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Pins and Needles's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| gHosts' Choice | #1 | n/a | n/a |
| Creativity | #102 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Sound Design | #122 | 3.440 | 3.440 |
| Enjoyment (Best Game) | #204 | 3.240 | 3.240 |
| Horror | #275 | 2.680 | 2.680 |
| Aesthetics | #312 | 3.400 | 3.400 |
| Story | #508 | 1.800 | 1.800 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What game engine did you make this project in?
Unity
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Comments
Very interesting idea! It took me a while to understand how to throw a ball, but after I remembered the actual experience of playing bowling and tried repeating it in the game, it all worked out!
Also, cool sound design and overall visual aesthetics. I liked how with every miss, the location becomes darker and darker, and the music becomes more and more eerie.
With that said, I got stuck at some point; not sure if I was missing some interaction, or if I encountered some bug. The balls just weren't picking up for me, no matter how I approached them. Also, the mouse sensitivity was a bit too high for me, I wish it were lower or even for some way to adjust it.
Overall, great job, thank you for the game!
Nice idea and visuals. The atmosphere isn't creepy though. I like how you implemented shooting bowls in this game. There is room for improvement, but it's a well-polished game. Congrats.
Thank you so much! glad you enjoyed it, and yes we wish we had some more time to flesh out all of our idea but sadly we were low on time
Interesting original concept! Mixing bowling with horror is such a fun idea, and the pins moving closer was a clever touch. The controls take a bit to get used to, but it's well done, once it clicks, it’s satisfying. Great work. It already feels well polished for a jam build.
thank you so much! We're glad that you got used to the controls after a while, it was one of the things we werent sure about if it would be too hard or not
The concept of a bowling game with rouge-lite elements is really interesting and I thought it was clever how the game gets easier the worse you are by the pins moving closer. Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble aiming the ball. Several times, the ball left with a lot less force than I expected or went in a direction I wasn't expecting. I found that I needed to turn my character sideways to get it to go straight. I think this may have something to do with the angle I hold my mouse at and might mean it's inconsistent depending on who plays. Maybe adding some bias to make the ball go straight or aiming the camera down a bit to see it swing would help. Other than that, I think you've got a really promising concept here and I hope it's successful if you decide to develop it further!
Yes thats exactly it! When we were testing we absolutely sucked at hitting any of the pins (in our own game...) so we thought the pins getting closer is a practical way of giving the player a chance while also being on theme for what we were going for. The bowling mode is a bit tricky to get the hang of but once you really get it you can get consistent strikes, what I do is positing my player itself a bit to the left so that the ball is more centered down the alley. Thank you so much for the suggestions, we'll make sure to try them when we have the time to revisit this project!
The visuals are really polished! I really liked it!
There was something addicting about throwing 10 bowling balls at the same time haha
I think I missed the scores you usually have in a bowling game, but apart of that, great work!
Thank you so much for playing!
The game is very smooth.
I loved the way we control the bowling balls; it’s very fluid, even if it is difficult. Yes, I threw my balls all over the room before gradually managing to aim at the lane. In fact, the left-right direction seems very sensitive, or maybe there’s something I’m doing wrong.
The effects on the balls are original, I found it fun even though I didn’t quite understand what the tickets were for.
The scary pins…!
Well done!
Thank you so much for playing!!, If you play enough rounds, a shop appears that you can use your tickets in to buy more balls, it's a bit of a proof of concept at the moment since there's not enough ball types and we already give you some of the special balls knowing people dont play jam games for that long, so we wanted to make sure everyone got the experience even if they were just testing for a few minutes. Thank you again, I'm glad you though the controls were smooth!
amazing
Thank you!!
The controls feel really smooth — you can tell a lot of care went into them!
I’m terrible at bowling in real life, but I was amazing at it in this game.
(Well, to be honest, I just brought the ball right up to the pins for an easy strike. There might be other sneaky players like me, so maybe consider preventing the player from getting that close to the lane!)
By the way, I’m curious — how many special abilities do the bowling balls have?
When I first played, there was only the Regular Ball, but on my second run, the Holy Ball appeared too, and on the third run, I also got the Cursed Ball.
Do the balls unlock progressively like that by design?
Oh, and one more thing — sometimes a strike is counted even when one pin is still standing.
It seems like the game registers a pin as “down” if it moves even slightly, but from the player’s perspective, that can look a bit odd.
Thank you so much for playing, we had a whole doc of types of balls, all with passive abilities (when they're on the rack) and active abilities (when they're used), but for the sake of time we couldnt implement the majority of them. The only ones in this build are the regular, holy, and cursed balls so you found all of them! When we have the time we'll update this will all sorts of ball types!
