Objective:
Collect all the green pickups to open the exit (double yellow circle) of each stage. Finish all 20 stages fast, brag your best times online on your favorite social network!
Controls:
- left/right: rotate the stage
- down: increase the ball's gravity to drop faster
- also supports mouse/touch controls
Features:
- 20 stages
- 4 bosses
- Many new game pluses (each with reshuffled procedurally generated levels).
- Lots of circles
- Different backgrounds per level (based on my own favorite tweetcarts).
I actually started this game more than a year ago but got distracted with other projects and its abstractness made it difficult to come back to. But after a quick poll on twitter, it was chosen by many as the next project I should work on, so here we are. I think it came out fun, what do you think? As always, please post below if you find any problems or suggestions and your best times playing the game.
Cheers!
Updates:
4/13/2019:
- Added much-requested hint arrow.
- Buttons X and O can now also be used for fast-drop
It's amazing what game mechanics you can pull off using just circles. Great work!
This is very impressive! It's very mesmerizing to just spin it and let the ball travel around. Great work!
Brilliant execution as usual!!
"I am a game designer" mode on:
Maybe allowing a slightly faster rotation (or acceleration while pressing left/right) would reduce moment just waiting for the ball to align to the nearest exit.
Call me casual, but I found looking for the exit to be no fun - maybe an arrow pointing to the exit room?
"I am a game designer" mode off :]
This is so fun! Really nice movement around the space. I got to level 7 in about 8 minutes; totally mesmerized!
I felt the game was really fun!
I'm no expert on how the Pico 8 works but I think the physics and rotating effects were pretty impressive. I thought the game has a good amount of content as well. My main issue with the game is probably with finding the exit in the later levels. The basic designs, the constantly moving screen and the space of those levels makes finding or remembering were the exit was very frustrating. Exploring to find the exit wouldn't be much of a problem, but the movement between circles isn't smooth enough to make searching levels quick and fun. Despite it's issues, it was a really fun overall experience and I'm looking forward for what you do in the future.
This is very impressive in terms of polish, physics, and game feel (especially with that bounce effect). When you can get it rolling smoothly the movement feels quite good, too. The background effects are interestingly varied as well.
A few notes:
- Some of the bounce pads are irritatingly wide, going off basically indefinitely while you're in the chamber with them or just making it nearly impossible to keep control while going through certain sections.
- Some way to track the bosses down might be nice, too, even if it's just to see the direction they fled in. I don't feel like there's much fun to be had wandering empty halls with no idea of where they could be hiding and nothing to interact with.
- Is the "vania" in the title supposed to be referring to Metroidvanias? Because I don't feel like this actually counts as one if it is. There are no abilities you acquire or cases where you backtrack to explore areas you couldn't reach before.
can you map the fast-falling to the O button? my right hand needs something to do~
@All Thanks for the nice comments guys, puts a smile on my face that you are all enjoying the game!
- The arrow is something that a lot of people want, so some form of that is definitely coming.
- @tesselode: I can make the buttons do the fast falling drop, no problem.
- @Jusiv: the "vania" part was supposed to hint at exploration gameplay which is something I was interested in early on but as the game evolved into what it became it just stuck... better than "Pinball Souls", amirite? :)
@guerragames Hey, fair enough. It definitely does have the exploration part at least. (Though now I actually wanna see an attempt at a soulslike that uses pinball mechanics) :P
It's okay, I guess. It's like if Peggle had a roguelike. Moments of satisfying action followed by minutes of unsatisfying cleanup.
I guess I was just expecting something different. The name made me think of a pinball game that leveled up with new abilities as you played it.
Finally got to play this. The ball physics and twisting the maze around is very satisfying. I am still learning to get more ball control, but this would be an excellent speed running game to show off precision ball manipulation. Great stuff, very enjoyable. It's like Cameltry for a new generation!
Dang! By far my favorite PICO-8 game right now! :D
feels like and awesome mix or locoroco and pinball!
The flow you can get into and the combos you can pull of feel so good! This is what a game should feel like! :D Thank you so much!
Really good. Obviously you get a star. Was wondering if you might make the bouncing effect to decrease the more the marble does NOT hit a target.
So if the player is lost for long seconds for instance, they are not still ricocheting dramatically off of the walls.
Naturally the moment they hit any target then the resilience is recovered to full.
Great game! Simple concept, high level of polish, satisfying physics, cool puzzle/platform hybrid, nice trippy atmosphere, the excitement of collecting balls in 2 minutes then finding the exit in 3 minutes. I can already see myself miss the bus stop playing this. 10/10
I love this game! It's simple but a whole lot of fun. Many time I found myself going "NOOOOO the other way." I was just laughing like crazy! Thanks for making this game so much fun!
This is AMAZING! I did run into a bug getting caught on level 8 though :( 
Thanks for all the nice comments, guys!
@ewindisch - yeah, that has been reported a few times, I might tune it in the future so it doesn't happen, in the mean time, resetting the cart should restart you on that same level.
Can I put this game on the list of games that don't use the sprite sheet that I'm making? https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=37372
OK, true master-class-in-game-design stuff you've got here! Simple to grasp and easy to control, yet difficult to master and get 'just right'. Not just a novel concept (which it is) but also quite fun and lightly addictive.
Action Puzzle Pinball at it's best!
While this wasn't what I had in mind when I saw the word "pinball" (I was thinking flippers), I had a great time playing this game! I look forward to showing it to my friends.
It's fast and energetic, and the music is quite catchy. I haven't run into any issues. I'm curious how the save mechanic works (like if I close my browser window, will it keep my progress or reset?).
EDIT: It seems to! I'll definitely be coming back later to continue my run. :)
I just found this game, congratulations it's awesome !!
The rhythm of the game is so nice, it's not boring at all, everything is in movement, camera zoom, physics, colors...
And the concept is really original, I like it.
1 hours and maybe 12-16 minutes
totally fast and not at all slow
Just found this game tonight thanks to Lucky Draw. Really love the look & the hyper action, and the controls feel really good. I ended up being pretty terrible at it (1:15:36.7) but I had a lot of fun getting there!
FANTASTIC!!!! I came because I found the cart's cover interesting and then I could not exit the game until I beat it!!! Amazingly done!
I love it!
It's like a 2d Monkey Ball pinball game!
Anyways go fast while collecting, its satisfying
@guerragames - really fantastic simple game yet so fun to play and mesmerizing art!! Have you considered porting this game to the PlayDate handheld console? The gameplay seems perfect for the crank.
If you're not interested in that, would you mind if I took a stab at it? I'd release it for free on PlayDate, not trying to make money off your work
@nhirsch - thanks for the compliments!
As far as porting the game, I did order a Playdate, I haven't gotten it yet, but I doubt I'll have time for a port.
I'm ok with you trying to port it, let me know how that goes.
Incredible! The physics feel so good, especially when you can get the ball to roll from one room to another seamlessly.
I've often said that pinball is an underrated genre for video games, and this is a great example of the kind of fun I want more of!
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