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Ai Usage
AI Assisted
Genre
Action
Shooter | Platformer | Slasher | Beat em Up | Base Defense | Survival | Racing
Strategy
Turn-based | Card Games | RTS | 4X
Multiplayer
PvP | Party Games
Sim
Dating | Farm | Colony | City Building
Sandbox
Open World
Other
Rating
For 13+
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Comments
BEAT BABES YELLOW
Cool game, the mechanics were surprisingly fun. I know you've just updated the tutorial, but I actually think you could just go straight into a simple match at the start and then add in the mechanics and tutorialise them when needed instead of having a bunch of dialogue at the start. The basic gameplay is pretty intuitive and it would be good to get people having fun asap and then addding in other stuff on top of that once they have the context for why it matters if that makes sense.
I also know alot of the art is placeholder and you're getting it commissioned which is great, but I would comment that the UI aesthetic is also pretty obviously AI generated so I would look into changing that up a bit too. I dont think it would be insanelly hard, you could just find a game UI asset pack and use that.
I don't have much more feedback outside of what others have said, but good luck with it!
Thanks for playing! You have such a cool game, by the way.
The idea of teaching mechanics in context is really useful, and Iām actively experimenting with how quickly I can get players into the first match. Iām on to my 2nd playtester round so weāll see.
Also, could you tell me what specifically made the UI feel AI-generated to you? Iām a software engineer with a fair amount of frontend and design experience, and much of the UI was intentionally designed, so Iād genuinely like to understand which elements created that impression. Was it the typography, shapes, icons, colors, inconsistent styling, or something else? That would help me address the actual problem rather than replacing the whole UI with a generic asset pack.
Fun game! Thereās a lot more skill involved than I first realized. Each character felt different than the other, thatās a great achievement given how simple the concept is, and it was really easy to pick up, but still deep enough to keep going.
Most of what I could suggest is related to UI: The tutorial is a bit odd to navigate given the dialogue boxes block some sections of the arena. Also, I wouldāve loved to see the full skill descriptions while on career mode, right now I only saw them show up on character selection.
The gameplay is very solid, and I canāt think of something specific to suggest, other than seeing more content, which I guess is a good sign youāve got something good going on.
Great job!
Thank you so much for playing! Iām really glad the characters already feel distinct and that you found more depth as you kept playing.
The next patch is a big one: a full HUD overhaul, equippable and unlockable parts, part shaping (think Spore), and expanded career progression are all coming next.
Thereāll be plenty more to experiment with very soon!
This game was really fun! It felt very mechanically dense for such a simple gameplay loop - It kind of reminded me of smash bros in that regard; easy to pick up, but there's a lot more going on under the surface. I also think the theming is really on point. You seem to know your audience! I think one of the driving forces in my continued enjoyment of the game was getting to see the new challenger characters in the breakneck mode and getting to read their flavor text. It's a fun coat of paint to put on these mechanics.
I think *maybe* an interactive tutorial would be a nice inclusion? The game is pretty easy to pick up once you've played a bit, but I'll be honest, I found my eyes sort of glazing over when I was reading the how to play section. It's definitely easier to learn by playing than by reading. I do think the training mode is a really good addition, but I'd love a short tutorial introduction.
Truly the biggest thing that would prevent me from playing the game is the use of AI art, so knowing that you're in the process of replacing that is great to here. Good stuff!
I played it on stream around 36:30
Thank you, this is super helpful. The Smash comparison is especially interesting because that āeasy to get moving, but with a lot going on underneathā feeling is very much what Iām aiming for.
Glad to hear the flavor and vibe landed!
And yeah, I just released a HUGE onboarding update this morning with an interactive tutorial!
Also, thank you for the timestamp. Iāll definitely check out the stream section around 36:30.
Really appreciate you giving the game a shot!
Iām looking to work with content creators at some point, you can add me on discord if thatās something youāre interested in @beatbaes :)
The concept is unique, and the presentation feels polished. The physics-based battles are satisfying, while the characters, UI, and sound give the game a strong identity. However, I often couldnāt tell whether my actions were effective. Sometimes I attacked an opponent but ended up losing more health than they did, and I wasnāt sure why. This makes the fights difficult to follow for a new player. Clearer feedback about damage, successful actions, and what causes the player to lose health would make the game much easier to understand.
Thanks for playing the game and providing feedback!
Actually enjoyed the game; the power-ups were a bit confusing, but other than that, a fun game :) Keep up the good work
Coming from Crownlands.
https://crownlands.itch.io/crownlands
Interesting game overall. For some reason it reminded me a little of Bakugan mixed with those robot fighting shows like BattleBots or Robot Wars. Not in a direct way, more just the general feeling and energy of it.
I also really liked the visual style. The way the buttons and interface elements react and move is especially nice and gives the game a lot of personality.
There are still a few rough edges here and there, but overall it was a fun and memorable experience.
Thanks for playing!
