Feedback Request: FizzBall BETA

[Ryan Clark]

Hi everyone!

We've just finished work on the beta version of our latest game, "FizzBall". Here's a quick descriptive blurb:

"Why has everyone fled the islands? There's not a person in sight! Who will feed the animals and find out what scared the people away? Professor Fizzwizzle, of course!

Bounce bubbles, rescue hungry animals, and solve a mystery, all at the same time!"

More details here (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball) (though the download and buy links don't work there, yet!)

Screenshots: 1 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=1) 2 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=2) 3 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=3) 4 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=4) 5 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=5) 6 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=6) 7 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=7) 8 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=8) 9 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=9) 10 (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/screenshots.php?screen=10)

Download links: Windows (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/FizzBallDEMO.exe), Mac (http://grubbygames.com/fizzball/FizzBallDEMO.dmg) (Linux version to come, shortly)

We would love to hear what you think about the game. If you spot any problems, we'd appreciate it if you could tell us your general system specs (processor speed and amount of RAM) along with your description of the issue.

We're also looking for a few good beta testers to play the full version all the way through. We require that you play through to the end of the game and give us feedback and reports on any bugs you might find. In return you'll get a free copy of the game and your name in the credits. If you're interested in beta testing, please email me at (my first name)@grubbygames.com

Thanks for reading! We're looking forward to hearing what you think of FizzBall :)

[Mike Boeh]

This is one of the most original and fun implementations of breakout I have ever played- really neat!

[Sharpfish]

Going to comend you on every single aspect. I've played a lot of breakout games in my time but this is perfect, especially for casual (as well as "other" players of course).

The art, the gameplay (love the ball size twist), the animation, the extra features (animal sanctuary), even the upsell screen is brilliantly done (I actually watched it until the last delayed car "what are you waiting for" which is something I rarely do so that's probably going to pay off big time!). It also has a lot of charm and a unique style (well it shares a style with your first game which is great!).

And best of all you have combined your previous game's character to create a mascot for Grubby games.

Too much to see in one 5 minute play (reached level 3)!

I got the warning about low performance and it switched the weather effects of very stylishly, on an 800mhz CPU so that's probably right.

It just shows that with all this discussion of the same old genres and gameplay types being reworked ad infinitum you can still make them worthwhile by adding to them and polishing them like mad.

The best indie game i've seen in a while and i'm sure it's going to do well.

Well done and best of luck with the "real" release! :)

[Midnight Synergy]

Hey Guys,

Wow, brilliant all around! I love the Katamari Breakout concept, the visual style and sound fx are very cute, and all of the extra touches really make the game shine... well done!

Ran no problem on my laptop (a Compaq 1 Gig with integrated Intel graphics).

Best of luck with the release!
Cheers,
Patrick

[Geom]

Wow, very nice.

A few suggestions:

In the main menu, when the fish hit the water, a splash effect would be nice.

Also in the main menu, I think the deer could use some touch up to look cuter. Its head looks, I don't want to say ugly, but somewhat reminiscent of Homer Simpson :cool:

When the player beats a level, the professor jets off and the screen clears awfully quickly. I'd like an extra second or so to bask in the glory of my accomplishment. Some eye candy as a reward would be nice, too.

Good things: too many to enumerate. It looks and plays great.

[Duke]

When Professor Fizzwizzle was released, I immediately dismissed it based on a quick look at screenshots. Just recently I downloaded it to see "what all the fuss is all about". Man, was I pleasantly surprised! I played all through the trial time. Halfway through it, I reached for my credit card to buy it for my son, but then ran into some more difficult levels and decided to wait until he's grown up a bit more (he's now 5).

And now this..

Man, I almost envy you :)
You are my idol!

[Tom Gilleland]

This is a really nice game, great job! :)

The only thing I noticed odd on my Mac download is the automounting window from the dmg looked like it was missing a background image. I expected to see something telling me to copy the FizzBall icon to my applications folder.

