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Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

breakout.lecaro.me

171–180 of 196 posts

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#171
post #20

Very fun! Works great on iPhone. Neat that I can stop by just lifting my finger to take a breather. Fun multipliers! More to discover!

Yes, I'm and android user, but my girlfriend is on iphone, so I better make it work there too. Not going to pay the apple tax to publish a free game on the store though. have you noticed that you could disable the "mobile mode" in settings, and then move your finger over the browser navigation, and it still controls the puck ? Fullscreen didn't work last time i tried in safari but this gives you a bit extra space and…

I didn’t have to disable mobile mode to move my fingers over the browser navigation from the app and still control the puck. It’s very replaceable. I like the statistics. Perhaps one that shows a histogram over all games and where you rank for score etc? But top tennis is generous.

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

awesome, fixed for brave thanks. I now get to see the 'run finished' page, but feels strange, I played 4 or 5 levels and then run complete, then another 4 or 5 levels, and reached smiley, but looks like you lose upgrades each time. Anyway lvl 3 ball piercing with 2 balls was started to feel like a bullet shooter with coins exploding everywhere, great fun! I had one level completed that showed 0 out of 0 and 0 in 0, o…

Ah yes, I guess the a?.b syntax is also quite new, and as a grumpy many myself, i didn't feel like adding a js preprocessor. This syntax is used 25 times, i think at that point it would be more reasonable to write my game in typescript or something else kids do these days haha. The run should complete at level 7, unless you extend it with the "+1 level" upgrade up to three time. If you stop at level 4 or 5 it means y…

I'm glad you have no stats, especially for hours spent playing! I have a better feel for it now, and still really like it. Although it can be a bit jarring to have crazy upgrades and clear a level in 3s, only to have completed the run, and be back to 60s+ level 1. I worked out the extra levels thing you mentioned (it was probably always 7 but felt shorter because of the fast pace!) and I hit 10 levels on a few runs, but the text was wrong a couple times eg. '+1 level lvl 2 - 1 more brick replaced by a bomb'. The new coins are cute, although I also liked the spray of colour on the old ones. The repulse is fun, although I had one ball bouncing left to right a few times, before another one shifted it, but could imagine a stuck ball had it missed. 6149 my top score so far. Do those scores/stats persist between plays, otherwise I might never be able to close the browser again! Right, 'one last game' to see what wind is all about.

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the perks seem to be downgrades or maybe they require synergy. Compound interest will tank you combo… unless you use magnetism (necessary) and viscosity (very helpful), at which point you get exponential bonus going. The perk that gives you more bonus the more bounces your ball does seems like it could be good, but it resets your bonus when you hit the ball with your paddle, so actually it is streak destroyin…

Yeah, there are a few footguns in here. Most bad perks are not so bad once combined with sapper+pierce+puck control ball + multiball + bigger explosions because levels finish in 2 seconds anyway

Speaking of finishing maps in 2 seconds—it seems to me that having the number of maps be the thing that determines the run length could be sort of limiting to your design choices in powerups. Enough kaboom and the run will just blow through the screens in an instant, and your run will be over before you can fully enjoy in your overpowered nature.

It could be interesting if time was a component to the whole thing instead. Look at Risk of Rain for inspiration, the game gets harder as time goes by. You have a finite number of power-ups that you can unlock per map, so the player is incentivized to try and keep progressing through the maps at a good rate.

In your case, maybe the player could “buy” a +1 map bonus for their run using coins. The cost in coins could be influenced by the current time and the map number. Then, the player will have to choose between strategies that slow them down but get more coins, and strategies that let them smash their way through maps.

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#174
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm and android user, but my girlfriend is on iphone, so I better make it work there too. Not going to pay the apple tax to publish a free game on the store though. have you noticed that you could disable the "mobile mode" in settings, and then move your finger over the browser navigation, and it still controls the puck ? Fullscreen didn't work last time i tried in safari but this gives you a bit extra space and…

I didn’t have to disable mobile mode to move my fingers over the browser navigation from the app and still control the puck. It’s very replaceable. I like the statistics. Perhaps one that shows a histogram over all games and where you rank for score etc? But top tennis is generous.

In the meantime i found the best way to play on iphone safari is to tap aA/hide toolbars. The histograms shown are your top 10 games. I limited the list because after a while the earlier games and 10 seconds run just pollute the histogram by stretching the interval. A separate list of just the score could be nice, but i don't know if it's so interesting to know you player 30 or 40 games better than the current one before, right ? The goal being to reach high scores, i thought i'd show how they compare to their best version of themselves. There's no global leaderboard because i don't want to maintain such a server and the game is trivial to cheat in.

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#175
post #35

Amazing! Well executed idea and great example that less is more. :) Consider: (a) locking mouse (b) hiding cursor (c) fullscreen mode Here's an example if you don't want to search docs: https://mdn.github.io/dom-examples/pointer-lock/ As other mentioned UI needs a few more iterations, but it's ok. I don't think you need to track coins during the run as you don't spend them to buy upgrades - which is not obvious and m…

Pointer lock is now in the options, it also hides the cursor, let me know your thoughts. Fullscreen mode should be toggled with the F key, or in the menu.