If you havenāt yet, please leave your feedback, it helps a ton!
https://forms.gle/hrA3t6et9t2jqkXp7
I do love the idea of a Beyblade game, and the gameplay was basically everything I imagined it to be so thats great. I am still not entirely sure if I understood most of anything about the Game, but I imagine it similar to a scenario of normal fighting games where any casual player would get immediately destroyed when playing online, atleast based on the amount of stuff that was on the Tutorial. Probably still not the best idea to have so much stuff right at the start though, it feels like a situation where you need a basic tutorial and an advance one separately, since I did basically start skipping over text when i realised how much of it there was.
I did figure out that Reina is probably the best character, since even without knowing anything I was actually able to beat the AI at hard difficulty in both the 1 vs 1, and free for all, so plenty satisfied with the progress made. Didn't actually do the Breakneck though seemed like it would take too long.
The Game does do mostly everything right, the one thing that did feel kinda off was how big the Menu Buttons got when they were hovered on but that's just a minor nitpick.
Thanks for playing! Really glad the actual Beyblade gameplay lived up to what you were hoping for. And yeah, Iām definitely hearing the tutorial is too much lol.
One thing Iām curious about: what made Breakneck look like it would take too long? Was it something on the menu/UI, or just the idea of doing a full run?
Also if you have 2 mins, Iād love to get your feedback in the form so I can keep it with the rest of my playtest data. If you already filled it out, thank you!
https://forms.gle/TgpNJp2bVzUuq8ea6
So about the Breakneck , it mostly came down the UI reminding me of something like the WWE Career mode option, but I did actually start with Breakneck only, issue was that I just lost to the first enemy twice, basically by going outside the Ring myself, mostly because the controls were new to me, and probably also because of the part where I skipped a lot of the Tutorial Text.
And after that I just went to the Brawl and that felt way more Streamlined to actually play the game, so did that only until I could beat the AI in hard. I did fill the form, so now do realise the part where Breakneck is supposed to be more of a Roguelite which does actually sound pretty fun at least compared to the Career path i was initially considering.
Hey! Iām working on a major BEAT BAES update and would love your feedback again.
Youāll probably notice this message is a copy-paste because I like to work efficiently, but I specifically picked you based on your previous feedback and want to see what you think of the changes.
The next build should be ready this weekend or early next week. Play as long as you want, then just fill out a feedback form. No recording required.
If youāre interested, message me on Discord with your itch name if itās different: beatbaes
Just a heads-up that I played this on a MacBook Air using the trackpad, so please keep that in mind for some of the control feedback!
First of all, I really liked the sound design. Hearing both my character and the opponent actually having voices added a lot, and the background music was great too. It honestly made me realize how much Iāve been neglecting sound in my own game.
While playing, I kept thinking this could feel really good with an analog stick and some controller vibration feedback. Iām not sure if it was mainly because I was using a trackpad, but the whole spinning mechanic feels like something that could be especially satisfying with a gamepad. Is controller support / vibration already possible? I donāt have a controller with me right now, so unfortunately I couldnāt test that.
I also think thereās something really fun about applying the physical motion of rotating an analog stick directly to this kind of gameplay mechanic.
The waifu art style is definitely pretty niche. Personally I tend to prefer softer styles like Blue Archive, so it isnāt exactly my taste, but I can absolutely see it working well for people who are into this particular style.
Also, considering this is a web game, everything felt surprisingly responsive. Moving between screens was quick and immediate, and overall it feels very well optimized.
Iām still not very familiar with this type of game, so maybe Iām missing some of the deeper strategy, but after hitting the opponent a few times I actually won because they flew out of the arena. It seems like there are probably two main approaches: knocking the opponent out of bounds or reducing their HP directly. That distinction seems like it could create some interesting strategy once you understand the mechanics better.
Thanks for playing, this is valuable feedback. I come from a music/audio background so donāt kick yourself too much for neglecting sound. Most of the gaming industry does haha.
If you havenāt yet, please take a minute to leave feedback on the form: https://forms.gle/y5LfqVy5nVK7p9cx9
Btw, I would play your game again. Feel free to hmu anytime with updates :)
Hey! Iām working on a major BEAT BAES update and would love your feedback again.
Youāll probably notice this message is a copy-paste because I like to work efficiently, but I specifically picked you based on your previous feedback and want to see what you think of the changes.
The next build should be ready this weekend or early next week. Play as long as you want, then just fill out a feedback form. No recording required.
If youāre interested, message me on Discord with your itch name if itās different: beatbaes
after a first pass on my phone, I am very impressed with the amount of detail in the mechanics and the art. This type of game i usually need a decent amount of time to get comfortable as i am slower to take up on quick twitch style games. I will make some time to play on my PC at home and provide more thorough feedback here as well as on the form. Thanks for your insight into my game. I will attempt to reciprocate to the best of my abilities.
Youāre the second person to play on phone and phone support isnāt even officially announced or supported lmao!
