trails are just about the best thing ever
just adding trails makes a game feel like whipped butter and that’s even before all this great temporal memory
@tibyz gettin’ dirty
Nothing with a soundtrack like this gets to be called minimalist
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I was just gonna say, that’s my first time actually hearing the sound design for this game and yeowch
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OH hey those were the ONLY online games that existed on PS4 before the patch existed. Do not judge my skills by that.
This looks and sounds like the game you would see two kids playing in the background of a drama while the parents argued about money. Things would escalate, and eventually one of them would spin around and SCREAM AT THEM TO TURN THAT GOD DAMN NOISE OFF JESUS CHRIST I WISH I’D NEVER PICKED UP THAT GAMEBOX ON SPECIAL GO TO YOUR ROOM
8/10
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Ok, the game is fun. There are a ton of things I wish there were there for ease of use. I also disagree with many of the design decisions on a fundamental level. Please don’t read this if you’ve invested many hours of your life in this and don’t want to listen.
Ease of use things:
- A tutorial for what the different triangles do and why you would use them
- Descriptions of post game jargon << videos would be helpful here and for #1
2*) Jargon that is unique to this game and doesn’t seem to crib/ripoff/demean other real sports/games. Making up sport jargon is actually fun, guys. - “Play anything online in case we don’t have an online community” button
I also have fundamental design issues with the action charging. To me the verb changes from “shoot varying sizes of triangles” to “shoot triangles all with different traits except sometimes drop a cube”. There are lots of buttons and the “simplicity” of one button is totally overcome by the actual real genuine simplicity of putting different verbs on different buttons.
Anyways, the game is alright and fine and whatnot. Talking about Rocket League in this thread just reminds me of how genuinely great that game is. The one suggestion I have for @108 is to drop a free to play version with ads and an option to buy the game. If you have a problem with that give all the ad revenue to a charity you like while keeping sales. I can’t imagine it’d be a lot of work to add that stuff in, and it’d add the value of having players in the ecosystem to make it more worthwhile for the people who did trust in your videogame sport dreams.
to me the “verb” being put on a the buttons is “put a thing into the world that isn’t me and interacts with the balls” though. it’s just one verb of which the nature changes based on how long the player commits to not pressing the button again. the relationship established here (on which the whole game is balanced on) is between time and the nature of the projectile, and all things being equal, it doesn’t really make sense to separate the triangles and the cube. it forces the player to be careful and not mindlessly charge, which was also explored in ziggurat
but yeah if you don’t like the charge system you just don’t like it! I wouldn’t say that it’s poorly designed though
Is this an argument for elegance or against?
Sorry, like, the game is good in the same way that other awkward games are good. Tho I feel like other awkward games understand that they’re awkward. They’re also not deriding of other games that are many, many leagues more established games. Like Tim says, “billions of sports fans can’t be wrong.”
And with that, I’m down to play awkward fun game made by friend of Select Button 2016 with ya’ll.
I don’t know if it’s an argument at all! if anything it’s just establishing a different relationship; instead of having a bunch of different verbs with small variations, it’s one verb with a large axis of change. it’s just different! I hesitate to call or more or less elegant and I don’t even really think elegance is what this game is going for
I also don’t really know where you’re getting the idea that videoball is making fun of other games! it’s using words like “touchdown” and “tackle” and stuff but I don’t think it’s going for irony, especially considering how bubbly the sound design and music are. to me it’s more of a kid at a playground excited that they created a new game to play with their friends. but maybe it was because I was that kid who knooooows
I’m not mad at you, but equating Tim to an unknowing child is what they did to Ryan Lochte at the Olympics.
@spacetown Lochte is to Brazilian attitude towards America as Videoball is to gamers’ wanting to buy Videoball. :-\
yeah i’m surprised anyone is reading videoball as making fun of other games/sports
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sure, but videoball didn’t strain diplomatic relations with brazil, so I’m not really sure how that’s relevant
I mean maybe it should tho more people might play it
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This seems to be a game that achieves elegance when you’re really good at it, no sugaring the pill with flashbangwow when you’re not
The difficulty ultimately being whether it’s worth getting really good at it; absent of a hefty community, welp
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I think there is a tutorial video in the game that explains the different charge functions.
re: the idea of putting squares on a separate button, the amount of time it takes to make the square is important. charging is an economy, and you need to spend a lot of your currency to make something as valuable as an impassable block.
yeah i’m not getting this either; can you try laying out the case for it?
oh hey, hi.
i really like VIDEOBALL. i think it’s a marvelous piece of software for reasons that have been brought up by meauxdal and spacetown and others. i also think it has problems, although the bulk of them are in factors outside the game itself.
through listening ellaguro’s amazing podcast and other personal things that have been piling up (some of which related to me finding and getting to know about insert credit and selectbutton a couple years ago, even) i got a sense of wonder through the idea of physicality “inside” the internet. i mean, i grew up just kind of taking it for granted; how it (The Cyber Space™) existed and worked. i perhaps was already lost in the templates for interaction given by well-estabilished social networks and the commodity of having all aspects of my life drenched in it to the point of seeming banal. what i’m trying to say is: years back it stroke me as a revelation when i found out in great detail what sorts of shenanigans people had to go through to make goofy webpages and set extravagant yet functioning forum software etc and that is because it made me realize that what we could call the cyber space is just a bunch of tools, after all. i became aware that people in the recent past had to externalize the thought of “okay, i’m entering the internet” and turning on their Computer Machines and doing their Computer Stuff, existing elsewhere through these tools and finding and creating new things. what ties all this to VIDEOBALL, i think, is how playing VIDEOBALL entices on me this kind of relationship between software and our physical selves. to play VIDEOBALL is to play a VIDEOBALL machine (much like tim said on one trailer that VIDEOBALL is a “digital sporting good”). you get it, you “enter” it, then you do whatever within the systems’ range. this is something all videogames do in some form, sure; for VIDEOBALL to be this thought-mechanism so expresively manifest is pretty cool.
