I started making this game in 2010, intending for it to be the first Flash game I ever released. While it's not necessarily a big game, progress on its development stagnated and I decided I needed to release something even smaller first, so I came up with PACTIME as a "3-day project" and then I got involved in collaborative efforts. Since I never got around to finishing Jugglenaut I never got to any of the other games on my game idea list that every game dev has. Some of the games I had dreamed up were Jugglenaut spinoffs like a Christmas-themed Jinglenaut, a Jugglenaut sequel where it's established that the tank is just a toy that comes to life sort of Toy Story-style, and a Jugglenaut-IndestructoTank crossover with a tagline about an unstoppable force meeting an indestructible object. Though I've mostly moved on from game development, the Flash EOL inspired me to just release what I had of this game so people could see it, since it is still playable and I think a lot of things in the game are quite nice.

Opening up a project you haven't touched in 10 years is certainly a trip. While most of the code is sloppy and cringey, some of it is really clever and I don't remember writing any of it so I'm kind of patting my past self on the back. I wanted to wrap everything up in a bow to sort of showcase what I had, so I made sure all the graphical assets and imported music were in use. There were a few bugs I wanted to fix, and I also drew the lava rock background, but I tried to make sure the scope didn't creep too much and suck me back into heavy development. Then I realized there wasn't actually a way to lose the game so I had to go and program a "level failed" condition after deciding that the game actually did need that even in a bare minimum release.

My original plans for this game included:

1. A cannon and a laser in addition to the machine gun
2. Special goals for the bonus levels. like trying to shoot a ball as high as possible
3. Different physics for different balls, like bowling balls being heavier and super balls being bouncier
4. Achievements (of course)
5. A boss level where a flying ship would drop spiked balls to make you lose stars and you could juggle balls into weak points to hurt it
6. Possibly a way to destroy balls because I felt that this would satisfy players even though it goes against the juggling mechanic
7. Sound effects

There are a few parts of the game that were never really resolved from a design perspective. Are you trying to aim for the black holes or are you trying to avoid them? A big problem is the way that you're supposed to go for a high score in each level but going over a certain score threshold is how you beat most levels so the entire difference in high scores is based entirely on the awkward limbo between the time you beat the level and the time the last ball goes off the screen. And it's really quite easy to juggle one ball indefinitely, so it's just a question of how long it takes you to get bored.

I don't really have an in-game credits page so I adapted the extra buttons on the title screen to link directly to Waterflame (who I took the music from) and John Cooney (who provided me two Ball Revamped assets).