Thanks for trying it, glad to hear itās holding up on mobile. SUPER looking forward to your thoughts when you try again, thank you so much!
Came over to check this out because of the pretty well thought out feedback you left on my entry. And I have to preface with that because I must admit this really is not my kind of game at all: I find thirst traps really cringe, I generally dislike roguelites, and I've never owned a beyblade! Take some of this with a grain of salt, I didn't play a whole lot, this is my best attempt to explain why I bounced off the game on first impression.
I'll start with some stuff I liked. I am genuinely very impressed with your presentation. The game is very well put together, and your itch page is fantastic. Game feel is also pretty nice, lots of good effects and the impacts feel satisfying and strong.
I think I'm most struggling with the tutorial. For how incredibly remarkably simple the game actually is at it's core, you have soooo much text explaining every little detail. I don't need to read an essay about the different types of collisions, especially since there's some physical intuition behind it. I can figure that out as I go, you're depriving me of any possible "ah-ha" moments in gameplay where things click. And I don't understand why there were 10 panels of tutorial text for the Breakneck run when it seemed like the only thing I could do was click "enter fight".
And at the same time I felt some things were incredibly under-explained. I didn't understand any of the "Remix" choices I was presented with. What does "grind that you started stores force, and throws you both apart when it ends" even mean? It's phrased so unnaturally. Most roguelike choices I've seen in other games are way more digestible, broken down by passive or active benefit, and usually quite simple but impactful, the complexity comes from the cumulation of choices, not all at once. And the house rule I was shown reads "Placed control geometry is drawn for everyone and holds a little longer, so the encounter reads as a command structure rather than a surprise" those sure are some words. I don't know what any of that means. "placed control geometry"? "command structure"? I saw little rings appear on the field, but nothing seemed to indicate what they did.
I'm of two minds about the actual gameplay. On one hand I do think it's kinda fun to control and play around with the abilities and the influence, watching the tops spin about, thinking about positioning and momentum. But on the other hand it feels like I'm barely doing anything at all, like things are just kinda flying around and happening and I'm not really in control, I'm just kinda mildly influencing things. I mean it's not like a traditional fighter where you have attacks, every time you are clinking with your opponent they are clinking with you too. It just felt like a game where I clicked some buttons for visual dopamine. And the abilities were difficult to wrap my head around, like yeah of course I'll press the do more damage button. Do we need 3? Is the random clinking of spinning tops strategically demanding enough to warrant having 3 different special moves that all just make you hit harder? I know it's more nuanced than that in reality, I'm trying to learn on the fly here and when I click the button and there's no immediately obvious effect, it just kinda feels flacid.
One more minor nitpick. There's a lot of information on the top bar during combat, stuff like HP and ult charge is probably up there somewhere... but I can't take my eyes off the battle arena to even look at it, there's not enough down time for that. Showing really critical stuff on the arena, maybe on the baes themselves would be a pretty big improvement to game state readability.
Anyways that's all I got, good luck!
Thanks a lot for taking the time to write all this out, especially when you already knew this probably wasnāt your kind of game. This is super useful.
Two things Iād really like to understand better:
If youāve got another 2 mins, Iād really appreciate you dropping this into the feedback form too so I can keep it with the rest of the playtest data. If you already did, thank you!
https://forms.gle/TgpNJp2bVzUuq8ea6
EDIT:
If anything, itād be most helpful to know what characters you played. Right now, there are two characters in particular that are being almost completely overhauled. This is a very hard game to balance already š
Sure, no problem!
1. The Controls page on "How To Play", plus the explanation of heartbreak and ring-out is probably sufficient to get started. Maybe emphasize whichever win condition is what you should be trying to achieve, just to give some direction to gameplay. Keep it simple. "Here is what you are trying to achieve, and these are the buttons you can press to get it done"
2. I played Ash, got a couple matches into a Breakneck run, but didn't finish it. I understood the LMB button, that one was straightforward and satisfying. I saw there was some strategic value for using it to force opponents off the ring (I think I did this once), but in neutral it felt underwhelming, like I bump into them real hard but it felt like little was accomplished.. Had no idea what RMB or MMB were doing, and didn't see a place to double check mid run. MMB felt like it was just "hit harder while active" which wasn't terribly inspiring. RMB... yeah... reading the description now I would have never figured that out, and honestly I have no idea when that would even be useful.
Oh dw, I filled out the form. (speaking of, I'd appreciate it if you could return the favor for our game if you didn't already, it's normally linked at the end of the game so it's kinda missable)
Regarding characters, if you have one that's intended to be easy to pick up and play, you should really emphasize that. I just picked the first character in the lineup without reading, I didn't see how I could make an informed decision before seeing gameplay so I just picked arbitrarily. I can't comprehend what an ability does in context before I've seen the combat. Honestly maybe lock all the characters except one until they've been beaten them in Breakneck, or some other condition. Risk of Rain 2 for example only starts you with the 2 most straightforward characters out of the possible 20ish to not overwhelm with complexity. If I were redesigning the gameplay loop, I'd consider removing all or almost all the abilities from the characters entirely, and just have those distributed as roguelike perks. Put all that together and you can truly make it "learn as you go."
