Rebound - hybrid of breakout, pinball and air hockey

Dev diaries
#1

Rebound is inspired by an old game named Titan which appeared on 8-bit computers and the PC Engine (remember that!?) nearly 30 years ago. The concept is very simple : you move a bat around the level and deflect a ball into destructible blocks.

To make things more interesting there are various special blocks dotted around the level and they have various properties for the player to discover.

I’ve had no end of trouble getting the collision detection to work properly with this. Lots of stuff going through walls and such but it seems fairly stable now, if a bit juddery in places.

I’m presently targeting browser for this game but might stretch to native builds if I’m pleased enough with the finished game.

There’s only a single level at the moment but it demonstrates most of the concepts in the game

Play HTML5 build in browser

Use [W A S D] keys to move around

rebound.jpg1280×720 296 KB

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#2

Nice! I got a bit confused by the arrow shaped button/tile seen on the screenshot. What exactly does it do? Teleport me and the ball or was that just a coincidence?

#3

Yes, the arrow tile swaps the position of the bat and the ball around.

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#4

Got lots done on Rebound over this weekend. The game now plays through the whole game cycle and has 5 completed levels this far.

My least favourite part of making games is designing levels so to speed up this process, I’ve implemented a ‘painter’ algorithm that takes the outline of a level and works out which tiles to use, adds shadows and such. Now, each level is only taking 15-20 minute each to make.

I’ve also added a front-end menu which is displaying a help screen at the moment. This will probably be split into two separate screens to avoid looking cluttered. There are a few more sound effects now too.

I’m pleased with how to game is looking so will look to release platform specific version on itch.io when everything is complete.

rebound2.jpg1280×720 313 KB

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#5

Kick-ass! Always fun to sign in and see another Ben James demo up.

This is a matter of preference, of course, but I thought the intro/help screen was a nice touch. Personally, this is my preferred way of learning games:

  1. Game is intuitive enough no/few instructions are needed.
  2. Great onboarding—learn the game mechanics through playing (Bring me Cakes does this really nicely, introducing more elements and enemies as you progress—take one one of the first few levels, where there’s a wolf stuck in a small, sealed-off, area of the woods, making you immediately realize how the wolf relates to your own movement without the risk of it eating you)
  3. Instructions up-front.
  4. Having to locate instructions and read them prior to the game (I just want to get in there and play!)

But maybe that’s just my millennial-ish attention span. Once again—very nice demo, @benjames171 :slight_smile:

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#6

Lol! Well maybe it is, but I can still agree to the points you’re making, and at the same time I also love the more hard core approach of learning stuff the hard way or through experimentation. I guess it depends a bit on the target audience.

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#7

We’re pretty much done with developing Rebound. I’ve updated the web version here if you want a go:

Play Rebound in browser
hint: press the END key to skip levels

I’ll be publishing platform specific builds on itch.io later and will post the link to the #MadeWithDefold thread when it’s ready.

Thanks for reading. As suggested, I’ve put basic instructions on the first screen of the game. Everything else you’ll have to figure out along the way :sweat_smile:

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#8

Add an audio slider / mute button / lower the default sound volumes?

Not enough padding/ extrusion?

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#9

Thanks for the suggestions - builds updated accordingly.

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#10

The full source project for Rebound is freely available :

Rebound Defold source on Google Drive

Use however you wish.

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