Tom

[barrygamer]

GREAT fun game.
No performance probs for me (Mac Mini, Intel Solo 1.5Ghz, 512MB, 10.4.7).

1 thing: when the ball is small, the trail looks very similar to the ball, which caught me out a couple of times.

[Sillysoft]

This is a really awesome game, excellent work. Fun game, good name, funny theme, and lots of awards!

- After beating a level the mouse pointer gets automatically put on the next level's circle in the island screen. But then you have to mouse over the entire screen to get to the Play button. I found this a little annoying.

- Some breakout (or other) games differentiate good and bad power-ups with colors. i.e. All bad powerups are red. I think FizzBall could benefit from doing this. It would be easier to know if you wanted to grab them or not at a glance, even if you don't know all the pictures yet.

- On the 3rd level (or so) I got the "turning off weather effects for performance" notice. But I had been happy with the performance and loving the effects. So I turned them back on again and it was all good again. This was on a 1.6 ghz PowerBook G4, with a gig of RAM (but I also had a bunch of other apps left open in the background.)

[Dyno Kid]

What can i say.....

Screaming number one hit!!!!!!

Simply brilliant and an insperation to us indies.

Sit back and watch the $$$$$ come in on this #1 game.

WELL DONE !!!

Darren.

[bluejay]

great game! love the cartoony twist on the breakout game.

The trophies and archivments are great fun. The "which came first?" one made me laugh hard. :D

one minor quibble: the birds sometimes are too hard to catch and can be a little frustrating when they are the last animals you need to catch to finishing the level.

overall, congrats for a great polished product!

[Tom Gilleland]

I was curious, was this title written in Flash?

Tom

[Ryan Clark]

Hi everyone,

Thanks very much for the feedback! Your comments are very kind and encouraging :)

And as for the suggestions that have been made, we've read every one of them, and will take them into consideration. We truly appreciate you taking the time to give us ideas for things to work on and improve!

I was curious, was this title written in Flash?
People asked us the same thing about Professor Fizzwizzle. I'm not sure why! But the answer is no, it's done in C++ with SDL.

[Tom Gilleland]

People asked us the same thing about Professor Fizzwizzle. I'm not sure why!
I thought it might be done in Flash because the graphics have that vector flash look to them, and you seem to release on both PC and Mac platform simultaneously, and I thought your online play version of Prof. Fiz was done in Flash. I was thinking that maybe Flash has the capacity to do a game of this magnitude.

Tom

[jeb_]

Oh no! I have the first bug report I think!

But first! Excellent game! I'm completely amazed!

I played the game almost thourgh the whole first island... not sure which level, but I had started collecting turtles and dogs. After finishing a level, I went back to the main menu and clicked Achievements and then the Animal Sanctuary... and boom! It crashed :(

I'll try to reproduce the error.

EDIT: Yes, it was reproducable. I started the game again and noticed that I had lost my progress of the last level, so I replayed it (the one with the barrels in a star). When I had completed the level I returned to the menu and tried to enter the sanctuary and it crashed again. (I was able to enter the sanctuary before I finished that level, so maybe it's something with the turtle, since it's the only new animal?)

[Ryan Clark]

I thought it might be done in Flash because the graphics have that vector flash look to them, and you seem to release on both PC and Mac platform simultaneously, and I thought your online play version of Prof. Fiz was done in Flash. I was thinking that maybe Flash has the capacity to do a game of this magnitude.
That totally makes sense :) Yes, our online version of PF was done in Flash, but we outsourced its development. We have 0 Flash knowledge, ourselves!

I played the game almost thourgh the whole first island... not sure which level, but I had started collecting turtles and dogs. After finishing a level, I went back to the main menu and clicked Achievements and then the Animal Sanctuary... and boom! It crashed :(
Thanks very much for this bug report, Jeb! A few people have also reported that the game crashes when entering the Animal Sanctuary. I will certainly be working on this issue. I appreciate the tip!