Hey! Iām working on a major BEAT BAES update and would love your feedback again.
Youāll probably notice this message is a copy-paste because I like to work efficiently, but I specifically picked you based on your previous feedback and want to see what you think of the changes.
The next build should be ready this weekend or early next week. Play as long as you want, then just fill out a feedback form. No recording required.
If youāre interested, message me on Discord with your itch name if itās different: beatbaes
thanks a lot for your feedback , I checked it out for a bit playing on mobile. I like the cohesive style the characters and art work together. It was a bit laggy on but this couldāve been on my side, I imagine it plays a lot better on the PC. One thing I would comment on is the default borders I would create custom art for them unless this is a intentional design choice. Fun game.
Hi thanks for playing! This game is not for mobile yet, so Iām impressed you got anywhere with it lol. Can you tell me what the default borders youāre speaking about are?
If youāve got another 2 mins, Iād really appreciate you dropping your thoughts in the feedback form too. If you already did, thank you!
https://forms.gle/TgpNJp2bVzUuq8ea6
When I first started playing, there was a lot of UI and skill information shown all at once, so it took me some time to understand what I should focus on first. However, the game has a very unique concept, and once I got used to it, it became really fun.
Thanks for playing! Glad it started clicking once you got into it. The amount of stuff thrown at you early is definitely something Iām trying to figure out.
If you could pick one thing, what UI or skill info would you have wanted me to hide or save for later?
Also please take 2 mins to fill out my feedback form if you havenāt already. If you did, thank you so much!
https://forms.gle/TgpNJp2bVzUuq8ea6
The visuals and UI are really cool. I especially liked the dark background combined with the different accent colors for each character.
However, when I first started playing, I had trouble understanding what I was controlling, how to control it, and what the objective was. Even in Bootcamp, there was initially no opponent, so I tried the controls shown on screen but wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing.
After adding a dummy and experimenting with the abilities, I gradually understood that the game is about battling other spinning tops. I think a short step-by-step tutorial showing what you control, how basic movement works, and what you're trying to do against an opponent would make the game much easier to get into.
I also had some difficulty reading the shape of the arena. It seemed to be bowl-shaped, but the slope and differences in height weren't very clear to me. Making the terrain shape a little easier to read might also make it easier to understand where and how to knock opponents around.
Once I understood the concept, I liked the idea of battling with different character abilities. The presentation, especially the UI colors and effects, looks great.
Thanks for giving it a play!
There are actually camera controls, but I might have forgotten to update them in the last build.
Tutorial is coming soon as well!
If you have a minute, please leave feedback on the form it helps A LOT!
https://forms.gle/hrA3t6et9t2jqkXp7
Thanks for the reply! I filled out the feedback form as well.
I enjoyed the game once I understood how everything worked, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops!
By the way, I also submitted a small browser game called "Falling Speed & Last-Second Stop" to Feedback Quest 9. If you have some time, I'd love to hear what you think of it too. It's designed specifically for smartphones, so if you do try it, I'd really appreciate it if you could play it on your phone.
If you have time, I'd also really appreciate a rating on Feedback Quest.
https://taro8factory.itch.io/rakka-sokudo-sundome
Thank you and OF COURSE. I will check out your game today :)
Hey! Iām working on a major BEAT BAES update and would love your feedback again.
Youāll probably notice this message is a copy-paste because I like to work efficiently, but I specifically picked you based on your previous feedback and want to see what you think of the changes.
The next build should be ready this weekend or early next week. Play as long as you want, then just fill out a feedback form. No recording required.
If youāre interested, message me on Discord with your itch name if itās different: beatbaes
Suggestions:
Fair criticism.
If the game was running at one frame per second, then it was genuinely a Barely Playable game. Iām grateful you were the first person to confirm that my one-person studio can truly live up to its name š
Iām a professional software engineer building this, but credentials do not change the experience you had. This sprint focused heavily on design and presentation, and performance clearly needs attention.
Admittedly, Iāve tested the game across several physical and virtual machines, and roughly three dozen people have played it so far. I also spent several hours testing PvP yesterday. We encountered rubber-banding and other network jank, but the moves and impacts remained legible for players on both ends. Iāve heard plenty about the general jank, but this is the first report of performance anywhere near one frame per second.
If you can share your browser, OS, hardware, and whether hardware acceleration was enabled, I would genuinely appreciate it. Your experience is clearly real, even if I have not reproduced it yet.
The current AI artwork is placeholder material, and Iām already commissioning human artists to develop the final character art and visual identity. I understand your objection to it, so Iām not going to debate you into liking it. It is what it is until it isnāt.
