Hi Viola!,

Not sure if you checked your email, but you should have received one from itch/our jam. We have some prizes available for the jam participants, so make sure to claim a game key if you’d like one. Make sure to take a look and fill the form soon!

I liked the sound when a pin spawns, and the timing for them appearing felt reasonable to me — I didn’t feel like I had to wait around for something to happen, which kept the game moving.

The constant clapping, however, didn’t really help me, and became more like background rather than a useful cue. Although I could use the claps to tell where I was throwing a ball, I just couldn't tell when to release a ball with my closed my eyes and in the end kept throwing lots of them which I believe caused the sound to stop due to the amount going on lol. 

Overall it’s a fun concept, I like the fast pace and how the pins keep coming back and how tightly packed they can be to the point where they can push your balls back. I think it could be really fun for everyone with more polish. 

I think it was a very intelligent detail the clapping thing to know hands direction! Maybe that's a little repetive sound, but also it feels like you are playing bowling inside a party, or near the start of a dance. So it kinda apport to the ambience. I found funny the sound of the bowling pins when they appears. 

As a prototype is really funny!! I think as others here: the clapping is too frequent, also the purple balls. It could be a better entry with score system and other features.

Locating the pins by the stereo panning of their clapping sounds was next to impossible to me. I didin’t hear any difference ^^!

Congrats on the submission and participating in the jam.

Like others had mentioned, I had trouble accessing this with a Screen Reader, so I definitely think if you hadn't before, test your game with NVDA or VoiceOver to validate that players can get to the game.

I thought the clapping was definitely an intuitive way to line myself up with the pins, but were a little too constant or frequent, and along with the new pins, made it hard to keep up or feel like I could make real progression. I think you could very easily turn this into a fun game of rounds where more and more pins show up, after already  successfully knocking some down. Alternatively, putting a timer on it and seeing how many pins you can knock down in a specific amount of time is one option (although that is definitely the more stressful route 😅).

This was what you would expect from a bowling game, i played for a little bit, but it was not for me. It just fealt like no variety and i was just chucking bowling balls at once. So i lost interest after a bit.

This is so stupidly fun, thanks for the nice palate cleanse!

Instead of clapping constantly, why not clap the hands when throwing a ball would hit a pin? For extra stupid bonus points, the hands could clap visually too? There are some great ideas here from other jammers, but for what it’s worth, not everything needs to be a game with strict rules and win/loss conditions. Sometimes you just need to throw some bowling balls! And to do that, I’d lean more into the absurdity and make it more physical, more destructive, and filled with sound effects.

That said, I was unable to access the game with a screen reader. This is a huge blocker for folks who can’t see the screen. I would suggest looking into the accessibility tools that are available to you in Godot, and ensuring that the game can be started without seeing it. The simplest solution in my mind is to just remove the startup screen entirely, putting us directly into the game. But you’ll want to have a menu system with accessible labels if you want to support our players.

To get into the game with NVDA, I needed to change focus mode with Insert+Space, hit down arrow once, then Enter or Space.

Spamming a purple tsunami of bowling balls is fun.  

Locating the pins by the stereo panning of their clapping sounds is next to impossible to me.

I'd suggest slowing down the apparition of new pins. Maybe limit the number of pins. Start with one single pin so people get used to the environment. Once it's knocked down, two pins appear. Then three, and so on. As it is, the soundscape is dominated by the whistle of new pins and then it's too busy with too many claps at the same time which means you no longer hear the location of each. Spamming purple tsunami ensues.

This is a fun idea and a fun mechanic. I like that the controls are pretty simple as well. I do however feel a problem with how often the clapping sounds are playing, which end up becoming a bit of an annoyance or my ears start being desensitized to it; but most of all the fact that I only hear the bowling pins pop up when they pop up. I can’t aim at a bowling pin after it has popped up because I no longer hear where it is after that brief moment. So I think this is something that you should think about.

I also don’t have any downside to just moving the hands throughout the whole screen and throwing infinite balls at it. I like that because it was easier, so I’d keep that option for a godmode play, but I would consider something with points and maybe only three balls to throw, etc.

I would definitely look into using this concept for a blind-accessible bowling game, with the bowling pins in their natural disposition for the game and the hands moving also side to side and not only in circular ways. This could also help making a mechanic for a golf game. It’s a great concept and I would like to see you explore it more!

Edit: Streamed it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2711908194