Now this is pretty interesting... kinda struggled with to type at first but kinda got the hang of it. Still lost though! But great job!

I love this idea! Sort of difficult to get the hang of, but really interesting and enjoyable once you realize you can hit in certain directions. Solid entry.

YESSS YESSS YESS IT WAS 2012 I TOLD MY BOSS THIS CAN BE MADE, THIS CAN HAPPEN, YISS THANK YOU

Your website is giving me a server not found error (just the game page, the rest of the site runs fine). So I downloaded the source file and managed to run the game.

It was tricky to figure it out at first, but once I did I managed to destroy that cocky opponent. It was surprisingly fun trying to read and type quickly to hit the ball back. And I loved the descriptive writing. It really did a great job of setting the mood with the crowd, the announcer, and the opponent taunting you.

I kept typing stuff like "hit", "smash", "curve", "lob", "drop", etc. hoping that it would have some kind of effect, but I didn't notice any difference. It would be cool if that was an advanced technique, or even just affected the narration.

Fun game, and great use of the theme.

@blushine Thanks! Extra verbs and commands was a feature I wanted to add but wound up cutting to keep scope down. If I come back and update it after the jam I'll have to add those and build out the system further to better to tie how you hit it to the opponents chance of returning it. I was also considering adding a max number of returns so that you couldn't get stuck in a round that takes way too long.

Also I'm not sure what might have happened with the server. Everything appears to be available from here and its a third party host. I'll have to look into it. Thanks for letting me know.

@blushine I managed to recreate the issue or at least something similar. It looks like there was an issue with the way my subdomain was setup and it was going down intermitantly for rather short stretches of time. The download would have still worked since it was on the main domain. I've moved the project over to where the main files are kept and pointed the subdomain url at it so hopefully it'll be stable now.

If anyone else runs into this, please let me know so I can look further into it. I'll also post a secondary link without using the subdomain url at all as a backup.

Thanks again everyone for the feedback you've given so far.

Nice combination of genres. I felt like I was getting the hang of it on my second game. The descriptor hints in the text box really helped. A complete listing of commands could make it better, but I guess discovering what words work is half the fun. The game felt solid, but a little music would help.

Nice concept! I got a sense of urgency seeing the text going up fast and that's something I would also get while playing Pong, so I think that's some great achievement there!

I see potential in this idea, maybe on a Visual Novel environment, with a setting like the "Prince of Tennis" anime or something like that.

Congratulations on the project!

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback.

@LeviDSmith I was rather attached to the idea of using the placeholder text on the input field as the vehical for delivering tutorial information. I was thinking about building that out further and adding hints and/or meta-remarks to each of the gamestates and maybe having them vary the wording each round.

@Richard N Silva Lol yes! I should have watched that show for inspiration while working on this. xD It's been quite awhile since I've heard mention of that one.

Also, in case anyone reads through the comments and cares about it, I removed the original main link because the subdomain is still causing issues. I'm just hosting it as a directory under my main site now. Sorry to anyone who may have run into the 'site cannot be reached' error.

Super cool game! It was really difficult to tell what was really happening. I described each shot with a lot of detail and couldn't tell which part was being considered. It was delightful for the imagination but i really don't know if my "bruce-lee lightning attack" helped.
Excellent piece! Congratulations!

I thought this was super enjoyable! The lines in game really got you into the match and it feels like they were pretty well written! Good job :)

A fun take on the theme. The commands were intuitive which is pretty important for this type of game. Nicely done!

This was really cool! I enjoyed the idea of using a text-based game to analyze the text and decide actions from that. Now, I would have especially loved this if it had given memory and puzzle challenges, rather than explicitly giving the answer for each move, but otherwise this was a lot of fun! Great job!

I really like the serious tone this has, it makes it even better. The text is all really well written too. I think it would be nice if this had some more commands to keep it interesting. While there isn't really much for art, I think the aesthetic is very fitting for pong. Good job on this, I'd really appreciate if you would check out my game, it's still a bit under 20.

overall good effort, really enjoyed it.

An interesting way to play Pong.