As for the code, I make the architectural and design decisions and have spent well into the triple digits of hours reviewing and refactoring tens of thousands of lines, separate from the rest of development. AI assists with implementation, but this remains a human-directed project for which I am responsible. If a bad decision caused this performance issue, then thatās on me.
I suspect some of the jank comes from functionally building my own game engine out of Phaser, Three.js, and wet dreams. Starting the game in 2D and later converting it to full 3D probably did not help either š
Iām not going to replace code solely because AI helped produce it. Iāll replace or refactor anything that fails to perform, behave correctly, or remain maintainable. Based on your experience, something clearly failed that standard, and I genuinely want to find it.
And yes, my background also includes marketing and creative production. Thankfully the vibes survived even when the framerate didnāt.
Anyway, Iāll keep the thirst and work on the jank. Thanks for giving the core idea a real chance and for taking the time to write such detailed feedback.
Here's a random grab-bag of system stats. Let me know if you need anything specific (redacted for relevance):
Web Browser Firefox
Maybe more like 5-10 fps, but in the video I recorded, it drops to 1FPS once three tops start hitting each other.
It literally looks like the animated gif in the top left corner of this page.š
It's really interesting that you chose to make your own game engine from scratch. That's literally the hardest thing to do in Game Development, and it usually results in years of wasted effort and developer regrets. One thing you gain from using an established engine like Unity or Unreal or Godot is hardened battle-tested reliability. If someone's using a 4 year old laptop with obscure generic parts from china and out-of-date drivers, that use case has already been encountered hundreds of times by the thousands and thousands of developers using the engine, and is usually long-since patched before you've even picked up the engine.
Now, you can spend hundreds of hours squinting at bad code and pressing the re-roll button until the RNG gods smile upon you and the markov chains manage to guess an answer that looks close enough to what you asked for that AI-bros with high-end systems won't complain too badly about it. Or, you can spend 5 minutes per decision squinting at the engine documentation, make all of the actual decisions yourself, not just the architectural ones, and, most crucially, pivot on a dime when something goes wrong, without completely regenerating everything from scratch and thus losing any institutional knowledge you'd managed to build up about how your own game works.
The downside is that you have to actually think about what to do, and then do it. Every step of the way.
The upside is the 90% of gamers who stay far, far away from anything with the "AI-assisted" tag will not only click on your game, but it might actually just work out-of-the-box on their equally-jank, barely playable devices. When it doesn't, you'll be able to talk to a person in the community or on the engine development team who knows the engine better than you, learn from them, and gradually improve your craft.
I'm sure the sunk cost is probably too great on your end for what I just wrote to change your mind, but I hope you'll think about it for your next project. Whether you were a traditional developer before you picked up AI, or you've been vibe-coding ever since you picked up your first computer, it's worth doing it yourself.
That said, I honestly don't know how I'd go about programming this. Who knows? Maybe this is one of those rare edge-cases where AI is actually the right tool for the job. Maybe there's a big database of Beyblade Math somewhere, and that was the only possible way you could have gotten the arena slope to feel just right to kids who grew up playing BeyBlade, or something. Now, most games fake their physics instead of actually calculating them. But maybe your game uses real physics under-the-hood. Maybe there's a good reason for that. I don't know. If that's the case, I'd love to hear about it. There's a part of me that's rooting for you, even though you're on the other side of the AI debate. I'm not sure why.
Thank you. This is exactly the kind of system information I needed, especially knowing that the major drop happens when three BAEs collide. If youāre able to share the recording, that would also be useful, but no pressure.
To clarify one point, Iām not literally building an engine entirely from scratch. The game is built on Phaser and Three.js, with custom systems connecting rendering, physics, combat, and the rest of the game. It is still an unconventional stack with plenty of opportunities for me to hurt myself, as demonstrated here.
The broader goal is to combine real physics-driven interactions with an arcade feel. One of the major roadmap features is the ability to shape and sculpt individual BAE parts, somewhat like Spore. Those shapes are intended to affect how the BAE handles, collides, distributes its mass, and behaves in the arena, so the physics become part of the actual build strategy rather than visual decoration.
I have seriously considered using a conventional game engine, and I may still rebuild the game in Godot once the design has earned that investment. Right now, Iām approaching this as product development as much as traditional game development. My priority is to validate the core idea, test its variables with real players, and iterate on feedback as quickly and cheaply as possible.
If the concept proves itself, I can approach a Godot rebuild with the combat rules, game feel, progression, content structure, and technical requirements already understood. That would still be a significant rebuild, not a simple port, but it would be a much more informed one than committing to production architecture before knowing whether the game deserves it.
Thanks again for the detailed follow-up and for giving the game a fair chance!
SICK. Found it. Looks like this is an issue with Firefox!
That's fantastic news! :D I look forward to the patch. I'll play the existing build later on Chrome or Edge or something and let you know the difference.
