Perfectly Balanced by mhorth
Intro
Perfectly Balanced is a physics game about... well... balance. It looks and feels like a simple, relaxing game, but those expectations quickly get shattered as you accumulate more and more weight and panic to rearrange it.
Helpful Hints
- It's a rogue-lite system where the game is impossibly difficult at first, but you earn currency to buy upgrades. Don't give up, it actually gets easier the more you play and upgrade!
- Springs are by far the best upgrade. I suggest upgrading that first! Followed by Sturdiness.
- The game is endless, don't expect to reach an end. Just go until you get a score that you're happy with (there are online leaderboards with detailed stats).
- The block spawning gets more difficult as time goes on, speeding up and introducing new blocks at the 2.5 and 5 minute marks. There are also music changes when you get to those intervals.
Team
- @shohenadel helped generate ideas once the theme of "unstable" was announced. He practically had all the mechanics of the game figured out within half an hour of the announcement.
- @miller1215 wasn't able to join in at the start, but came in big on Saturday with ideas and helped point me in the right direction. The glowing ring wouldn't be in the game without him, which was such a huge upgrade.
- @mhorth the main developer, I've dabbled with game dev for a couple years now as a hobby. I took these guys' ideas and made them reality.
Tools
- Unity
- GIMP and Inkscape for 2D art
- Blender for 3D models (add standard mesh then slap on a bevel :laughing:)
- Audacity for recording and processing sound effects
- Trello for staying organized
- MongoDB for leaderboard
Showcase
A teaser of the current endgame: https://youtu.be/_UFCHYda8yo
Special Notes
- I have you type in a name so that scores can be submitted to a leaderboard. The name is the only differentiator, so try to pick a unique one. If you and someone else type the same name, the leaderboard will think you're the same person. Sorry!
- I uploaded an HTML build, but the post-processing and the web requests for the leaderboard both broke. I don't want anyone to have to play the game in a reduced quality, so it'll stay Windows only for now. Sorry again!
- In case you're in the mood to grind for a high score, you should know that the supplemental stats on the leaderboard like "tallest height", "blocks lost", etc. don't matter at all for your ranking. It's just the score. Each block has a point value that gets added when it lands, and gets subtracted if it falls off.
Future Plans
- Some of you have mentioned wanting to play the game more to compete for high scores. I'm sorry to say that I don't have a save system for your upgrades, every time you launch the game starts from 0. That's a huge deterrent against further play, so I'll upload a new build once the jam totally ends that will slash the upgrade prices and keep progress between sessions. Thank you for all the encouragement!
Devlog
In case you wanna see how we made a certain part of the game, or if you just like watching devlogs in general, here's a "making of" video:
https://youtu.be/16BjdA0bjIQ
| Link | https://mhorth.itch.io/perfectly-balanced |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/perfectly-balanced |
Ratings
| Overall | 158th | 4.008⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 161th | 3.966⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 377th | 3.653⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 26th | 4.5⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 353th | 4.034⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1039th | 2.469⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 479th | 3.643⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 80🗳️ | 113🗨️ |
Great job!
The difficulty curve was probably the hardest thing to get right for me. I was inspired by rogue-lite games, so it's intentionally impossibly difficult on the first round. As you get more upgrades it gets easier. To balance that out, the spawning gets more difficult the longer you stay alive. The spawn rate ramps up to 1 block per second after 10 minutes, and new (trickier) shapes are added along the way. These changes are accompanied by new music tracks to show that it's getting more intense.
I really like the chill vide, the color palette, and the general mechanics of the game! So fun!
If I had one suggestion, it would be to make the game a bit easier at the start, like making the point under the board a bit thicker.
I don't know if my score was good or not, but I got to 125!
Again, very nice job!
Update: yup that makes a big difference lol. Shows me for thinking it would be a piece of cake to start out with lol
Super enter congratulations
The game is 100% intuitive and I just hopped right in without needing the tutorial. My strategy was to pack the center with the largest objects, and as asymmetrical as possible. Upon looking at your video did I see you can put the large cube around the edge to keep things inside a pen. Genius!
