Punch Pong is a fantastic and fun idea, turning the classic Ping Pong into a turn-based fighting game that needs quick-thinking and countering your enemies.
It's turn-based but the Punch Pong battles continue switching between players in real-time as the ball moves directions but you can only engage your move as it comes your way. It's quite ingenious and a has a lot of style to it. As you bounce the ball back, you build up an energy bar allowing you to do special moves and gradually bring down your opponents HP.
Certainly not easy, takes a good amount of practice and I definitely needed more coffee before going in, although if you're a fighting-game buff you will probably feel right at home with the kind of mental games it requires. You can block for less damage, counter moves to prevent HP annihilation and it requires good button-mashing reflexes mixed with some real thinking ahead. Love the idea!
Want to know what else is interesting? The idea was originally made by Nekomatata during a Game Jam, and three years of development later it's here and built with the open source Godot Engine. Super smooth too, works fantastic in my time spent with it.
Punch Pong can be picked up from itch.io right now for a $2 Early Bird special price for a limited amount of copies. The developer mentions regular content updates with new characters, special moves and locations.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I hope they do a more complete video or explanation :)
Maybe I am too focused on the game to understand this.
Quoting: xaviI am a table tennis player, and I did not understand at all!I admit I did have to play the tutorial twice to understand the mechanics.
I hope they do a more complete video or explanation :)
Maybe I am too focused on the game to understand this.
A clearer visual feedback on what happens to the HP bar on each move might be necessary to make the mechanics clearer to the player.
But yeah, you can forget about table tennis in itself, it's a good pretext for a "turn-based but real-time" arcade game where you have to chain combos in a strategic manner to reduce your opponent's HP to 0 before you bite the dust. A "chop" removes 1 HP, a "topspin" removes 2 and adds a buff to the ball which cause any subsequent topspin from either player to do 3 damage, unless the buffed ball is debuffed by a chop, etc.
We'll be tweaking the tutorials based on player feedback on our next update so this is great to see.
-- Team Nekomatata
Quoting: NekomatataThank you! We were so happy and surprised to read this article.
We'll be tweaking the tutorials based on player feedback on our next update so this is great to see.
-- Team Nekomatata
Hello Nekomatata
In my opinion you should decide if the game will have any similarities to real game.
If it's a topspin, then trajectory will be a parable
If it's a block, then will be linear
A block after a topspin is relatively easy to do if you are close to the table (timing is not very important)
A topspin against a topspin needs a very precise timing
an smash will be from top to down and it is very difficult if the ball has bounced very close to the player
the moment of the block will affect the trajectory ...
smashing a ball that has been cut is kind of suicide if you do not have a very precise timing and correct racket
cutting a cutted ball is easy
playing short or long is very important
playing backhand and forehand will be also nice.
left-right axis stuff will be also nice, but I think you will not implement this according to the perspective.
Cheers!
Last edited by xavi on 10 June 2020 at 12:22 pm UTC
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