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Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing

astro.golf

21–30 of 115 posts

Re: Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing

#21

Great job on completing it, and great job on nailing the same beautiful simplicity of Desert Golfing, but with planetary gravity.

Thank you, I was hoping it would appeal to the DG crowd. I couldn't go as full minimalism as DG since I felt that some explanation / tutorial was necessary (the game being a little less obvious). I also wanted to play more on a "Le Petit Prince" theme!

Re: Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing

#22
I remember playing a game like this when I was a kid (25ish years ago) at school, except it wasn't golf, but rather a two player game where you shot gravity-assisted missiles at each other (think Worms-in-space). I remember it being on an Acorn Archimedes, but it may have been a PC.

Re: Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing

#23

Finished the demo and enjoyed the experience. Fun! Thank you! Some ideas that would have made it even more fun for me, though which might change the game too much from your original vision: Ghost arrow: show what shot I played last time, so I can tweak my strategy. Reset: some sort of gesture to quickly go back to the start, so I can tweak based on the ghost arrow. Escape velocity: a fun part of orbital mechanics, an…

Thanks for the detailed feedback - some really good points.

Ghost arrow is something I thought of, but I was concerned it would make the game too easy.

Reset: you can long press without dragging to reset. There's a tutorial-prompt for it, but it only comes up when you appear to be stuck in a gravity well (which can happen).

Escape velocity: I did have this initially, but playtesters found it very frustrating and preferred to see a crazy figure-of-16 through lots of planets. I understand your point of view though.

That's very good feedback on hard mode - I wonder what I can change to make that more obviously a button. I personally prefer hard mode too.

Re: Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing

#24

I remember playing a game like this when I was a kid (25ish years ago) at school, except it wasn't golf, but rather a two player game where you shot gravity-assisted missiles at each other (think Worms-in-space). I remember it being on an Acorn Archimedes, but it may have been a PC.

Yeah, there are a few games with a similar mechanic! Probably not the one you're thinking of, but there is: https://sourceforge.net/projects/slingshot-game/

Re: Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What platform would you consider using in the future, rather than Unity?

I've been looking more and more at Godot, and I really like it. Open source, you can script in C++, and it seems to have most of the features necessary for a simple 2d game like this (perhaps not for some AAA 3D game of course).

Also when developing on Linux I had more luck getting Godot to function than Unity. Had quite a bit of fun making a sidescrolling game in Godot :)

Re: Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing

#27
post #25

I don't usually install apps (especially games) with in app purchases. The only time I sometimes do is when I know what they are up front. Can you explain what the in app purchases are in the description?

Sure thing - that's a good point. I will add something to the store descriptions.

The first 10 levels are free (and you can replay them endlessly). To unlock infinite levels, there is an IAP for ~1.99 USD.

Re: Show HN: My first game, minimal procgen gravity golf inspired by Desert Golfing

#28

Hi HN, I just launched this little game of mine - Astro Golf. You can think of it as Desert Golfing but in space, where the gravitation pull of the planets create some interesting levels. I think it was on an HN comment that I first heard about Desert Golfing many moons ago, so it felt fitting to post this back here. All the levels are procedurally generated, and are guaranteed to be hole-in-one-able. I did this by c…

So simple, yet incredibly fun, well done! Could you share how long it took to build it ? I've been thinking about creating a small game, for fun, and to learn stuff along the way, and I am wondering how much time it would take me.
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