[dumbmanex]

Wowzers, awesome job. Did anyone else get pinball jitters when the Fizz is bouncing around in a mass of trees? If you don't mind me asking, how long have you guys been working on this?

[papillon]

It's not completely happy with tabbing out while help windows are up, but at least it doesn't crash, which far too many games do when tabbed out. :)

Is there a noise when the ball first launches at all? There should be - it's confusing for a moment because the trail is always lifting from my spot anyway, I'm not sure a launch has happened until the ball starts banging into things.

[Ryan Clark]

Wowzers, awesome job.
Thanks!

If you don't mind me asking, how long have you guys been working on this?
It took almost exactly 1 year, with about 2.25 people working on it full time.

It's not completely happy with tabbing out while help windows are up, but at least it doesn't crash, which far too many games do when tabbed out. :)
Thanks for the feedback, papillon. What sort of behaviour did you see? In my tests it handles ALT-TABbing properly.

[Deux]

This game is incredible, it is gonna be a winner for sure.

At first I was a bit concerned it was going to be too much of a kiddie game, but after playing the first few levels I am HOOKED!

Again you guys have produced a gem. I have had no problems as of yet, but will report anything I come across.

My wife came home and wondered why I was chuckling, and now she is hooked too.

Anyway, back to the game :)

[BIGZIPZ]

Superb piece of software. You should be proud of your team.

In window mode I have noticed that sometimes I lose control of the mouse cursor in that when I try to move to the far side of the window the cursor moves to the desktop and I find myself being unable to press certain buttons etc.

[papillon]

When tabbed out at the beginning while the help windows are up, it does switch back to desktop, but the taskbar buttons behave strangely. Instead of switching to the program I'm clicking on (like this browser window to make my notes) the mouse just jumps to the top left corner of the screen, and the program doesn't come up. Clicking on the fizzball icon takes me back to the game properly.

Once the game proper is started, this problem doesn't happen, but a single click on the fizzball taskbar entry doesn't take me back to the game - it just throws my mouse up into the corner again. Have to click twice to switch back.

Also, alt-tab clears the help window as if I'd clicked through it, but that's *really* minor.

(XP, service pack 2)

[Chris Evans]

Considering this is just your second game, you truly do have a talent for game making. This game has just so many of the little touches that rest of us usually overlook/neglect even with our 3rd and 4th games. Also the game seems really complete and doesn't feel rushed at all. I imagine with the success of Professor Fizz, it allowed you to take your time and get everything right.

[redito]

Count me in with the rest on this forum who are already in love with this game. I'm a big breakout fan and this DEFINITELY adds something new to the genre.

I also agree with those who said the bubble should make a sound when it's first released and that the bad powerups should be red while the good ones should be blue (or something else).

Nit picking here - I thought the bubble was quite hard to see in the beginning. I adjusted as I played but perhaps you could include an option to choose to have it a little darker, making it easier for youngest and oldest eyes to see.

I also had the low performance warning after about level 10. Seems to be a trend here. I'm running 2ghz CPU with a gig of ram and extra video ram and the performance looked just fine until then, thank you very much.

I didn't understand the butterfly bonuses (I didn't even see the butterflies I was catching!) and even checked the help screen for it but there is no mention there. I figured it out (D'oh!) but you might want to include it in the instructions, especially for kids. And you know...dumb people....like, say, me!

Seriously. Great Game. Seriously.

[Infinite_Reflection]

I'm loving this game!

I want to get back to playing ASAP so I'm going to keep this short and only point out the relatively trivial negatives I've found.

So far, I've had it crash once while trying to access the animal sanctuary. I was in fullscreen mode and it just exited back to the desktop when clicking on the button. Also, and I'm not sure if this is desired behavior or not, but using the Destructo-Ray on a single tree in level 12A caused pine cones to fall from all of the trees.

Okay, back to playing. :D

[jankoM]

I love it a lot like everybody else so this is no useful info.

