For this year’s game jam, Bloopy, @Ultranova, @Niwatori401 and @Sunward have put together an arcade dating sim inspired by the 1994 “Puzzle Bobble”. In this game you will select different locations around the world and attempt to get as far as you can in each stage.
There are three girls (and one cute penguin) for a total of four levels to play.
All three levels should be beatable, though Texas is easiest.
Here is the link to the game’s Itch.io page:
If you are on Windows, be sure to download the .zip version! Major bugs will be fixed in the “POST SUBMISSION FIXES” version, so download that if you want the most up-to-date release.
There are some bugs, but we worked very hard on this and I hope you enjoy!
If you are interested in looking at the source code, it’s available on my Github!
This game is pretty frustrating. The balls stick to places they really shouldn’t, and sometimes they just disappear without popping any other bubbles or anything. It’s just really janky. You should probably increase the value of the combos or something to compensate for it.
Other than that, it’s a good concept, the art is great, and it’s got cool music, and I like how the music escalates as you progress.
I have to second Korotas post. The visuals are very nice, the girls sprites are great and having different food for each location is a nice touch and shows real dedication, instead of just using the same food across all levels. The music escalating as you progress through the levels is really neat.
Unfortunately the gameplay itself is quite frustrating. I still haven’t beaten the Japan stage because it feels like you just have to get lucky with what orbs you get or you’re just screwed. Compounding that are some bugs like orbs disappearing after being shot, not all orbs in a row popping when they should, and orbs sticking inconsistently. Some other QoL features that could be added are a pause button and a trajectory line for shooting the orbs. Despite all that I can tell this game has a lot of love put into it, and hopefully will continue to improve after the jam!
Also the game will crash if you max out the tutorial penguin and then lose.
This game is really great, but MAN is it hard. As others have said, there are certainly some inconsistencies with the behaviors of the bubbles, like when they sometimes don’t disappear or outright replace other bubbles when landing. Despite these issues, though, I still really enjoyed the game. Finally clearing Japan was extremely satisfying (though very difficult), and there are many others things to like. The visuals are great, the dynamic music is really cool, and the escalation of difficulty in the three different areas is solid.
Overall, this is probably my personal favorite game of the jam (of the ones I’ve played so far, there were a ton of submissions today alone). If there were to be some changes made to the game in the future, though, I have a few suggestions. Obviously, buggy interactions between bubbles should be addressed. Additionally, if there was some kind of pause menu that allowed you to adjust the volume of the game, that would be nice too. I also think that an option for fullscreen would improve the experience quite a bit as well, but I don’t really know how realistic of an option that would be. Other than that, there isn’t too much else I think needs to be changed. Great job to everyone who worked on this one!
Thanks! I wanted to give it a shot. It was my first real experience programming in Lua, but I think it was a lot more fun to use than something that provides more of the product for you, like Unity.
I fixed this, but a couple minutes after the deadline. If you download the “POST SUBMISSION FIXES” version this is fixed.
Glad to hear you did it! We were balancing to the last minute on the clock, so we didn’t quite get to adjust it as much as I would’ve hoped. The goal was for Texas to be somewhat easy, Delhi to be medium hard and Tokyo to be quite hard.
Definitely feel free to post your scores here, I’m curious to see how everyone was able to do!
Reckon it’s just a case of getting used to it, took a little while before I did. Actually cleared Delhi before Texas after failing the latter a few times, oddly enough.
T’was a fun game, only issues are 'sometimes not all the bubbles in a 3-combo pop and needing to focus means sometimes we miss the text. Also the lack of an ending, but that’s just a personal thing, as is the missing text boxes come to think of it.
Still quite a fun little game and the Texan is best girl.
This is really well done, love the graphics and dialog. However the gameplay could use some tweaks, sometimes when landing a bubble at an angle it just pain disappears. Also maybe a predictive line would help with aiming,
This kicks serious ass! I was disappointed to see there was only 3 girls cuz I wanted more!
Pros:
Just stellar gameplay, genuinely fun
GORGEOUS artwork, this pixel-based style whatever it is… it looks amazing! Especially at fatter sizes!
Fun dialogue!
JAMMING Music! You know its good when the game plays great, looks great, sounds great, and has great characters and dialogue
Cons:
HARD. This game is difficult! Not for the casual one-handed jerk’n’gamer, and the later stages may get you bordering on titled. But I was never so tilted that I felt like quitting… except for maybe
Bugs and graphical glitches happen semi-often, especially on the india stage I noticed. Balls will go directly on top of each other or fall out of bounds. This made things difficult and frustrating.
I also don’t like that the tutorial is baby easy compared to the levels, due to ball size and number of rows. Also, why does Japan have 2 Blue foods, that’s rough on my eyes to differentiate quickly.
THE BIGGEST ISSUE I HAVE, However, is the lack of an awards screen on the main hub world, or cut-ins during the gameplay. I have genuinely no idea what dialogue or gorgeous spritework went on during the final third of New Delhi, because I had to focus so hard on the game and battle the clock, that I couldn’t afford to look at the sexy indian fatty say funny dialogue. A cut-in screen each time they fatten up to a new size, pausing the game as they talk, OR a screen to view all dialogue and artworks outside-of-levels after you win would really be appreciate here.