The visuals are perfect. Clean and fits the music perfectly. In fact, the entire presentation reminds me of Viridi now that I think about it. A tad less relaxing than a game about succulents though...
One thing I particularly liked is the upgrade system, which makes us want to come back again and again, with new features. The game is pretty hard though, the yellow cubes are really heavy, even if it is balanced by the possibility to move them whenever you want (in our version, once the object is dropped, you can't move it anymore). All in all, it's funny to see how different a unique game concept can be declined when it is left to two different teams.
I would be curious to have your opinion on our version, if you have time :)
@gaming-night thanks! The upgrade system was a feature I knew I wanted before we even started. After seeing games during LD48 that had upgrade systems, I found them so compelling for replay-ability. I'll definitely check out your game after work today!
Definitely on point with the "unstable" theme. I will play it again soon to compete on the leaderboard!
Good job!
So addictive with the upgrades and leaderboard ! Well done ! Managed to go to the 6th place haha
Smooth music and nice graphics + game is super easy to learn but difficult to master. :heart:
Quite relaxing! I have no idea how you reached over 2k but I might try to beat it one of these days =). Use of the light is very well done and just using simple cubes you delivered a unique experience. Bravo! =)
One thing I would add is a save system if you were to make this a full game, but at this point I'm just nitpicking.
That's a lot of fun, I really enjoyed playing.
I thought it would be fun to put my work-learnings to use in games, so I used MongoDB to store my data in the cloud, and then found tutorials on writing a web app with barebones REST API that can communicate with MongoDB. That web app is hosted in Azure (because that's what the tutorial did that I followed :laughing:).
Then the UnityWebRequests I would guess are very similar to how they are implemented in your game, and they talk to my web app. This gave me the freedom to choose my own data structure, rather than being limited to what the pre-made service tells me to use.
I ran into the same frustrations you spoke of with the service I'm using for our game ([globalstats.io](https://globalstats.io/)). I'm able to store which version was used when the highscore was achieved but I'm currently not able to figure out how I would limit the score's present in the game to be the one's achieved in the same version. I doubt it's impossible since I'm able to store both data-types in the same "entry" on the site but I simply lack the knowledge required to make it work :sweat_smile:
Thank you for responding!
I really appreciate the advice on audio! You got me looking at sound cards and all that jazz now :stuck_out_tongue:.
@rufson thanks very much for the compliments, glad you liked it!
I'll make sure to try out both of your games after work today.
Maybe I'll grind for the highscore later.
Overall very good and polished entry!!
It is easy to learn, but hard to master. You found a nice balance between easy and hard.
Overall well done!
@wouterk12 thanks very much! The difficulty curve was a piece I was really worried about, so I'm glad to hear you found it alright. I was hoping to play your game and leave some feedback, but it looks like android only? Let me know if you post a Windows or web build, and I'll try it out.
Such a meditative game, but pretty difficult to me. The circle drops very fast and gives me no chance to manage cubes. I think (I hope) that problem is not only in my hands and reaction but also in circle's falling speed. Paint surface with string is a nice idea, it helps, but I still don't have time to replace. Again, it seems start difficulty is high and it may force player to improve his or her skills.
@astramorae I'm glad the controls felt intuitive! I spent a good amount of time and thought trying to get it there. Did you have any upgrades purchased? I went with a rogue-lite system for this game where it's designed to be impossible at the start, but each attempt earns some money where you can buy upgrades that make it easier. Other users have mentioned that they didn't notice there were upgrades to buy, and kept playing in the impossible state. Could that have been the same for you?
I really enjoyed the polish with this one, and definitely wish I had more time to play it. :sweat_smile: Maybe I'll come back to it eventually for that high score!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1173738676?t=0h0m6s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
This is very relaxing to play, and the athmosphere is super nice !