Unstababel by ubershmekel

[raw]
made by ubershmekel for Ludum Dare 49 (COMPO)

unstababel-shot1.png

In Unstababel there are many odd shapes, but only one direction - up. Earn money by building a tall tower. Can you reach god?

  • Play on a wide screen (landscape on phones/tablets)
  • Purchase blocks
  • Build a tower
  • Taller towers earn WAY more money
  • Zoom in (+/- button, or scroll wheel), and pan (tap-drag the blue sky)
  • Cash out when your tower is ready
  • Repeat. At least until you find god

If you need help, click the black rectangle for pro tips

!> Even if your tower is unstable, you can still quickly cash out

!> Grab blocks from their top edge, they will spin less

!> Be gentle, make a plan

!> It might be easier for you to zoom in

!> When you're zoomed in, you might have to nudge whatever you're dragging to keep moving the view to where you need to go.

If you're still stuck, or want the spoilers

!> The most expensive blocks cost $500

!> God is on the left side of the $729 "cash out" button (9th white horizontal bar from the bottom)

!> There is another easter egg to do with 'mariobait'. Just saying.

Ratings

Overall 322th 3.383⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Fun 287th 3.328⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 293th 3.276⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Theme 98th 4.086⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 464th 2.776⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Audio 304th 3⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Humor 209th 2.964⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Mood 322th 3.103⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 31🗳️ 38🗨️

Feedback

cirno
04. Oct 2021 · 06:04 UTC
The idea is fun and of potential. And the gameplay is perfectly fit the theme. The most interesting part for me is that each block can be placed in different orientations to play as different roles.
ZwodahS
04. Oct 2021 · 06:36 UTC
Nice game. Got to the god quite quickly but I couldn't place the another block at the edge of the screen.

Half the time I am trying to figure out the center of mass for the blocks and the other half is there holding my breath. Good implementation

Honestly think that the audio do more harm than good, but that's just me
Zarkonnen
04. Oct 2021 · 06:36 UTC
I found it really fiddly. I don't understand what the zig-zag between the cursor and items you're manipulating is meant to be. A spring?
VarunDevs
04. Oct 2021 · 06:37 UTC
Great GAME
squimmy
04. Oct 2021 · 07:20 UTC
I like the sound effects. They really suit the simple, playful style of the game.

I don't know if my screen just isn't wide enough, but when I had bought all of the blocks, the building area became so crowded that I'd sometimes lose pieces off the side of the screen!

Whatever the case, I quite liked this game!
the.jahn
04. Oct 2021 · 07:28 UTC
Lots of these in this jam, but this one is executed pretty well. The physics felt stable enough so that when something went wrong, it felt like my fault. Most of the time. Haha.

I didn't think the controls were too fiddly at all.
Nebiros
06. Oct 2021 · 09:12 UTC
Pretty fun game, minimalistic sound effects, but it works !
The shapes available make it very challenging ! Nice work
binroot
07. Oct 2021 · 01:47 UTC
The piano sfx as you build a tower was a nice polish/touch
LDJam user 0
08. Oct 2021 · 17:08 UTC
Well done!
OllieOA
09. Oct 2021 · 08:48 UTC
This was an amazing little game, simple yet well done and it kept my interest for quite a while. Keep up the good work!
ALAN001
09. Oct 2021 · 09:39 UTC
Very Cool
**EPIK ** and God was umm...
doomshmuck
11. Oct 2021 · 16:48 UTC
I played it on PC, although it seems like it was really designed for mobile? The controls were really hard to get around, which perhaps is a side-effect of playing on PC (and for what its worth, that's going to be primarily what people are playing on). My biggest gripe I think is when attempting to adjust the positions of the blocks, it overlapped with the complete box, which caused me to end prematurely... it also looked like there was no real way to de-select a shape, which seems like an odd thing there. Oh, looking at the screenshots, I guess the black bars were borders? I was thinking that I was supposed to balance things on the bar. That probably needed better explaining as well.
Weenie Walker Games
11. Oct 2021 · 16:49 UTC
Fun little game. Loved the piano notes as the sound effects.
Jackaljk
11. Oct 2021 · 20:14 UTC
It's fun reaching god, it gives the player something to aim at. I had some issues with the physics, at the start of a round often I would grab a piece and everything gets flinged in all directions and at least a piece goes so far it becomes unreachable. Also, the small square when used as a base (alongside one of the black columns) would begin to slide when the tower gets high enough for no apparent reason, eventually causing everything to crumble. Finally, it's really unintuitive having to click an already bought piece to start the game. But anyway it was fun to play, nice job!
🎤 ubershmekel
12. Oct 2021 · 06:31 UTC
Thank you all for the great feedback. I apologize to everyone and @jackaljk that had trouble with the menu. My excuse is that I had to build the UI with just a physics engine, so it was hard and time consuming. I did want to add more buttons to make everything more obvious.

I saw a lot of people try to stack pieces on the black bars, which is odd to me. In hindsight, I shouldn't have left those bars there. When I went to delete them, I realized that you can buy the little red square and then can't cash out without putting it on the black bar. So I either had to fix the UI, or live with the black bars for the jam.

Interesting that a lot of folks have a different experience with how fiddly or broken controlling the blocks is. I think this is caused by folks either being too zoomed out, not grabbing objects from their top, accidentally pushing objects into each other, and just their level of patience to gently drop objects instead of trying to exactly manipulate them onto each other. I also noticed that some folks choose to use the hardest blocks to stack, and sometimes they even succeed.

@squimmy I didn't really know what to do with the endgame where you have a ton of blocks. In a way I hoped it made you feel like Scrooge McDuck, swimming in all your blocky riches.

@doomshmuck - I played the game and beat it on mobile and on PC. Most of the dev was on a PC with a mouse. I wonder if folks falling in love with balancing on the black bar is my fault or just something that makes the game hard. Once you purchase the big blocks, I hope it becomes clear that you have a much wider base to use.

@zwodahs - sorry I capped the game at that height. I didn't know how to make it so the view was limited, to prevent newbs from getting lost, and still allow pros to go even higher. I even originally planned for a leaderboard, but couldn't make it in time.

@zarkonnen - that is indeed a spring. You can see a few anti-fiddle techniques: Here's a video of me speed running the game, I can currently reach god in just under 3 minutes: https://youtu.be/h_yXaXWugsc

Thank you @cirno @the-jahn @nebiros @binroot @ollieoa @weenie-walker-games
zimny11
12. Oct 2021 · 16:45 UTC
Well done with different and challenging shapes of elements to stuck up. The sound effect are nicely done too. Good job!
sslees
16. Oct 2021 · 18:37 UTC
I like that you could choose to build a lot of small towers to earn money, or one big one. And I like that you have to earn money to get the blocks that are good for tall towers. Makes for a nice progression. Nice job!