Marble Trouble by LDJam user 381180

Welcome to Marble Trouble
A chaotic marble battle to take revenge on your childhood!
Four bosses are waiting for you in the playground, each guarding their own powerful marble. Build the perfect combination of marbles, aim carefully, and shatter theirs to claim victory! Each boss’s marble is visible in their illustration.
We highly recommend playing in fullscreen !
The goal is simple:
Defeat all 4 bosses
Collect new marbles with unique powers
Combine them strategically to deal maximum damage
Don’t hesitate to share your screens, gifs, or best shots in the comments! :camera:
Controls 🖱️
To shoot a marble:
1) Scroll through your marbles in your inventory and click on Select
2) Click, drag and release while aiming to shoot it!
The damage that the marbles inflict is written on them. You will collect different types of marbles with their own powers each time you defeat a boss.
Soundtrack
Listen to Marble Trouble soundtrack here !
Credits
:computer: @Kyrios & @mooyett
:art: @Nomus
:musicalnote: :musicalscore: @Anachrone & @mooyett
:speaker: @blackpulse & @Anachrone
Our folio links :)
Anachrone : soundcloud
Nomus : Artstation
mooyette : youtube
blackpulse : website
| Link | https://mrkyrios.itch.io/marble-trouble |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/marble-trouble |
Ratings
| Overall | 11th | 4.369⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 5th | 4.451⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 22th | 4.142⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 46th | 4.308⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 27th | 4.583⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 26th | 4.272⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 25th | 4.27⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 24th | 4.383⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 94🗳️ | 101🗨️ |
Tight and buttery smooth gameplay, an absolute unit of a BANGER soundtrack, over the top character design, I'm simply blown away.
Thank you for creating this gem!
You might want to add "HTML (Web)" to your list of links (it can be the same link) because right now it implies you'd have to download the game to play (might deter some people, and they'd really miss out!).
I absolutely loved the art style and the animations! I'd love to try a gamejam in this style some time. You guys got any tips on what makes this style work so good? What good practices are, or what to focus on to achieve this visual style, stuff like that?
@purrseus Thank you so much ! I'll try to set that up, that makes more sense hehe
This was *so* good. The character art was incredible. The concept was incredible. The way that it tied into the theme was incredible. Move over deckbuilders, this feels like it's establishing a new genre of roguelike marble-collectors. Just these four predetermined marbles had so much synergy built into them, and I can imagine how it would be so much fun to start building up a synergistic toolkit of marbles, and pull them randomly out one by one for each fight.
My only constructive feedback is about the arena design - The way that the random non-marble objects got pushed around often caused them to trap marbles in unfun ways, and they weren't something that you could predictably try to move around, due to their heavy weight and strange shape. This led to me sometimes just throwing a bomb to randomly shift the board around, rather than try to use my marbles strategically.
I also ran into a weird bug on my second playthrough while writing up feedback - My marbles slowed to a stop, but I wasn't prompted to continue. I'm not sure if there is some floating point math causing a marble to get stuck with *just* barely more than 0 speed, but it might be something to look into.
@koolruz We had so many ideas for new marbles but the time and arena size made it too hard to implement. Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the feedback !
A small complaint I have is that I kinda confused the first opponent with the player character — I think they look pretty similar. But overall I love the game! Great work!
Wow, you guys animated every character and even gave them different animations for taking hits, that’s really amazing. The characters were already beautifully drawn, and the animations made them even more detailed. I also noticed that each marble has its own rolling frame sequence, which absolutely impressed me. It’s incredible that you managed to complete so much in such a short time.
I got stuck twice in the fight against Theodore; he’s a bit tough, but I had a lot of fun!
Once again, I absolutely love your character designs, especially Theodore.
Great entry :thumbsup:
@mumu Thank you ! Danpaladin was a great inspiration for this game indeeed, his art stuck to me for eternity
https://soundcloud.com/anachronemusic/sets/marbles-trouble-ost-ludum-dare
Hands down one of the best I've played. Incredible aesthetic (both art and sound) decision making which strongly balances against a very polished, very fun gameplay loop. My only question is are you planning on keeping up work on it post jam? You should, brilliant work all around!
What I meant is that the "friction" feels too slow when the marble is aaaalmost stopping... We get waiting for a few seconds that I feel could be avoided. It doesn't feel like a bug, but you know better.
Anyways, as mentioned, it's only a small annoyance. This is a total 5/5 game. Can't wait to see what else you guys make.
congrats!
@mestrerothld Yes that's true, with some minor adjustements with placing the marble wherever you want and also stopping earlier it would be a really good QoL !
@ciphereo @placeholders @poboy @mrbamboo Thank you so much ! I love that people get nostalgic about it.
)
i love this game
@zathnic Thank you ! we were bound to have some randomness in it, couldnt be avoided, that's mostly why we made different combos if done well could easely beat any stage
@mrv Holy that's insane ! It's pretty hard to get such a high devourer without killing the boss first, biggest I had was 17k but 29k that's insane, thank you for exploding playground king to bits with that omega marble
I don't have anything to add that wasn't already said, so I leave you with this:

The combat mechanics are fantastic — a unique mix between billiards and fighting that works surprisingly well.
My only minor setback was getting sent back to the beginning after losing to the final boss, but that's a small issue.
Amazing work!
The graphics and music go together so magically!
I got a lot of positive emotions from the process, died for the first time on Double Trouble, but on the second try I finished the game to the end. And when I saw the final credits, I realized that it wasn't enough for me, and I want more. I would gladly play a full version of this game, it seems to me that this concept has room to grow and develop. Incomparable work, bravo!"
The personality on this one was tops, and the gameplay was simple yet juicy. Y'all clearly know where to put your focus during a jam weekend!
@coleslaughter Thank you for playing it on your stream ! Was a blast seeing you enjoy it !