On Firefox android, I don't get fullscreen after adding to home screen. Not sure the cause. Slightly better on chrome but there's still some browser UI shown. I guess it needs to be a configured as a progressive web app. That would be amazing to maximise screen real estate

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#176
Hello,

This a tremendously good game, very clean in all ways that matter. Merci beaucoup!

Below is me wilding out a bit, feel free to ignore. The take home message is: great game, thanks!!

I do however wish for two things down the road:

More focus on the run

A) some kind of tracker for where you are in the run (level 2/10)

B) a perk that lets you chose (2-4 choices) what level to go to next (so you can pick ones you like OR search for hidden combos)

C) a perk that lets you prolong the run with 1-3 levels (making it easier to score higher and also to look for hidden combos)

.

Some complexity to the unlocking system

Since you say you are inspired by Vampire Survivors I think there is a lot of space to have more complex unlocks.

Like having levelled a perk to 3 unlocks another perk, 2 level 2 perks can combine to a different perk. 3 specific perks combine to a new one, etc

Completing a set of levels unlocks a final level in the same theme.

Unlocks based on misses per level and/or run.

Unlocks based on coin-catch percentage, obviously 100%, but also others.

Even time based unlocks (completing all levels in a run under X sec, completing every level slower than the previous one, or Mario style time unlocks, so ending on 11, 22, etc)

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#177
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured this can be used to cheat a bit. The paddle warps to the finger instantly on touch. You can use the pause to catch all coins

Yeah, I'll try to alleviate that by making the pause take more and more time to happen when repeatedly use it in a level.

Interesting. I was thinking it might lead to some cool emergent mechanics, especially combined with puck control ball, but I can see that being suboptimal, especially in how it introduces differences between mobile and mouse gameplay.

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#178
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your coins look like coins, i'm a bit jealous and will do the same :) So you're going for a longer play style, with many levels, and a character build where you have a very strong ship at the end ? I think trying to tell stories around such a simple mechanic with nicely designed levels and background is a great idea ! If you release out of steam at some point, I'd love to try it. I'm allergic to that platform and its…

here i have updated it to latest. https://arcadenest-games.itch.io/rogue-bricks

I'll give it a try. Itch quarantined your page, i'm not sure why. I don't care because my gaming pc is airgapped but you might want to look into it. When clicking download i got this :

WARNING: This Page Has Been Quarantined

Our system has flagged this page for additional review due to potential suspicious behavior from the page owner.

If someone has asked you to download from this page and you don't fully trust them, or their behavior isn't what you recognize, then we don't recommend downloading this file until our team has reviewed the page.

Password-protecting files or pages is a technique often used by scammers in an attempt to block virus and other security scans from detecting malware. Do not trust password-protected files unless you fully trust the uploader.

Learn more about the "Try my game" Discord scam.

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#179

Hello, This a tremendously good game, very clean in all ways that matter. Merci beaucoup! Below is me wilding out a bit, feel free to ignore. The take home message is: great game, thanks!! I do however wish for two things down the road: More focus on the run A) some kind of tracker for where you are in the run (level 2/10) B) a perk that lets you chose (2-4 choices) what level to go to next (so you can pick ones you…

Merci for the feedback.

A/ I had a current level display before, but now the menu is in its place. I guess once you pass level 1 i could display your current level instead of "menu" at the top right. I also want to show the score and multiplier, i'll have to do hard choices. B/ Yes, letting users pick the next level is a great perk, it's a bit of a code change but not that hard, i added it to the possible new perks list. C/ This perk already exists (menu/unlocks/+1 level) but you need to score a bit to get it.

I've played a lot of nova drift where the is a lot of complexity to the upgrades system in-run. In previous versions of breakout 71 you would permanently unlock perks level by level but that was a lot of code and not contributing much to the fun, so I got rid of it and you for example just unlock all 3 levels of "extra level" at total score 13000 (all run scores summed).

I did restrict some perks about ball to ball interactions (ball_repulse_ball, ball_attract_ball to having first picked the multiball perk) because otherwise they'd do absolutely nothing.

The misses, coin catch % and level clearing speeds are already tied to an in-game behavior of having more options and being able to upgrade more than once after a level, so I don't know if I'd also add another thing that depends on it. Keyboard users (where it's really hard to not miss 50% of shots) will be mad :)

I never heard of Mario style time unlocks, that sounds like silly fun. You get something for finishing the level in a sepecific amount of seconds, no matter how many minutes?

Re: Show HN: Breakout with a roguelite/vampire survivor twist

#180
post #116

A lot of fun! I enjoy the subtle coloring and changing background texture. It's a bit confusing at first to grasp that one upgrade is applied randomly at the start of the game (I think?). The first few times I played it felt like the rules were changing and I couldn't figure out what contributes to the score multiplier. Also, when you get multiple upgrades, the text reads something like "You caught 0 coins out of 0 i…

Thanks, i put a lot of thought in the neon effects. Yeah, i'll have to explain that in some clearer way. The "You caught 0 coins out of 0 in 0 seconds" is definitely a bug, happened to someone else too, do you mind trying to reproduce it ?

I see the buggy text too (You caught 0 coins out of 0 in 0 seconds (+1 upgrade and choice). You missed 0 times .). Usually on the 2nd+ item selection screen.
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