Block Breaker Battle! Local two-player and block-building vs AI!

[Martin]

Hello fellow game makers!

I’ve continued building on the game and added more levels, bombs, icebombs and a skill that lets you duplicate the ball!
There’s also a local two player mode where one player must place bricks while the other player tries to break them! Or you can test your brick building skills against the AI!

http://www.marhin.com/2016/09/06/block-breaker-battle

Click here to play!

Block builder mode (VS AI or human):
Left click to place bricks. This drains Energy (blue bar), which slowly regenerates.
Click the blocks in the top right to switch block type. The numbers indicate Energy costs.

You can also right click to toggle brick type, and
scroll up to use normal bricks, scroll down to use special bricks.

The red bar acts as the block builder’s life.
The number in the center of the red bar is the number of blocks placed.
If it drops below the “Min” number, you lose.
The Min number increases slowly over time, so you need to keep more and more blocks placed.

When more than half the red bar is filled, the green block lifetime bar starts moving.
To win each level against the paddle you need to fill up the green block lifetime bar.
So you win faster by having more blocks placed.
You can also win if the paddle player runs out of lives.

Normal blocks: Break after 1, 2 and 3 hits respectively.
Bomb block: Refills 1 Energy for each nearby block it blows up.
Ice bomb: Freezes nearby blocks, giving them one extra hit point.
Solar panel block: +5% Energy regeneration per block placed.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

I appreciate feedback or ideas, so please leave a comment!

[Jake_Allen]

Excellent work!
There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here. I like the extra ball timer.
The exploding bricks. The paddle having, what feels like, 3 surface angles.

The vs mode is also very inspired. It’s almost as if there is a RTS game inside of a Breakout type.

my only issues were:
The vs. mode took me second to figure out what was going on. I didn’t realize that I was putting down the bricks and what my goal was, at first.
In single player mode, the scene instantly pops to the next level. A few seconds of delay would be nice.

When I have more time, I’m going to hop into Vs. a bit more.
Great Work

[Peter_Gambell]

Hi Martin, brilliant block breaker game! It’s the best I’ve seen yet!

I especially liked the exploding and ice bomb bricks, they make good targets to aim at and avoid respectively, so the player has an incentive to plan where they’re aiming the ball.
The risk/reward factor when choosing to duplicate the ball is good as well, as it can be quite destructive to the bricks when used effectively, but also gives a bit of increased risk in losing lives.

I played through all the single player levels, and I enjoyed the payoff at the end, very good idea!

I have played the VS mode against the AI a couple of times, and I’m getting better but still not exactly sure how the block builder wins or loses. I think I still had some blocks left at one point when I got the lose screen, so I’m not sure why that happened. I do like the VS mode though, I just suggest some explanation is in order so that the players know what their goals are and what the different bricks do. It took me a while to realise what the bricks with the plus symbol did.

Still, terrific work!

[Martin]

Thanks for the nice feedback Jake, I’m glad you liked it!

I will add instructions or a short tutorial to the VS AI mode so it’s easier to understand from the start.
I’ll add a delay of a few seconds to the next level.
There’s also supposed to be a level up sound, and lives are supposed to accumulate, but this didn’t work in the WebGL version. I’ll try to fix that.

[Martin]

Hi Peter, thanks for the nice feedback, glad you liked it!

I’m happy the payoff worked, didn’t test it in the WebGL version yet.

I will soon add instructions to the block builder mode so it’s easier to understand from the start, and a description of what each block does. For now I’ll add an explanation to my original post.