Immediately lost my ball behind the tables and got stuck trying to get it back. Personal Hiccups aside, once I understood the bowling mechanics (which were admittedly pretty hard to get right at first with how you need to flick the mouse to send the ball meaningfully forward which also changes your direction), the game was actually pretty fun! It wasn't all that scary but I don't think that was what you were going for, I do think it would have been cool to have the pins turn into some kind of huge elongated teeth monsters or something as they got closer, just to add to that horror aspect. But overall the game was quite fun and I enjoyed it quite a bit, excellent work!
Hey thanks for playing! I wanted to make the pins get scarier the closer they got but it got scrapped for the sake of time ) : , hopefully in the future we can revisit this concept and bring something awesome to everyone
Goofy game! I was thought it was just bowling where the horror is how much I suck at all forms of bowling... but then the pins got real spooky
hahaha thank you so much for playing! I promise if you play a bit more you'll get so good and get all the strikes! Glad you enjoyed the game!
Great game, I love the setting of the cursed bowling alley and you turned it off really well!
The idea with the special balls was great too, maybe you could turn it into a balatro-styled deck-builder. :D I didn’t quite get what tickets do tough.
One thing you might have overlooked is that you can just walk up straigt to the pins with no punishment which makes the game significanlty easier to say the least. Altough I still managed to miss a shot at point-blank range. xD
Thank you so much for the detailed review! I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and ya haha we really should stop players from walking right up to the pins, right after the jam period!
Who doesn't like a bowling, ahah!! Nice game, throwing the ball is very challenging and I like it. Overall fun game :)
Glad you enjoyed it, thank you for playing!
Pretty neat idea and well executed. I'm not very good at bowling in real life, and even worse in a horror computer game apparently, but still quite an enjoyable experience.
So glad you enjoyed it, thank you for playing!
I want to know how to throw a ball
that's drive me crazy!
T_T
It's so hard at first even for us the team that developed it! If you hold down both mouse buttons (so you're grabbing the ball and also holding down right mouse button) you enter bowling mode where you can swing your ball, then the trick is to let go of the left mouse button at the right time! Once you get the hang of it you'll be getting strikes like it's nothing!
Really nice sound design and gameplay, thought the controls were really smooth. I encountered a few bugs, namely due to me throwing multiple balls down the track at the same time, particularly when I could see one was going to be a gutter ball. If I ended up with a gutter ball and a strike at the same time, my pins sometimes ended up freezing. I also wasn't sure if there was anything past the first round (I made it to the store and then after that nothing reset - but that could be intentional as its just a jam build?), else it might have also been because of the aforementioned bug. But regardless, really cool concept and would love to see how it progresses, I reckon you could make this super scary! :)
Thank you so much for the detailed review, we took note of the bugs mentioned and will make sure to address them after the jam period! I'm glad you like the concept, we're excited in fleshing it out more in the future!
Tuns out your linux build lacks all the sounds! Which explains why it weights so little compared to other builds.
Other than that, bowling mechanic is cool, and I see where you were going with special balls. Maybe I'd do some clearer goals for rounds (i.e. in "Clover Pit" you have X turns to score Y pins) and several separate rounds, which would progress game and make it harder and more complex and interesting. Overall, pretty cool, I love bowling 🙂
Wow thank you for the catch!! So sorry about that, we'll make sure to look into that after the jam period, we use WWise and I assume something went wrong when compiling the sound banks for linux
Honestly I wasn't a fan on how you control the game, trying to swing with the mouse has a chance of you swing your camera and it very annoying.
Ahh yes, we were hoping going into bowling mode (holding down right mouse button too) would lock the camera enough to make is usable, but we're always open to suggestions on how to make the game feel better! thanks for playing!
Fun little game. Never thought I'd be scared of bowling pins.
And I never thought I'd make a horror game about bowling pins, there's a first for everything! Thank you for playing!
What a great concept, and good execution too! A few things that I think could spice it up to something really special:
1. Have the pins do more than just change red as they approach, have their graphic morph into something sinister
2. Don't use the evil laughter right away, it becomes less menacing the more you hear it, save it for when the nightmare has increased. Some more subtle, slightly sinister sounds would be effective at first.
3. The concept for how the music needs to change is there, but since everything else is warping something that is already there, I would have the music also warp, instead of changing to different material altogether. If it is slowly becoming more sinister with each failure, it will go along with all of the other elements much better.
Really fantastic, I enjoyed it a lot!
Thank you so much, we're really glad you enjoyed it! Your advice is noted and we'll make sure to include some of these changes in the next patch, we really appreciate your detailed feedback it means so much!
What a silly little game, there are quite a few bugs but you can actually make something pretty fun out of this. Probably shouldn't be able to walk down the alley tho
Thank you for playing! Yes no doubt its a bit rough around the edges but we're hoping to push a bunch of fixes right after the jam period so that we can still fairly play by the rules of the jam (: , We debated on if we can walk onto the alley or not, but after your input we'll make sure to patch that as well!