I'll be honest, I hadn't looked up what Phaser and Three.js actually were when I wrote my last comment. I haven't done a lot of web frontend development to be familiar with them. I just assumed they were part of the AI stuff. I suppose if you were desperate, you could try hand-optimizing the html5 output? I have a feeling you'll figure out something more elegant, though. You sound like you know your tools.
Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to get this from concept to where it is right now, using AI?
Physics-based gameplay is almost always a bad idea... but I say that with a caveat.
Many video games have "physics engines," like Bullet and Havok, for example. And Box3D is apparently poised to optimize that whole concept pretty soon. But historically, what I've seen is a lot of "dev trying to make a simulation, the simulation falls apart when people actually play the game, so they start fudging the numbers." Increasing the mass of cardboard boxes or whatever, until the thing looks like it behaves realistically.
The caveat is, people who grey up playing Beyblade probably know how all those fins and grooves would interact, realistically. Maybe not all of them. But if they see a familiar match-up, they'll have a gut feeling about how it will go down. That could be your game's secret sauce, if done right. That could be its killer app.
Then again, if the player can steer their top into a collision, but they can't keep track of the rotating blades or adjust the tilt of their top, there's no practical way for players to leverage that knowledge. The gameplay becomes vibe checks all the way down. That's the point where it starts making more and more sense to fake it.
But what really gives me pause is the idea of adding all-new parts that never existed or can't exist in the real world. I think you'll find that most physical shapes could have been manufactured out of plastic and chrome in the 1990s if corporations had really wanted to do it. What stopped them from putting a big hammer on one side of the top, or a bunch of forked blades sticking out in all directions?
Well, physics.
The physical laws that you're trying to capture and bottle also constrained the viability of the actual physical beyblade designs IRL. To put it another way, the more heavily you lean into the arcade gameplay, the less sense the physics simulation is going to make, and the more you'll need to override the physics with pre-programmed or at least heavily constrained responses.
Suppose a top fires a missile at another top. How big are these things? What are they made of? Does the explosion send one of the tops rocketing off-screen in less than 1/60th of a second because it weighs as much as a plastic toy? Or do you increase the top's mass to compensate? Or just use a much weaker explosion? I feel like, at some point, intuitively, they're either going to feel like toys on a toy arena instead of giant steel death machines, or else they're going to feel less like Beyblade for the fans.
There are ways to solve this, but they all involve classic game dev smoke-and-mirrors. Juice, sound effects, screen shake, particles, all that good stuff. They're case-by-case, extremely contextual, and hard to describe. The sorts of things that AI can sometimes do with surprising fidelity... until it suddenly doesn't, and it glitches out in some ridiculous way that a human faking the simulation never would.
It might be that I'm still over-estimating how heavily you rely on AI. Let me know if I'm out of line. I don't feel like most of the code I've written over the last 6 months has been boilerplate. I feel like most of that stuff is already taken care of by the engine, to a very reasonable extent, and most of what's left to the developer is game-specific choices. (Then again, I've been using gdscript as a mostly functional language and only relying on signals to interact with UI elements, so it's possible I've either dodged some godot engine boilerplate, or else created some for myself, depending on how you look at it.)
Youāre not out of line. Youāve actually landed pretty close to how Iām approaching it.
Itās difficult to give the project a clean start date. The concept and systems have evolved through ideas and experiments over a much longer period, while AI has accelerated the recent implementation and iteration. The game still draws on over a decade of accumulated experience across software, design, music, and creative production.
My workflow is essentially rapid hypothesis testing. If I have five possible approaches to a mechanic, I can define them, use AI to help implement bounded experiments, evaluate the results with automated checks and instrumentation (spent a week on building a CICD pipeline and it sucks but it works), then personally playtest each version. I keep, combine, refactor, or discard them based on what actually feels good. AI shortens the distance between an idea and a playable answer, but it does not decide what is fun.
Iād describe the game as physics-based, not physics-pure. Physics creates the interactions, but gameplay remains in charge. If realistic behavior is unreadable, uncontrollable, or boring, Iāll constrain it, exaggerate it, or fake it. Iām building a game, not submitting a spinning-mech dissertation lmao. The future part-shaping system is where this gets especially interesting. Players will be able to sculpt parts somewhat like Spore, with shape influencing mass distribution, balance, contact geometry, handling, and collisions. That should create builds with actual physical consequences rather than slightly different stat cards. Or at least make spinning phallic objects at some point.
It will be difficult to tune perfectly, but the theme gives me permission to embrace some instability. This probably wonāt become the worldās most clinically balanced esport. Itās for people who want to build something questionable and watch spinning mechs collide into absolute ragdoll insanity. The simulation creates the surprises, then juiced up feedback and carefully fudged impulses make them feel good.
Iāll be releasing a hotfix for Firefox based on your report but itāll take time. Today is dedicated to collaborating with the artists, playing other developersā games, and catching up on real life work (boo fucking hoo, but it pays the bills and funds this project), so the deeper performance investigation may have to wait a little bit :(
BTW: adding your game to my list to try out this week, looking forward to giving it a go!
