Hello, MadLad224 here with another game. In this one you play a game of tag, but the one who is chasing is also audibly inflating!
After tagging the other person, you’re immiedatly deflated and they’re inflated to the same point of inflation at which
you were and vice versa. Also, after someone is tagged, they can’t move for a second to avoid instant retagging. Have fun!
Due to its time dependence, this game is more like the hot potato.If there were more player-bots, the gameplay would depend on tag count (if someone gets tagged n times, she’ll pop.)
I hope, if you’ll still working on that game, you would improve graphics and design.
Cool game, it’s always great when a straight-up inflation game shows up these days.
I really enjoyed it.
Concerns/bugs:
Not sure what’s causing it, but half the times I got tagged, I’d float upward for a few seconds and it doesn’t seem to be tied to my character’s size, so I assume it was probably a bug
It’s awfully easy to hide behind a pillar and delay/prevent the AI from getting to you, and you can tell which side of the pillar they’re trying to go around because of the stereo sound
Agreed with Goof up there, the game is far more like Hot Potato than tag, as it’s not dependent on who is tagged for how long, it’s just a matter of who is inflated when the time runs out
Not sure how it can be fixed, but it’s slightly annoying to have an inflation game where you’re explicitly avoiding looking at the inflation, where the better you play, the less inflation you get to look at
Ideas and suggestions:
Maybe a picture-in-picture popup when someone who isn’t you goes up a size? A little popup in the corner showing them running around with the words “[NAME] has inflated!” above the video?
Palette swapping character customization? Nothing too fancy for now, just hue-shifting the red shirt into purple and the hair into black, or whatever.
Modes with more than one AI? This is a big one, I think. It should also alleviate the constant back-and-forth of the current gameplay.
IMO, to fix the hot potato gameplay, there’s a few options:
4a. everyone inflates passively very slowly, “it” or not, and tagging someone just deposits a large portion of your inflation speed and deletes whatever size you were, so being “it” is less about running down the clock and more about making it vastly more urgent that you tag someone faster and faster.
4b. add a slight net loss of air when you tag someone, so tagging someone also delays the “clock” slightly.
4c. kind of a dumb idea, but change the tagged character so that their controls get floaty as they get bigger, but after a certain size, they get an ability to vent (either through a WHOOSH sound effect or a fart sound) and launch themselves forward in a difficult-to-control straight line. The move would have a long cooldown, but can work as a last second save, venting a little bit of their size, but if they miss (and they’ll probably miss) they’ll be sent bouncing halfway across the map.
Could use more variety in the map, but I feel that’s probably already planned. Maybe pitfalls that the tagged character can float over, but the non-tagged ones have to run around?
5a. Z-levels? Add a jump function. The tagged character can jump a little higher than everyone else, too.
Maybe an unlock shop? Win a round to get a currency, spend the money in a shop to unlock new shirt colors, or dumb little hats to wear?
EDIT: another observation I’ve made about the hot potato gameplay as it stands is that there’s really no incentive to try to do anything at the beginning of each round, other than giving the player someone to look at while running down the clock, instead of inflating yourself, I guess.
Please continue work on the game! I’d love to see it inflate into something even bigger! I think @SRP 's suggestions are really good!
P.S
I found a bug, that if you corner your opponent against one of the walls and manage to space yourself properly, your opponent won’t be able to transfer the inflation nor escape, resulting in your opponent eventually bursting without you doing anything. Gotta fix that, otherwise we can cheese the rounds even on very hard difficulty.
Yo, the video just hit over 100K views and I wanted to thank you for making it, this kind of exposure really helps and gives creators like me a lot more enthusiasm to push out more content. Btw, I love your channel, it feels like a really big part of this community!
Well, there wasn’t really a clear bump of views since the video released within like 3 hours of the game releasing, but according to itch statistics, around 1/3 of the views this month come from that video alone. Which, as I said is very helpful!
