The only other game I'm aware of that uses endless + brick breaking is Breakfinity and the board is also dropping (although there's only one block formation at a time). However the pressure in that game comes from the ball since its speed increases over time and you lose when you lose the ball. Here, the pressure comes from the board itself. The dropping speed of the board increases over time and when the board reaches the bottom you lose a life (and moves up a little to give you some breathing room).
Lol. The board pressure is much lower at the beginning of a game though. The configurations and lighter and drop speed lower. We'll see how the difficulty curve work once the tests begin. Btw, the game has now been submitted to Apple for external testing so the alpha will probably begin this week.
Sounds great. I've beta tested a few games now and am a sucker for both brick breaker games and pinball games. I'd love to beta test Pinball Breaker Forever.
It was quicker than anticipated but the first alpha build is now ready! We're taking a chance and allowing the whole group of applicants in the first wave, instead of fragmenting it in order to reserve a pool of fresh comments all way through. Hopefully, new applicants will show up so we can organize new 'fresh' waves in the future. Here's the Testflight message: Welcome to the first alpha version of Pinball Breaker Forever! At this stage we'd first like to evaluate how you feel about the game and tell us if you think that the project is heading in the right general direction (of if we'd need to take a major turn on important aspects). Secondly, we'd like you to help us identify its strengths and weaknesses so we can build on that through the next iterations. Feedback, comments and suggestions may be about (but not be limited to): game mechanics (and if they're easy to understand), visuals and its thematic, controls, difficulty curve and the general fun factor. You can report through the game's thread on Touch Arcade, by email or through the Testflight report tool, at your convenience. The period of alpha/beta is planned to last around 6 to 8 weeks. Here's what we currently have planned for the next versions (which could be modified, based on players comments): - Complete the in-game shop (where you'll be able to unlock/upgrade power-ups and other perks) - Push the visual thematic and effects through many iterations - Add more power-ups - Add more side track mini-games and fix some of their issues - Push the board upward on iPhone to give more room for fingers We hope that you'll enjoy yourself and thanks to be part of this adventure!
ok so initial reaction: i dig the music, i need to get my headphones to know just how much though. the high scores button that comes on at end of game doesn't work - but that might just not be implemented yet. when the game ends by the bricks reaching the bottom and the ball is still in play you can still continue to play until the ball drains- not sure if bug or feature. the ball feels *light* if that makes sense. the player doesn't really get a feel for it having any weight off the flippers. also, related i feel that it is too easy to trap the ball with the flipper. but that could also be intentional. digging my first time with the game so far though!
I'm loving it! I love the hitting the side buttons. I find it so satisfying. Also I think your evil in that when the ball falls through it advances the blocks lol. That's fantastic! I like the direction you are taking it! I'm going to play some more! I love the music! I love the artwork! Really awesome! Can I preorder? Hehe I would like to say though I agree the ball does feel light. I'm not sure how you can change the weight of the ball but several times the ball just goes around and around and aroun the upper part of the deck because it feels light. I hope I am explaining myself correctly. Billy
Thanks for the feedback, both of you! - If you meant the Game Center button, it's not implemented yet indeed, along with the share button. - About the 'weight', I'm not sure what to say or how to interpret it yet. If it's just a matter of ball speed, it's a bit of an objective to have a supercharged flow. Also, in another feedback a player was reporting that the ball was feeling a bit heavier than normal. We'll have to hear more comments and try to understand this correctly. - About the flippers, there's a sort of 'velvet' effect over flippers to help staying in control. I added this behavior because people around me were struggling too much to control the ball. It's a form of empowerment for people less used to pinball, especially with the high pace of the game. More control/less randomness also allowed us to create more elaborated/difficult block formations. We'll have to see if this is generally perceived as a problem. I can foresee that the game will continually be compared to 'pure' pinball games. This is good, since pushing it's pinball side is one of the objectives. I think this brings a deeper question. Should the 'pinball feel' be pushed, period. Or should we say that this is not a 'pure' pinball game and as such, it should feel differently if it serves the game (or inversely the pinball side should be pushed when it serves the game). The game was developed as a 'new beast', based on pinball roots but not bound by them. However, given that the people being drawn to this game might in good part come from the pinball genre, the answer is not obvious at all. That's something that we'll have to ponder about as we receive feedback.