A few of the early sketches from artist testing :)
Hey! Iām working on a major BEAT BAES update and would love your feedback again.
Youāll probably notice this message is a copy-paste because I like to work efficiently, but I specifically picked you based on your previous feedback and want to see what you think of the changes.
The next build should be ready this weekend or early next week. Play as long as you want, then just fill out a feedback form. No recording required.
If youāre interested, message me on Discord with your itch name if itās different: beatbaes
FUN-tastic Game!
Visuals are just awesome. I wish I could have anything like this in my own game. Who made it? How much cost?
UI has the only one but huge weak point: very low font size and too many UI elements on the screen at the same place. Feels too "busy", overloaded. Therefore, it does not feel comfortable to read all tutorials, descriptions and stuff.
Audio fits perfectly fine.
Passed through the arcade mode. After the victory in the final match, the ending/result screen popped up immediately, suddenly and unexpectedly. Just BOOM! and You Have Won!
I have lost once and did not understand what happened.
Go Go Power Rangers!
Thanks for playing! And noted on the UI, I am working on it.
Pls leave feedback on the form, itāll only take a minute and itās super helpful:
https://forms.gle/hrA3t6et9t2jqkXp7
Hi all, this is just to let you know that the game has changed immensely since I first posted it here. If youāve played before please consider playing again.
Devlog: https://barelyplayable.itch.io/beatbaes/devlog/1653652/v040-the-beat-baes-update
Woaaah this is a very unique combat mechanic :D The Ui looks AMAZING o.o
For me personally I felt like Didi and Reina are weaker than the others, but maybe I just didn't quite understand how to play them correctly. Ash's LMB was straight forward, but with other attacks I felt like I didn't really knew if I or the enemy succeded with the attacks or not. So sometimes somebody (me or the enemy) died and I wasn't really sure why. Maybe some visuell feedback on the attacks outcomes would be helpful :) Also the ability explanations are a bit short/hard to understand sometimes. I could imagine something similar like in lol where you have character screen and a short video of the ability to actually see what is happening during the ability.
The brawl mode is suuuuuper helpful to learn the skills of the different characters :D
Hi Moana, thanks for playing!!
Great feedback and glad you mentioned the skill explainers from lol because I just finished adding that scheduled for the next release haha
If you havenāt yet, please take a min to do the feedback form, itās SUPER helpful and VERY appreciated :)
https://forms.gle/hrA3t6et9t2jqkXp7
Ah nice so you already had the idea for that xD
Yeah I'll look into the form! :)
I added your game to my list to try, will be checking it out next week <3
Hey! Iām working on a major BEAT BAES update and would love your feedback again.
Youāll probably notice this message is a copy-paste because I like to work efficiently, but I specifically picked you based on your previous feedback and want to see what you think of the changes.
The next build should be ready this weekend or early next week. Play as long as you want, then just fill out a feedback form. No recording required.
If youāre interested, message me on Discord with your itch name if itās different: beatbaes
Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!
I'm not someone who grew up with Beyblades, but I always knew what they were and thought they were a cool concept. So seeing a game like this was honestly really cool for me. I also immediately fell in love with the style of the game, with all of its dirty jokes. I also loved how you even worked that humour into the "build" of the tops, referring to parts as body, waist and heel. That said, I do need to open with this: you should change the name. While Blade Baes is a really great name, I could absolutely see this coming up as a copyright thing due to how similar it is to Bey Blades. I always advise people to steer clear of copyright issues because large corporations like Takara and Hasbro.
Right off the bat, the gameplay is really fun. Having this sort of control over a spinning top is really cool. While it took me a moment to get used to controls, it wasn't long before I was just rocking it and wasting opponents. I especially was kicking ass with Didi, who I found would just outlast everyone thanks to her ability to regain spin. On the flip side, I was struggling with Miyu due to her having a much slower initial spin (and a bit of confusion over how her primary skill worked due to not remembering what I read when I went through all the characters). I'll outright say that the only character I didn't try in some way was Reina, so I can't comment on her gameplay.
In terms of the gameplay, I can already see that this game is going to be rather challenging to balance. Like I said, Miyu felt really hard to use even when I knew her abilities, despite the fact that she's rated as having the same learning curve as Didi. I do think Miyu could use some more spin, or at least maybe a way for her bouncing to recover some. In fact, I think every character should have some way to recover some spin just so it doesn't feel as hopeless if a player falls behind.
I also think a larger arena would be a good idea. By this I don't mean shrink the size of the tops. Rather, keep them the same (or even make them a touch larger) and make it that the bounds of the arena go outside the screen. That way, you can do more than just 2 additional opponents.
Speaking of opponents, I think every run should begin with a single opponent for one reason: so the player can learn that all opponents have names, descriptions and quotes. I sometimes started with two opponents, and when you do that you don't get to actively see all of this information as easily when it's just one.