Also idk if this is an iss-me or issue, but the version I played kept crashing, “not responding” and whatnot. It was really tilting on harder levels.
this was was a relly good and fun game. The girls lookt amazing and the pixel art was wonderfull. I playd this kind of game as a kid and it was nice to play something like this again and with super cute fat girls as a extram.
Still it was a bit buggy and the balls disepiert or right out replast some other balls and the dialog sometimes disepiert to fast.
I still hope you guys plan on working on it since this has so much pontenschel.
Like a shoort opening/ending sence with the girls and ofcours i woud love to see some other girls.
Anyway thanks for making this great game
This game was an immediate favorite of mine aesthetically, the presentation is really nice and the music progression with weight stages is great!
Unfortunately the game is much more frustrating than it needs to be in its current state. Others have mentioned it but there are three crippling bugs that are fairly common:
The ball tries to land at an awkward angle is is deleted entirely
Completing a combo of 3 balls fails to properly delete all 3, leaving a straggler behind. Seems to happen most often when the ball you’re shooting is the connector piece between separate groups of balls.
Balls will override other ones when landing, potentially locking off the balls they were supposed to combo with.
2 is the bug that causes the most trouble for me, it is the most frequent and has left me unable to clear the balls that are lowest down on the screen because a single connector ball refuses to be deleted and leaves a big peninsula of balls connected.
The game also needs some sort of dotted line to show the trajectory of balls too imo, this type of puzzle game wants the player to try creative wall bounces to get higher score but in the current state its just a death wish to go for that.
The sticking is pretty touchy too, trying to land a ball in a spot surrounded by 3 others is way too risky because it may get stuck on the sides and block the spot off.
Overall, I wouldn’t be replying with critiques if I didn’t really enjoy this game so I appreciate all of the time and energy that went into it!
While the game is indeed incredibly janky, that is too be expected from a game jam and I myself was able to get used to it quickly. The gameplay itself is very fun, but without a pause button of a reward system, you can’t actually enjoy the fat art on the side of the screen because you’re too busy trying not to die. Even when you reach maximum fullness, the game keeps on going. What I would recommend is implementing some kind of reward system, where if you beat a level or die at a certain weight level, you can still enjoy the girls afterwards up to the weight you’ve unlocked.
Banger quality game with great art but I think I echo everyone else’s sentiments about the game being too janky and difficult. With some more polish this would easily be one of the best games I’ve ever played on this site. Concept alone makes me wanna keep trying regardless of how tilted I’ve been getting. Keep working on this, I’d really absolutely love to see more
Also maybe add a pause button. And now that I’ve played it some more, with a focus on the fetish itself, you really should add an arrow that showcases the direction of your shoot because I’m getting the absolute wrong placements despite swearing I angled my shots just right
Last edit, I won but at what cost. Don’t even get to see the girl I successfully plumped up. Probably should have saved all the text for this part rather than during the game where I’m focusing on the puzzle bobble
Asides from all the bugs people have reported, I think I’ve found the main cause of frustration for people: this game is based on a static grid. Every Puzzle Bobble-esque game I’ve played (Bobblite? Bobblike?) has alternating grid rows so you can match balls diagonally, so that’s probably what people are subconsciously trying to do. I certainly was anyway, and, combined with the lack of a directional line and the ball shooting off-centre from the arrow, made every shot I made feel cheated somehow because it would never land where I expected it to land.
Image of an “alternating grid” because my descriptions are often confusing:
Another thing, I didn’t even realise there was a tutorial level until I looked through this thread. Admittedly I did skip through all of the beginning text but the game opens with the cursor over Tokyo so I just went with that.
I definitely understand the frustration! A gallery would definitely have added quite a bit I think. For anyone else who wants to just view the assets, LOVE games are actually just glorified zip files! If you extract the .exe (or .love) as if it was a zip, you can navigate into the data/ folder and look at the character art and dialogue.
Loved the art style and the characters, and the music went so hard. Also the dialog was a nice touch, especially how flustered the Japanese girl gets, especially when she’s practically bursting out of her kimono, that’s the good stuff right there! Also full disclosure I beat Texas and Delhi, could get one level short of max for Tokyo, called it quits after around two hours then just looked at her final weight sprite in data. Would like to see this expanded (pun intended) to include more locations and an upgrade system, but I do know that would be a lot of work and this was just a jam project. 10/10 for sure
Highlight for me is definitely the art and characters bc good god I am SWOONING the artist knocked it out of the park
Mainly just echoing the sentiments of everyone else, it’s a bit jank and really difficult (seemingly more than intended), but I mean it’s Puzzle Bobble and it’s well made so it’s fun. Aside from some feel stuff and layout things it’s legit great. I think maybe one extra (optional) weight stage would be a nice aspirational goal, just for when you really get into the groove of things. Maybe a gallery with text and things? It’d be nice. All around though it was really neat!
I really hope this game gets updated cause this game is REALLY GOOD. Yes while it is pretty janky i think it adds to the charm and enjoyability of this game.
You certainly had the juicy elements down pat! Loved the dynamic scaling up of the music, the sound effects of pushing past a girl’s limits and both seeing and hearing them becoming bigger and greedier.
A small request would be to have a gallery unlocked upon completion where we can see the sequence and dialog once more. I found at times I was focusing on the puzzle to the point where I was missing what was being said!
Despite some gameplay wrinkles with the bubble placement, a fine effort!