Just trying to throw some tools that may help with the discussions and to understand each other. In the physics parameters that affect the flow of the ball: - There's the gravity, that dictates how strongly the ball is pulled down the screen. - There's the ball launch speed by the flippers. - There's the coefficients of absorption, by the walls and flippers, on bounces. - There's a 'bounce' or 'absorption' force that may come from the blocks, depending on the situation (hitting from the side tends ton increase the ball speed, hitting from the bottom tends to slows down the ball (to reduce draining)). - There's the 'velvet effect' on flippers that tends to glue the ball when it rolls on it - There's currently no 'air friction' or 'floor friction' slowing down the ball when it's at high speed. May be forgetting a few things...
i think i can see how walkingg the line between the new thing we are looking at here and pinball game would be difficult, but i think it is good. one small thing i forgot to add- maybe add a function for people who want single touch gameplay where touching actuates both flippers? and i do want to clarify the 'velvet' to the flipper isn't really a problem. o was not thinking about the necessity ofnit to balance against the brick formation complexity, et cetera thanks again for listening! rj
Well it feels like the flippers are hitting the ball too hard then I would guess to say. What keeps happening is the ball keeps hitting the top and rolling along the top. Over and over. Does that make better sense? I woke up at 5am and I've been playing the hell out of this game. So what does that tell you. And this is just the freaken alpha lol Billy
Played this morning and i think the score system is a little bit abstract. Obviously just my point of view!
I'm a pinball hobbyist, and I'm really digging the game so far! I think the velvet feel of the flippers is nice, maybe too easy to control the ball. The flipper bats are also pretty large, and combined with the center post it's hard to lose the ball unless you're holding a flipper up. I don't think that's a bad thing though. The way the ball feels flying around is nice and its easy to pick off blocks before they fall out of play. The scoring is the only 'sore spot' for me. Multipliers are shown, but there is no pay off in watching your score grow faster when the multipliers are active. An on-screen score would be awesome. I know there is that little light system, but I'm still confused by it. Also, it's hard to tell what a 'good' score is. I think around 250 is my highest after a few plays. I know leaderboard integration is coming and might offer more perspective. A little tutorial or guide about the various elements would be cool too. I was aiming to lock the ball in the side pockets that occasionally appear, but then I noticed it just stalls the ball from scoring while the walls drag everything closer to the dead zone at the bottom. The little arrows I still can't figure out. With the term 'endless' the game makes a lot more sense to me. You're facing an endless series of tables or boards and trying to stay alive as long as possible. The game is a lot of fun, and chasing that 'one more game' high score is very compelling. Excited to see where this goes!
Have had a chance to give this a proper go and I really think you have something here! It is so rewarding to have the blocks almost to the bottom of the screen and battle back to clear the board. I too would like to see some sort of score while playing as it would add to the frantic nature of the game. Just got to work but had to stop in to say looking forward to seeing this to fruition, great work devs!
Thanks for the comments once again! - For the one-touch controls, we had something planned but it proved to be harder to make than anticipated, that's why they're not in yet. We were planning a swipe system where if you slide your finger from one side to the other, the flipper on the 'old' side drops and the flipper on the 'new' side raises. Unless someone saw another way to do this in pinball games? - For the abstract score and minimalist approach, I'm not really surprised by the comments. Here's a few ways to tweak this: 1- Just add the score in numbers and make the info redundant with the lights. 2- Add the base score in numbers and use the lights for a 'bonus' score, obtained through various ways and added to the base score at the end of a game. 3- Add the base score in numbers and use the lights for 'something else' not sure what It would be nice to hear more about what would feel like a standard way to do this in a traditional pinball game.
I would vote for option 2, have a base score in numbers and then a bonus with lights. In typical pinball, the player gets bonus multipliers (multiplying the end game bonus, but not adding to the base score until the ball drains), and they do not know their bonus score until the ball drains. In PBF, the growing bonus multipliers could be represented by the dots/lights, but the actual value that is being multiplied would be hidden until the end of the game. I assumed there were already in-game multipliers, or active multipliers that grow the base score while active. Adding an end game bonus (with multipliers), would be great as well.
So you'd have 2 threads of multipliers? One for the base score and one for the bonus score? And the left lights would represent the end score multiplier instead of the bonus? What's the usual weight of the bonus score compared to the base score, in an average overall pinball score?