One thing I'm also hoping will be a thing is more characters. From what I can tell, each character is built around a specific stat. What you could do in order to have more characters is create more variance between stats such that you can have some characters who are highly specialized in a single stat while others are above average in two stats. I'd love to see some characters from other parts of the world, especially from certain nations that I find can get under represented in video games.
The last major thing I'd like to cover is to suggest trying to limit how far the mouse cursor can move while in the game. This could be harder when it's a web build, but I'd love to see it that during a match the cursor can't go too far beyond the arena itself. That way, a player can't panic move their mouse far outside of the arena.
From here, everything I can talk about is more nitpicking than solid feedback. However, for the sake of wanting to see this game get really good, I'm still going to include it all.
First, the artwork. You already put this in the start up so I know it's going to be changed in the future. However, I think that this being done ASAP would be really good for the game's promotion. It's already a lot of fun to play, so the sooner the AI artwork is gone the better it'll be. Also, Miyu has six fingers on her left hand. XD
Second, this could be a me thing but I am NOT a fan of Didi's voice. Maybe it's because I heard it over and over at the start of every round for some reason, but her voice sounds muddy and uninteresting. I know she's a goth, but I've heard goth people speak with more energy. I think she'd be better by having more energy in her lines but then having her lines just feel more goth-like.
Finally, I'd love to see the visuals for the tops improve. This game is obviously a 2D game and this could be hard, but I feel like just seeing the topside of... well, a top just feels a little visually boring, even with the fun designs. I'm not sure how you could improve this, mind you. Maybe a thing where, as you make sharp turns, you can see the top "tilt" and see the heel poke out a bit? Not sure. This isn't a big deal, just something I think could be cool.
That's it from me. Great job on the game! If I could download it to play off browser, I 100% would because this is fun!
First of all, thank you so much for hosting the event, playing my game, and taking the time to write all of this out. I definitely want to see the VOD, so please link it whenever itās ready!
Youāre also one of the first people to really call out the dirty jokes and how theyāre worked into the game, so I appreciate you noticing that. And yes, Blade Baes is definitely sailing in some potentially treacherous trademark waters lol. Iām keeping tabs on it and still figuring out what to do there. For now, I mainly wanted a name that immediately communicated what the game was about and got people curious enough to try it, while I make sure the game itself is actually fun and worth pursuing.
Didi is absolutely broken right now, by the way lmao. Iām glad you tried nearly everyone because all of that character feedback is extremely valuable. Funnily enough, around half of the things you mentioned have already been changed or are being addressed in the latest build, so itās reassuring to see someone independently arrive at the same conclusions.
The single opponent for the first fight is a really good call. I think that would make the opening less overwhelming while giving players a better chance to learn the enemy personalities, names, descriptions, and quotes. Then, if they keep playing, we can open things up into the larger battles afterward.
And yes, more characters are absolutely foundational to the idea. I kid you not, my notepad already has over three dozen character concepts representing a lot of different countries. I love the international representation in games like Valorant and Overwatch, so Iāve definitely stolen a little inspiration from them there.
Good call on Didiās voice too. I literally replaced it today because it was starting to annoy me as well. The repetition certainly wasnāt helping either.
On the artwork and AI usage, I completely understand the concern. The current alpha is partly about validating whether people actually enjoy the idea before I pour my own money into it. I have no problem investing in my own game and replacing the placeholder artwork as it develops, but I also donāt want the prototype to have fewer features, less personality, or weaker presentation than I can reasonably give it right now. Also, yes, Miyuās bonus finger has been noted. š
The tops and arena presentation are something Iāve been thinking about a lot too. In fact, Iāve recently been experimenting with a 3D version of the battles while keeping the existing gameplay and HUD. Iām not deciding anything officially yet, but honestly, itās already looking pretty sick. If you want to try that experimental build, let me know.
And hearing that youād actually download the game to keep playing it is genuinely one of the most encouraging things you could have said.
Again, I really appreciate the time you put into both playing and giving such thoughtful feedback. Iām looking forward to the VOD, and Iād also love to connect outside of itch if youāre up for it.
Discord: @beatbaes
Love it, I'm actually pretty interested to see what more comes from this. I got a nice hit of nostalgia from the beyblade era
Feel free to follow and add me on discord @bladebaes, always looking for real bb fans to playtest!
Working on a new build right now thatās experimenting withā¦3D ;)
Oh yeah, please leave feedback if you have a sec: https://forms.gle/hrA3t6et9t2jqkXp7
Iāll try out your game as well :)
Any feedback youāre specifically looking for?
Sure thing!
For feedback, mainly just what works and what doesn't, lol. This isn't my main project, just something I'm mainly messing around with. This is the first project where I'm trying to use AI, so anything to help with that aspect.
I was always a fan of Tron back in the day so it's more of a personal nostalgia thing...
Left you feedback on the game page :)