The Last Brick Breaker 3D

Based on the feedback from the jam there are several issues with this build which are as follows:

- Crashes

- Confusion about the boss battle at the end and what it actually is, if they can even make it that far given the current stability issues. Some people were confused why the boss flashes; it should only flash when the ball hits the boss. This is because the boss is taking damage from the ball.

- The game is too long with 7 levels in total

- Confusion about the power up brick and the power-ups it awards. I fear that not many are noticing the paddle changing size or the game is simply not giving them this power-up for whatever reason. There's also confusion on what the power-up brick is. A considerable number of people believe that the power-up brick's appearance is a bug, it is not, it is intentionally black and it intentionally rewards a random power-up, it also intentionally replaces a random brick within the level. I can understand why people might think this is a bug because different bricks use different colors to indicate their strength, and so might believe that because the brick is completely black it is missing a texture. This is not the case. The texture is completely black.

- The levels will sometimes rapidly start over and over again because there is no delay between when the levels transition (some believe this is because the paddle doesn't start in the right place, but it's only purely because there is no delay. The paddle always starts in the same place, the start place is baked into every level and it is the same on every level. The level simply continues to take input because there is no delay in the transitions between levels).

- The paddle moves too slowly and there is no way to adjust its sensitivity.

- The way the ball angles off the paddle does not feel right on some occasions.

Some feedback that I have for myself from my own playtesting:

- There are lighting issues: the 6th level in particular is not well-lit at all.

- When the multi-ball power-up is unlocked the noise it makes is too loud because all three balls emit the same hit sound effect causing it to be 3 times the amplitude. RIP my eardrums.

- The paddle changing length is instantaneous, and I'd rather it changed length more visibly to the player.

- The UI is extremely basic.

- The "surprise" at the end probably reads as cheap to most players, edits will be made to this game's page simply to reflect that the game has an ending and nothing more.

- The game did not exactly fit the theme of the jam, but that wasn't something that I was overly concerned with as my submission was still allowed.

- When the power-up brick is broken, no matter what the strength was of the brick it replaces, it destroys the brick entirely. I believe that the power-up brick should be destroyed but if the regular brick it replaced has a strength >1 (or more simply put, is not a red brick), it should replace itself with the brick it replaced - 1 strength. Breaking the brick entirely feels too easy, even if the power up bricks have long timers in between when they spawn in.

- The power-up bricks have too long of timers in between when they spawn in regardless of if they're destroyed or not.

- Something about the movement of the ball is off between the second and third levels and it keeps this off movement all throughout the rest of the game. I have no idea what could possibly be causing this. There is nothing in the code that specifically references the third level other than the level changer function (it references ALL levels in the game) and there's no special code for the third level in that function.

All this is to say that a complete rebuild of the game is now in progress, made by myself and a partner. The new build will address all of this feedback and add fixes to the game. The power-up brick will remain similar in that I still want it to randomly award a power-up -- the player shouldn't know what they're going to get -- however a third power-up will be added to the game in the veins of Arkanoid: lasers. More effort will be placed on making these power-up awards more obvious to the player with sounds and particle effects. I will most likely need to rethink the appearance of the power-up bricks, but I have to wonder if particle effects and some sort of sound that the power-up brick emits, will make it more obvious that "hey, a power up brick is now in the level. Get it!" I like the power-up brick being black because black is a combination of all colors and I like to think that all the different brick types combine to form this power-up brick. We'll see if the brick stays black, I may have to change it to something else entirely, maybe change the shape of the brick... who knows? Haven't thought that far ahead yet.

People seem very pleased by the music, which when I was producing the song I intended for it to only be placeholder music. I'd love to see if I could iterate on it and flesh it out... Make it sound even better. But most likely I'll just be keeping the music as is. Stability of the build is my biggest goal. The game should not be crashing, I have no idea why it currently does, hence the rebuild. 

I will be making the game shorter. I think the first two levels can be scrapped entirely and I think 4 levels is probably more than enough for a game as simple as this. A timed delay will also appear in between each level as well, so that the ball doesn't rapidly start the level over and over again. I'm also planning a hardcore mode that will unlock in the main menu after the regular game is completed. More effort will be made to make the boss battle more obvious as well.

I will leave another comment here when the rebuild is completed and uploaded to this Itch.IO page. Thank you again to all those from the jam who left feedback and played my game. :) For now, just know that this current build needs a bit of work and may not be stable on your machine. It also only currently runs on Windows, would love to make this next build accessible to Mac & Linux. Stay tuned for an update.

P.S. For those curious, this was supposed to be the surprise at the end (my cats Nana and Gwen):