anyway. when i was at my hometown i recommened the game to all my highschool friends who liked sports and/or, but they didn’t buy it. they all seemed legitimaly interesed in the premise, though. i’ll probably talk of it to them again over whatsapp sooner or later.
VIDEOBALL definitly requires time and thought and skill to play with grace and effectiveness! and yeah it invites you to learn its languages! that’s a-mazing, specially because we are all grown-ups in the Year Of Our Lord of two-thousand-sixteen and we can enjoy things without, like, having to necessarily measure them with pre-estabilished notions of How Stuff Should Work as long it feels good and thrilling (right???).
so yeah; as pretty much anyone has said already, i get why one would not like it. not everyone likes basketball, because it does have stuff that are not entirely acessible and its pacing may feel kind-of-everywhere, etc.
oh! and also: bigger proof of the game’s “athletic” potential (as if playing is not proof enough [it is]) is how i stayed about one month without playing and now that i’m back i’m god-awful at it (over the first two weeks i was within top 20 in all solo-rankings).
yeeeaahh you’re the first person i know to perceive it that way. its enthusiastic humor is legit!
and, uh, the game does have a “how to play” section with short text and gifs illustrating the core actions and behaviors.
if only the very opposite, lol!
like i’m friends with the three people responsible for the brazillian-portuguese translation (which is hilarious btw, although there are some formatting issues with it) and we scheduled to play a bunch online matches this weekend! so that’s going to be fun.
hey; they call me dominique wilkins cuz i bring slam dunks to the table.
“You catch the football match yesterday? The pitcher threw it to the runner and he slam dunked the touch down in extra time. Goaaaaaall!”
Maybe I’m crazy or maybe I’m just particular with my words. Tim’s “videogames can make the ultimate sport” GDC talk may be making me go insane.
listen ≠ agree
i tried to call it like i saw it earlier: given your initial impression of the game and apparent dismissiveness, it appeared this game was almost certainly not for you. that’s not elitism, it’s pragmatism. i probably fucked up with earlier passive-aggressiveness, encouraging you to lean into your anti- sentiment like an entrenched solider, so that even if you were to find the game enjoyable, all you can muster is[quote=“anothergod, post:196, topic:2181”]
Anyways, the game is alright and fine and whatnot.
[/quote]
and that sucks. my b. i mean, maybe that’s just how you feel about the game! but i can’t help but feel like i fucked up here. i know, i know, bad faith and all that. but, let’s be honest, is this generally how people respond to a game they ostensibly profess to like?
the following may or may not apply to you, @anothergod, but a pretty consistent pattern i’ve seen lately is people projecting their perception of tim’s personality onto every element of the game.[quote=“anothergod, post:196, topic:2181”]
2*) Jargon that is unique to this game and doesn’t seem to crib/ripoff/demean other real sports/games. Making up sport jargon is actually fun, guys.
[/quote]
genuine, unironic appreciation. the game is a celebration of sport, not a parody.
lest anyone think i am inoculated against recognition of the game’s flaws, i have a list about a figurative mile long of things i would change about the game. i don’t think many of those changes would be about the gameplay.
all that said, let’s look at[quote=“anothergod, post:196, topic:2181”]
I also have fundamental design issues with the action charging. To me the verb changes from “shoot varying sizes of triangles” to “shoot triangles all with different traits except sometimes drop a cube”. There are lots of buttons and the “simplicity” of one button is totally overcome by the actual real genuine simplicity of putting different verbs on different buttons.
[/quote]
how would this work? use four buttons? one for each triangle and one for the square? and… you’d still have to charge them, right? so… you couldn’t then transition from one to the other? you couldn’t miss your timing window on the L3 so you spit out a square instead? you could hold the charge for an L2 indefinitely? you couldn’t trick your opponent into thinking you were going to spit an L2 and then pivot and slam dunk the ball with an L3 instead…?!?
these criticisms belie a fundamental misunderstanding of how the game works
your criticism is somewhere in the vicinity of an analogue to “why should i have to double click on things with a mouse? why isn’t there just a third button for double click?”
no, wait, that’s a terrible analogy
it’s actually: why should mega man’s charge shot be on the same button as his peashooter?
wait, wait, still terrible
it’s: why don’t all the things on the one button work exactly the same, except bigger?
i mean, uh, i guess that’s valid then. i’m feeling a wee bit more vindicated in assessing that the game probably isn’t up your alley.
anyway. we’re cool. i’m a dick about this game, i recognize that. maybe i’m a fuckup in my proselytizing and an elitist in my dismissal of criticism. maybe i’m too invested and impartial to take legitimate grievances seriously.
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i ain’t gonna apologize for being passionate about one of my favorite games of all time, folks. fuck me running
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