Battery Panic by HacksawUnit

Your phone is almost out of battery, and you can't find the charging cord anywhere! Quickly, now! I think we still have that old power converter in the garage next to that drawer of old batteries...
So, I'm really happy with how this entry came out, but I would like to acknowledge that it would be far better with a proper scoring system... Right now, I feel like the balance and 'push and pull' of the game is a bit off... BUT! I'll let you decide for yourself. :)
Read the info on the itch page for important gameplay info!
| Youtube | https://hacksawunit.itch.io/battery-panic |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/battery-panic |
Ratings
| Overall | 161th | 3.847⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 174th | 3.76⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 190th | 3.75⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 381th | 3.82⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 294th | 3.755⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 117th | 3.778⭐ | 99🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 585th | 2.61⭐ | 88🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 512th | 3.223⭐ | 94🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 8🗳️ | 1🗨️ |
So, a little bit of feedback!
Feel free to ignore most of the things due to jam scope etc, but as always I’ll give feedback considering you’ll work on it after the jam.
Could’ve been better:
- Hard to learn. The first experience with the game was really confusing, I was trying to build lines as Tetris since this was the concept I had in my mind for the aesthetics of your game.
- The new level SFX doesn't sound like a victory, so I always thought I lost the level because I reached the line, and the game restarted.
- A tutorial would be great, and by tutorial I mean anything that slowly teaches you how to play giving you room for error. You probably have more batteries later on, but it was still a bunch of info to understand and retain.
Good points:
- Web build, so I don't have to download anything, yay
- Nice audio
- Nice art
I mostly stopped of playing it because I didn't understand. As advice try to avoid the lack of understanding of how your game work, you're probably aware of that, otherwise you wouldn't write the how to play and hint section. But yeah, that’s it!
Hope that helps, and if you happen to update this game, come back here in your comment section to remember me and drop me a tweet or something!
If you have time, please click on my profile and give me some constructive feedback on my game (:
See ya!
Pretty hard to learn/get the hang of - had to restart a few times before I "got" it.
Can't help but want to see the battery chain have more...oomph. For example, seeing a sort of electrical chain and having those high voltage sounds as the power builds up.
Also, maybe I am too used to playing tetris, but I felt rotating pieces/placing them were a bit harsh, would have preferred more leeway/sliding.
Overall, while i love the concept, and its decently fun, I feel it could be wayy more sastifiying/fun with just a bit more work/polishing.
I like what you did making the negative side always the same color, it becomes instinctual after a bit. Think I was able to safely get to level 5 after LOTS OF TRAINING trying to get good, as I am not very adept at these sorts of games.
Also smashing music and art of course, really has a peppy vibe.
Other than that, pretty solid art, music. The gameplay wasn't particularly captivating but it did get a bit interesting as everything sped up. At that point I had to develop a new strategy for dealing with the speed!
But the controls are so non-standard it drains most of enjoyment from it for me. Although you don't mention it anywhere, I think it is no secret that this game is very similar to Tetris, where the standard controls are almost opposite to your controls. After countless tens of hours of playing Tetris, I have standard Tetris control scheme deep in my muscle memory unfortunately, and even after several minutes of playing, I keep pressing up arrow trying to rotate the block and mess up my play area, or press space to hard drop, messing up also. Although there is not "standard Tetris controls comittee" or anything like it, extremely common scheme is up for rotate, down for soft drop and space for hard drop. Adjust the control scheme to match at least those, and I would love to come back and give it another go. I am not rating the game just yet.
I know it is silly, I know I sound arrogant and sassy, but just the control scheme is a huge problem I have with this game and a deal-breaker for me.
Well done!
Dat music doe. 25_3. so goood.
Tetris-likes are always a fun puzzle type game to make, I also tried my hand at a tetris spin off a few years ago and had a blast making it.
I know you said you didn't have time for it but having a scoring system would be amazing for this game.
I like the concept, but the battery rewards definitely need some tweaking for the game to be fun.
Similar to Tetris, I think you could become really good at this!
As you've mentioned on the itch page, a proper scoring system would be nice, although the level number does the trick too.
One problem I have, is that it seems like my inputs don't register sometimes or feel laggy.
I think this has to do with the web version.
Any chance you could build some executables?
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Anyways, another awesome entry. I'm having a lot of fun with this!
The speed ramp-up is maybe a bit too aggressive - getting to the frantic pace is good fun, but it felt like it happened before I could really get a handle on what I was supposed to do.
The art and audio were a little rough but hey it's a compo entry! Would be very interested in seeing more of this funky little arcade game.
It felt a little bit to difficult and I had the feeling that the phone wasn't charging up too much even though I built a very long battery chain.
But Overall good job! :)
I wish there was a more robust score system, or a global leaderboard. The controls are very confusing, especially after playing a lot of tetris. Alternative control schemes or even key rebinding would have been helpful. More involved combo chains could have been interesting, though I'm not sure how they could be implemented. Also not sure how I feel about the "surprise" drops, it messes up the flow of the game a little bit.
* It took a fair while for me to understand that I was supposed to go past the Safety level if I blew the chain, as well as to power the phone
* A high score system would be great, and for bigger combos to add exponentially more power (and visual effects)
* I could go on for a long time just building upwards towards the Safety level and ignoring builiding any chains - this only really stopped working once the game got too gast.
* It's likely just practice but it's much harder to play than Tetris at higher speeds - hopefully incentivising chains more and adding a scoring system would help with this!
* Any reason you didn't include more of the classic Tetris shapes? It gets a bit hard building dense chains with just straight shapes, but perhaps that's the point!
Also dropped batteries should keep their shape then more complex moves ahead power chains can be created. Even dud batteries could allow for reconnection a power chain.
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615922637?t=0h31m57s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin