks. I packaged on the play store (free). Nobody seemed to
| care, and it got 0 downloads. It's now on f-droid too, where I
| got a nice message from a random user. Maybe I should make a
| paid version for play store/app store/steam, while continuing
| to give the same game away for free on web and f-droid (it's
| OSS). I don't like really like app stores and their annoying
| rules and monopolies, though. And I feel like they don't
| promote good stuff, they only push adware in front of visitor
| because they get a cut of the ads, so even if I package the app
| and publish it (ad free), the stores will probably push the
| clones. I might eventually make the move, but for now I'm happy
| to make good OSS software.
| tiku wrote:
| Does anyone know the url of the variant with multiple balls?
| Blocks have numbers and you get more balls the more you play. I
| cannot find it, is was on ycombinator news a few years ago.
| lecarore wrote:
| Sounds like a description of the idle breakout genre? But I
| might be wrong.
| https://www.hoodamath.com/games/idlebreakout.html
| ConanRus wrote:
| I need this on iOs, now
| lecarore wrote:
| I could try to build the app on my girlfriend's mac, but more
| likely I'll see how to make a PWA that installs. For now you
| can combine "share / add to home screen" and "aA / Hide
| Toolbar" in safari to get and experience close to an app. Still
| no offline mode but that's just me being lazy, I need a pretty
| simple service worker for that to happen.
| bee_rider wrote:
| "Add multiplayer" is of course the annoying request that every
| game maker always gets, but since you've already done it for
| v2-how hard do you think it would be to combine the multiplayer
| and the "survivors" type system?
|
| Anyway, fun game. I liked that the perks slowly seemed to ramp up
| from small tweaks to total game changers as I
| accumulated/unlocked them.
| lecarore wrote:
| I think that would be a good candidate feature for a paid
| version later. When starting v3, I decided to focus on game
| feel and finding the fun, and disregard everything else, so
| there's a lot I could do. I still want to make it deeper, and
| add basic QOL options to let everyone play it the way they
| like, before adding multiplayers or distributing in more closed
| gardens. I'm already very happy about the reception the game
| got here.
| mrmuagi wrote:
| I love this genre of games, I use to play the Ricochet games
| (from Reflexive Entertainment) as a kid, a lot of good memories.
| lecarore wrote:
| I tried it, I've been doing some pretty extensive research. I
| wasn't a fan of the art style, I prefer very minimal things.
| You might want to try LBreakoutHD (foss) if you haven't, it's
| clean and friendly in looks and follows the traditional
| formula. I really love their other game "swarm gold" though,
| it's also a very clean ui and control scheme with lots of
| potential. But it's about murdering aliens and there's fast
| scrolling, so my girlfriend doesn't like it all.
| Evidlo wrote:
| Is the ball supposed to change color when it touches the bricks?
| At some point this started happening which made it nearly
| impossible to track when there are hundreds of similarly-colored
| coins bouncing around the screen.
| lecarore wrote:
| It happens with the "picky eater" and "color pierce". With
| picky eater, you need to hit bricks that are the color of the
| ball, and color pierce makes a red ball go right through red
| bricks, and change color when it hits a different one. You
| could disable both by enabling color blind mode in the menu.
| This will be less of an issue once i make coins look like coins
| and all gold.
| juujian wrote:
| Very fun. Reminds me that I wanted to check whether Peglin has
| had a major version release.
| lecarore wrote:
| Oh I think my Girlfriend would like that game, thanks for
| mentioning it.
| saejox wrote:
| That is crazy coincidence. i just released demo my rogue like
| breakout clone on Steam next fest. i picked a more of a bullet
| hell/shoot em up kind of approach. Faster the better.
|
| I had great fun playing yours. Sound design is especially good.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3499470/Rogue_Bricks_Demo...
| lecarore wrote:
| Your coins look like coins, i'm a bit jealous and will do the
| same :) So you're going for a longer play style, with many
| levels, and a character build where you have a very strong ship
| at the end ? I think trying to tell stories around such a
| simple mechanic with nicely designed levels and background is a
| great idea ! If you release out of steam at some point, I'd
| love to try it. I'm allergic to that platform and its constant
| updates, my gaming pc does not connect to the internet and will
| stay on windows 10 forever.
| saejox wrote:
| Thank you. It is kinda like Tetris, blocks falling
| constantly. you have limited time to get strong and destroy
| blocks.
|
| i struggled greatly on balancing. My solution was to make
| director behind the scenes to make sure player never gets
| bored. Downside is; game is quite hard for non breakout
| players. Aiming is crucial.
|
| i did release the demo on itch.io But it lacks some features.
| i will update it tomorrow.
| gennarro wrote:
| Any more details on how you made it, tools, etc? It's a lot of
| fun and I appreciate the gitlab link, just curious about the
| tooling and process that got you to such a great point.
| lecarore wrote:
| It's all handwritten js, lots of trying the game and figuring
| out what's fun, what's not. I don't even use a bundler, right
| click / show source will show the code I wrote. I made an apk
| for it and added a small deploy script that ssh to my server
| and pushes the code. The code is written with webstorm, but you
| could use anything. I've asked mistral AI for help when it came
| to making procedural sounds, the rest is just a lot of trial
| and error. I have a small ui to make levels and icons that's
| also handwritten.
| gennarro wrote:
| awesome and inspiring. really enjoying it. Thanks!
| daitangio wrote:
| Very nice indeed... I wasted a lot of time playing on it!
| lecarore wrote:
| Really sorry about that haha. it's meant as a short game to
| play when you want a break, but i've found myself replaying a
| few times and really not getting much done.
| emmanueloga_ wrote:
| Nice game!
|
| I found myself putting my finger directly into the paddle many
| times. Instead of the message "Push here to play" you could
| create a more obvious UI element where one should press
| (something like the grip part of a slider). Maybe even make the
| grip glow when you push it for funs :-).
| lecarore wrote:
| Good idea ! Some sort of handle on mobile that's inviting you
| to "grab" it. good point.
| Loughla wrote:
| This is a fun little game. Would make a nice app. I would pay a
| buck or two for this.
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