Not too shabby! It was a pretty nice experience battling it out with the boomerang through the enemies. I did feel like the difficulty spiked a bit too early with the shield guys as they are very frustrating to fight. Even when I had the great idea to throw the boomerang past the shield guy so that they would get hit when the boomerang returned to me (which I'm assuming was the intended way to combat them), there were just too many shield guys crowding around that just made my boomerang stop dead. Maybe ease the introduction of those guys with just one or two at first, instead of dumping a group of five of em at you when you first see them. I was hoping to be able to maybe buy some items to combat them, but money comes at you so slowly that it became a real grind. With some elements like music and other effects to add some pizazz and a better difficulty curve I think this could be really fun as the boomerang has a lot of potential for interesting combat scenarios!
Reviews for "Bounce Back"
Thanks! Good feedback, I plan to work on a sequel someday that will add a lot more stuff like you suggest. This was originally for a 13k game jam.
A few gameplay tips about the shield enemies. You can hit them from the side. Try to lure them near sand to slow them down. Use the dash button to escape if you are surrounded.
Good for a quickly-made game, however there are two main negatives.
The first is the awkward boomerang. Mostly you will be spamming little short goes nowhere throws. Why? Because somehow the length of throw corresponds with the length of mouse button press. I guess it makes sense from a how boomerangs actually work perspective but it's completely counter to intuitive game design, which would suggest the boomerang should always go a medium distance (not long and not short) every time you click, and ignore length of clicks. This also would go a long way towards feeling right for the player.
The second negative is the follow-the-player "AI". Most enemies are of this type, and it's one of the most annoying possible kinds of enemy (aside from enemies that spawn directly on the player -- not a problem this game has but is the other primary annoying type). It's annoying to play, but worst is it takes almost no effort to program when all you do is set enemy destination x and y to player x and y. A single enemy or two of this type might be acceptable, but they shouldn't constitute the bulk of the enemies. I realize it's a quick and dirty technique, and when you're under a time constraint maybe you do that, but it's bad design.
Thanks!
This was not a quickly-made game. It is a small made game, under 13k zipped.
We disagree on the boomerang design. It is generally a good design choice to give more control to the player. In this case it servers a similar function to a variable height jump. I spent a lot of time tweaking the boomerang mechanics as it is the main part of the game.
There are 3 enemy types with different behaviors that vary quite a bit. It is not set destination xy to player xy, that would cause enemies to move in a straight line towards the player. I'm not saying the AI is complex, but I thought I managed to squeeze in a lot.
I'm surprised you are saying this after beating the game twice. It seems that based on your speed run time you may have misunderstood some of the mechanics, as it took you almost twice as long as the next fastest person. I don't mean that as an insult to your skills, just making an observation!
Anyway, thank you for the review, I appreciate your perspective!
the game idea is good its kinda fun but the pixel art sucks, they could do better.
Thanks for the review, can you explain better how I can improve the pixel art?
So yeah, this is alright. There are shortcomings, but it's not bad.
This game consists of a level-based structure in which, in every map, you need to beat all enemies before a portal appears to lead you to the next level. Pretty standard stuff, and not terrible. It's a roguelike, so you die permanently and the levels are randomly generated.
The combat is a bit annoying at times, especially when you throw all your boomerangs and have to pick them back up real quick, but it's quite fair and enjoyable for the most part, with some juicy effects and easily readable enemy behavior. I do hate it how our boomerangs just sit there and we have to pick them back up, but I love how we can hoard boomerangs and throw all of them at once at certain enemies.
Cutting through grass is satisfying right from the start, and cutting through stone becomes gradually satisfying the more boomerangs we have. Other than grass and stone, sand is an environmental hazard that makes you move slower, and that's it. The environments are okay at first, but it doesn't take long until they start getting kind of samey. I gather that this is a jam entry, so it makes sense that it wouldn't be super varied and full of content, so this is forgivable.
The lack of music makes the experience a bit more monotonous than it has to be. I'm not sure if the game really lacks music or if it's just my browser acting up, but it made the game a bit boring for me. Is it the browser, or does the game really not have music?
The game gets repetitive quickly, even with the occasional new enemy being added every handful of levels, for all you do is walk around, kill the baddies, occasionally find a shopkeeper, and move on. The game has got "metroidvania" and "zelda" tags, which I find weird, as there's no meaningful exploration or adventuring in it. The only things you can find by exploring are some more cash and the occasional shopkeeper, which you'll more often than not have insufficient money to buy their stuff.
This is a jam entry, though, so of course there wasn't enough time to make a fantastic masterpiece of profound complexity, and what little this game has is pretty solidly implemented. I really don't like having to run around enemies to pick my boomerangs back up, and I do feel like the game becomes repetitive too quickly, but it's still a pretty solid time killer.
Thank you for the in depth review and not holding back! I agree with most of what you have to say. This game was originally created for a special game jam with a very strict small size limitation (js13k). So while I have improved it some since then, it is a small game right now, and I want to test more in this state before I do a another major update. I totally agree about the lack of music, there is some during the opening sequence but not during normal gameplay. Music would help big time, and is high on my list. Also planning more weapons/items and terrain types/obstacles so there is more exploration and metroidvania elements. Maybe even ability to go back levels. Hopefully the zelda connection is pretty clear, that was by far my biggest influence. I totally get your issues with the boomerang gameplay, it is a strange mechanic and there is a learning curve. I plan to add more weapons that do not work like boomerangs to help address that (bow & arrow, sword, etc). Thanks again!
This is really cool and i sank a lot of time in it already. I dont know if thats a good thing. There is a learning curve but that is a good thing. Also the fact that you made this in java gave me nightmares. Thats a lot of code.
Thank you! Believe it or not, this game won 2nd place in js13k. https://js13kgames.com/ So the entire game + assets fits in a 13k zip file. I have since added a few things but it is basically the same game. The source code is open source on github!