2D puzzle "Gravity Duel"

[thewizardplusplus]

Here is a technical demo of my game. It lacks a menu and any settings, and the graphics are highly sketchy. My main goal was to test the idea of the gameplay.

Title: Gravity Duel.
Genre: 2D puzzle.
Date of start of work: Sun Apr 25, 2021.
Date of release: Sat Dec 10, 2022.
Developers: only me.
Screenshot:

Summary:
The game field is represented by the player ship, targets, and black and white holes. The player can control the position of his ship and produce the energy pulses. The targets and black and white holes appear at a random location and have a limited lifetime. The black and white holes have gravitational effects on the energy pulses of the player (but not on the player ship). The game goal is to hit as many of the targets as possible with the energy pulses.
Description: https://github.com/thewizardplusplus/gravity-duel/blob/master/docs/gameplay.md.
Controls:

• movement:
  • upward:
    • via a keyboard: W;
    • via a mouse/a touchscreen: left joystick upwards;
  • downward:
    • via a keyboard: S;
    • via a mouse/a touchscreen: left joystick downwards;
  • to the right:
    • via a keyboard: D;
    • via a mouse/a touchscreen: left joystick to the right;
  • to the left:
    • via a keyboard: A;
    • via a mouse/a touchscreen: left joystick to the left;
• rotation:
  • to the right:
    • via a keyboard: Right Arrow, L;
    • via a mouse/a touchscreen: clockwise rotation of the right joystick;
  • to the left:
    • via a keyboard: Left Arrow, J;
    • via a mouse/a touchscreen: counterclockwise rotation of the right joystick;
• production of the energy pulses:
  • via a keyboard: Enter, Space;
  • via a mouse/a touchscreen: ~~>.

Builds:

• LÖVE game file (523 KiB): https://github.com/thewizardplusplus/gravity-duel/releases/download/v1.3.3/gravity-duel.love
• Windows (4.09 MiB): https://github.com/thewizardplusplus/gravity-duel/releases/download/v1.3.3/gravity-duel-win64.zip
• macOS (5.78 MiB): https://github.com/thewizardplusplus/gravity-duel/releases/download/v1.3.3/gravity-duel-macos.zip
• Linux (in AppImage format; 4.13 MiB): https://github.com/thewizardplusplus/gravity-duel/releases/download/v1.3.3/gravity-duel.AppImage

Source: https://github.com/thewizardplusplus/gravity-duel (MIT license).

[Ross]

Here is a technical demo of my game. It lacks a menu and any settings, and the graphics are highly sketchy. My main goal was to test the idea of the gameplay.

I tried this a bit. At first it was very sudden and confusing, with a time limit and no menu or even a "press a key to start". After I got used to the controls and what I needed to do, then it was mostly just too fast. You only have a few seconds to destroy the targets, and your "ship" moves fairly slowly, so fairly often it's not even possible to destroy both targets before everything changes on you.

That seems fairly easy to fix, but also there are no restrictions or tradeoffs on anything. You don't really care about the gravity, because you can just ram your ship into a target and pound the space bar.

The controls seem to all interefere with one another, which was quite frustrating. You can't turn while moving, can't move while turning, and can't shoot while doing anything else. :/

You might take a look at Sagittarius, by George Prosser: https://gprosser.itch.io/sagittarius

[knorke]

I second what Ross wrote.
The gameplay idea is okay, basically some sort golf in space.
The gameplay fun depends hugely on parameters and tweaking, at the moment it is not good for mentioned reasons.
Worms series and the various "artillery" clones might be other games to look at and see what works or does not.

Interesting that you wrote this on a phone!