Entertainment Software for Lonely Children by folmerkelly
ESFLC is basically me talking to myself as a kid when I used to play 2 player Pong by myself. Every time the player loses, a message is displayed; it's all things I wish I could tell my younger self.
The gameplay itself is your basic Pong except that the controls for P2 are inverted, so that if P1 goes down, P2 goes up and vice versa. I tried to simulate the frustrating difficulty of having to deal with two controllers at the same time, but for one player.
Arrow keys to navigate, space to do an action.
KNOWN ISSUES:
- There's a gameplay glitch where you can, in theory, get the ball kinda stuck on the wall and keep playing forever
- On the Mac build, score doesn't seem to show up
The gameplay itself is your basic Pong except that the controls for P2 are inverted, so that if P1 goes down, P2 goes up and vice versa. I tried to simulate the frustrating difficulty of having to deal with two controllers at the same time, but for one player.
Arrow keys to navigate, space to do an action.
KNOWN ISSUES:
- There's a gameplay glitch where you can, in theory, get the ball kinda stuck on the wall and keep playing forever
- On the Mac build, score doesn't seem to show up
Ratings
| Coolness | 72% | 3 |
| Overall | 3.70 | 132 |
| Audio | 3.87 | 48 |
| Fun | 3.18 | 458 |
| Graphics | 3.60 | 248 |
| Humor | 3.59 | 76 |
| Innovation | 3.42 | 345 |
| Mood | 4.37 | 10 |
| Theme | 4.00 | 152 |
I also wish that you could press space once to have all the text instantly appear. I wanted to read them, but didn't want to wait for them to scroll in.
The inverted controls is a great idea and makes the game interesting - somehow it doesn't feel like you're playing against yourself - but for me this one is all about the mood. My mind would just take turns switching between seeing me playing this game and seeing the imaginary child you doing it (in front of a giant computer, like the one in Dexter's Laboratory).
I hope you feel better than you seemed to do then <3
Nice playable game in such a short time, congrats!
Great graphic and audio, the gameplay is also interesting, but personally i'd swap the directon at every start
Playing this made me feel comforted and incredibly uneasy at the same time. The combination of the bizzare audio and the face made for an all around awesome experience. My only complaint is not to get repeats of the after game 'advice' until you've gone through them all. I liked that it felt as though it was building up to something though. Maybe its just reading too much into it, but it felt as though the 'advice' was getting more and more intimate as the game went on. I liked how you got to really feel like this mystery face was a real character rattling things off about 'itsself' in a creepy, sort of reassuring way. Awesome job, love this one. :D
The control scheme was a good approximation of attempting to use two controllers. I wonder what other games could be adapted to this sort of 1.5 player game style... though pong's simplicity is effective here.
I like how personal the game feels.
I like how personal the game feels. Very interesting
Btw. Check my game too, thank you!
Good game btw.
I noticed one bug, where the description text would draw even after the game was started. I don't know if this is intentional or not. Altogether, though, this is an extremely well put together game!