AboutThis game was made for a private game jam, which was meant to introduce a group of friends to game design, but surved me as a purpose to get to know the Pico8 engine. The task of the jam was to remake the game "Pong" and it was optional to put some kind of twist on it. There were no time constrictions, but I was done in about a week. My idea was to change the shape & movement of the planks as well as adding a special move. I'm very happy to how the controls and game feel came through, but I later noticed that I may just have created airhockey.
The gifs might look weird sicne I am playing against myself btw. GameplayThis games is build on the basic principles of Pong: Both players can only stay on their side of the screen and try to move the ball into the enemies goal behind them.
However I made some adjustments to the movement of the tiny ball, making the velocity more dynamic (with a speed falloff over time and a minimum), as opposed to the original pong which had a constant moving ball that just changed angle. To make aiming easier I then changed the shape of the player from a square to a big circle and later also added 8 directional movement. To spice things up I also implemented a dash ability, which can either be used as a save when the ball is almost in the goal, or to offensively shoot the ball very fast. Post MortemAs I spend most of the time on the mechanics and game feel not much time was left for art and sound. I tried to use a restricted color palette, but it doesn't really look like pong anymore. Apart from the sound effects which turned out alright, I would have also liked to have done some music as well.
Balance wise there could have also been a lot more features. Some kind of losing or winning at a max score or very high velocity shots didn't make it into the final game. Overall I'm really pleased with the result and want to do something with a similarly simple idea but a lot more polish as well! |