One thing that bothered me when playing. The angle that ball bounces away when you hit it with the most left or right side of the bat seemed too small for my liking. I had a feeling I can only bounce it mainly upwards (in front of me). For example I was on the left side with the ball and I wanted to get the ball to the right side to do something so I hit it with farmost right angle of a bat and I got only 1/4 of the path to the right so I would have to do it again and again and again to get there (if I am able to controll it so much and dont send it back to the left in the meantime.) Well, just an oppinion.

best wishes,
Janko

[Roman Budzowski]

I'm with Jonko, changing angle is too hard.

[jeb_]

I'm with Jonko, changing angle is too hard.

I thought that too at first, but then I learned to use the fan (right mouse button), and then it didn't bother me so much.

[luggage]

There's a fan!?

Missed that.

[simonh]

Superb stuff, only minor complaint I've got is that the map screen I thought looked a bit 'samey' - three green islands that all look similar to one another.

[Deux]

Sweet! I am top scorer for today :)

Anyway, if I have to make a complaint, which is so hard to do for this game, would be that I battle too, to change direction effectively from the paddle.

The fan does help though.

Something I really like is that you have put a failsafe in incase your FizzBall gets stuck. I had mine get stuck yesterday behind some trees, and I was like, yup first problem right here, and boom, the ball was reset onto my paddle, nice work!

My sanctuary looks overrun right now, hehe, I love it.

[SteveZ]

Great way to end a demo...

(Takes out credit card)

:)

My only complaint is those damn birds. On every of those levels, collecting the last few birds becomes more of a chore than something fun to do - couple recommendations:

1. When a bird is standing on a structure and that structure gets damanged/destroyed by the fizzball, it knocks the bird onto the ground - which stays on the ground for the duration of the level.

2. If apples and acorns are on the ground, there is an X% chances that a bird will fly to the ground to peck on the food. X% is proportional to the number of animals already saved.

Regards,
Steve Z.

[luggage]

I tried it out on my Dad. He liked it although he found the smallest bubble hard to see. Once it had gone up a size it was fine. I think how small it is plus the other bubbles that come off are what did it.

[Drake]

Great stuff, as expected. You guys have outdone yourselves, and that's saying something.

- Beautiful interface work all around. By ditching the monospace font and crafting those very nice dialogs and buttons, you've dramatically improved upon something that I thought was one of Fizzwizzle's very few little weaknesses.

- The comic strip presentation of the hints is great, and the strategic reuse of art is very well done.

- As a non-1337 Arkanoid/Breakout player, I really appreciated how forgiving the game is. Like some others mentioned though, I expected to get a wider range of angles from the bumper. I guess the fans solve that, but I played through the whole first island without being aware of them.

- Bug: The game does not seem to detect custom sound cards on the Mac. I have an M-Audio card, and I had to re-route sound output to the standard hardware to get it to run. Prof. Fizzwizzle runs fine with the M-Audio card.

- Super Minor Bug: When I was flying my mouse around the sanctuary, I noticed that the horse seemed to space out for about 10 seconds after you roll over him, whereas the other animals responded repeatedly to rollovers.

[me_36]

Hi Ryan,

Although I like Professor Fizzwizzle better I still enjoyed playing this one.

My demo-playtime is over and I want more :D

My niece is six years old and when I showed her the game she wanted to try herself. I was playing in regular mode and she couldn't match the speed and we started Kids mode. She became frustrated when attempting to move. She missed the small bubble over and over again.

Maybe you can start the first levels with a larger carriage. (maybe a wagon?)

Also as she is a non-english speaker she couldn't understand the quiz.
We managed to skip it at the end but she required my help.


Are you considering a multi-player (online) version and/or mode?
Is there a level-editor?

Did I mention that this is excellent work :)!!


Best regards from
M.E.

[Ryan Clark]

Thanks again to everyone above for the feedback! Every issue mentioned will be taken into consideration.

Are you considering a multi-player (online) version and/or mode?
Is there a level-editor?
Sorry to disappoint, but the answer is "no" on both counts :(