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Loon'up's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of console | #2 | 3.930 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #6 | 3.322 | 3.381 |
| Creativity | #9 | 3.299 | 3.357 |
| Fun | #9 | 2.737 | 2.786 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Pre-made assets (Optional)
Music is Spinning Out, by https://joshuuu.itch.io/
Discord username (Optional)
qwack_games_26976
Explanation (Optional)
Reuploaded because of a crash at startup!
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Comments
Very creative and the balloon animations are really well done! I love the use of two different stages that control and play very differently! And the way how you change the speed of the balloon and the management of the inflation is very smart.
I discovered way too late that you can use the microphone to inflate the balloon, since the A/B buttons do the same. Overall I find it very awkward to control though. The tilting is very weak and the microphone is to the side so you can't easily look at the screen while playing. I also completely misunderstood the goal of the blocking stage. I thought I still had to make the balloon go as high as possible :D
I like how this game managed to use every input that the playdate has to offer, although most of the progress can be made using just accelerometer since crank and microphone inputs felt flaky.
Nice idea. I found the controls a little hard to work with, sometimes the blowing didn't do anything and sometimes the game felt like it was responding without me doing anything.
Thanks! Using the mic is not the most ergonomic thing I agree, though you can use A to inflate your balloon without having to blow on your console!
Lots of nice touches in this one. The balloon inflation / boosting have satisfying art and sound. The string is a nice touch, too. I gave up on the blowing mechanic quickly in favor of the button controls.
I found the block mode hard to understand. Things improved once I figured out there is a limited time to move a block before it crosses the dashed line. I don’t feel like I got a handle on the balloon’s “AI” in this mode, though, so I didn’t see much room for “block placement strategy”.
I am mixed on the sideways screen, but I found it downright confusing that the game over screen goes back to the “normal” Playdate orientation.
Congrats on a cool thing! You’ve given me a lot to think about, haha.
Thanks! The balloon’s “AI” is… YOU! :-) In the blocking phase, your inputs (console tilt, button presses, microphone level) from the previous balloon phase are replayed in real time. At first I did the same for the blocks in the balloon phase (replay the crank angle change), but that was too messy because of the dissynchronization you get by going slower of faster with the balloon, so I chose to make the blocking phase simply change the blocks layout, so that you could have some “strategy”. In hindsight, it was maybe better with everything going haywire though ^^
Oh right! Playing against my past and future self. That is fascinating. Gives me something to think about, haha!
I was a little unsure of what the overall game sequence was, but once I played a couple of times, I figured it out. Initially, I thought the blocking phase was an attempt to land the balloon back at the start.
I agree that it's a little awkward to try to tilt the Playdate and still blow into the microphone, but other than that, it's cute and fun!
Yep, I thinks I might have had to explain the rules within the game in a bit more detail. But it was getting reaaally late in my timezone and I had to submit what I had ‘^^ You actually don’t really have to aim specifically for the microphone and just blow (albeit maybe a bit hard) on the console for it to work. Note that I left an (undocumented) dev/accessibility feature that lets you inflate the balloon by simply pressing A.
Crashed on playdate once but upon restart it worked fine. I found it a bit awkward to hold the device this way and use the crank and blow into the microphone and use the dpad too, but I m unsure how that could be solved if you wanna keep it as a portrait format thing. Maybe a horizontal version with a tiny balloon going sideways against the wind could work?
But yeah I think the whole control scheme and autofloating movement is a neat idea, gj! :)
Thanks!
I’m holding the console like this to play (although you never have to use the d-pad and the crank at the same time).
I guess it’s easier for left handed people so the can simply use their right hand on the d-pad and not feel like they’r crossing their arms to play! :-D
AAH i see! weirdly enough some of us play our game on emulator cross handed :D playjams awkwardness hooray
Fun little game! I like how you can effectively boost non-stop by just holding down A and dpad at the same time lol. I couldn't tell if there was gonna be an end to the game so I just had to call it at some point - it looks like as long as you end the run quickly enough as blockman and keep going long enough as balloonman you can just keep it going forever? Couldn't really tell if there was much of a point in keeping it going after some time.
Thanks! I left the button control as a hidden “accessibility” feature, and indeed you can boost non stop using it :-D The game ends if you die as the balloon before reaching the last point you managed to stop it with the blocks. While I made some effort trying to limit it, I agree it’s still a bit too easy to stop the balloon. And making it harder for the balloon just goes to make it even easier for the blocks. I thought about an actual two players mode where the balloon must go higher than the previous block, and starts increasing their score only after that point each game, and where the blocks must block the balloon before it’s previous height and scores as much points as the distance left to this height. This would work to have an actual game over condition in both phases, but then breaks the solo experience. The game still becomes faster and with more, larger blocks with less space between each block in the balloon phase so you should’nt be able to keep it going forever very long though.
Super well balanced game!! I wasn't expecting it to be so playable from both sides: not too easy, not too hard. I'm also super thankful you added the simulator-accessible "press A to avoid blowing into a non-existing microphone" option :)
Wonderful, fun game, will be trying this with two players as well once I have my device!
Thanks! Trying to balance things ate a lot of time, and I still think the game falls be bit short there, as I feel it’s a bit too easy to block the balloon… As I explain in another comment, I think it can be at least partially solved by actually making it a two players game, but I’d have to make some modifications to make it so, and I really wanted to make a “solo-multiplayer” game ^^
Getting the same error as DraperDanMan!
Ooops, I removed extraneous files that got included in the pdx folder. Well there was one that was not extraneous after all! This is fixed now!
getting a error on boot!
Ooops, I removed extraneous files that got included in the pdx folder. Well there was one that was not extraneous after all! This is fixed now!