Blog - Player Thoughts - Classic SpikeDislike

9th February 2019

Each week, a huge influx of emails and comments and thoughts flurry into view, as @RSKGames plays the game!
But RSK has competition, this week, as Spinal's joined in with some feedback, too!!

You can Download Classic SpikeDislike here.

@RSKGames

Overview: Back to basics Classic Spike dislike is as enjoyable and addictive as the previous versions of the game.

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Gameplay: Having the core mechanics in place without the distraction of the timer bar on top or the combo notifications has made the game very relaxing to play without the tension seen in the previous versions. The timer constraints and the combo points are still present in the game to goad the players to make mistakes.

RSKGames later replied to his own comment, having realised that the combo-timer is subtly hidden behind the score display.
Maybe I hid that a little too well?!

If the player is patient and focused any amount of high score is possible as it is a truly endless game. Spikes at different heights having the same color at all times and in different game types makes it easier to tackle them. I felt this is a much easier spike dislike compared to Super Spike dislike and Spike dislike 3 that I had played before.

It's a much better balanced version, I think, although maybe I have made it a bit too easy? I'm not really sure how that's happened, but it does feel like I can get a better highscore than normal.

Still, the feeling of "Epic-Combo" is still there, so that's good!

Graphics: The sinusoidal movement of the ball is always a beauty to watch, the score stars and the changing background were good.

I spent ages trying to get the right background effect to work. It's a HUGE departure from my usual "panels" method of drawing the background, and was mostly determined by the way my framework handles 3DS functionality, coupled with my 3DS Classic's odd "screen blur" issues.
In all honestly, the screen blur was the one big problem I had with this game, and it's actually been about 6 or 7 months since I started to think about ways to do this game.
Thankfully, most issues are now gone.
.. Just don't try playing the game in Portrait mode!!

Overall a very addictive and fun game.

Everybody likes SpikeDislike

@Spinal_Cord

I have only one issue with your new version, nothing big, but it just a shame that the bounce speed doesn't exactly hit the same bpm as the very cool music. It very almost does, so it keeps time for a while then slowly shifts out.

Ugh, I know!
I'm not 100% sure what part of the conversion did that, but when I composed the music in KORG Gadget, I managed to find just the right tempo. From there, I converted it to a Wav, sent it via Dropbox, converted it to an Ogg, then used my badly coded music player to stream the Ogg..
Somewhere along the way, it went ever so slightly out of sync, and I tried three or four times to get it "just right", but..
Nah..
Wasn't gonna happen!!

3DS version - I would suggest having the ground on the same depth as the ball and spikes, but have the stars at all different depths. Also stars in front of the ground?

The stars actually ARE at different depths, but all in the 0.0->0.25 range, so are usually so far in the background that you don't register their depth.
The stars "in front of the ground" aren't actually in front of the ground.
In the 3DS version, there actually isn't any ground! There's Grass, sure, but there's nothing under the grass!!
This is due to my own badly coded sprite-scaling and memory issues, which have in fact reduced the 3DS version down to a lot fewer drawn layers. I skipped the ground, to keep the framerate up.

You need to get this onto something officially. I think the 3DS dev stuff is still running, or the switch perhaps?

Yep. I sure do..
But whenever I think about "Paid for SpikeDislike", I want to add more and more to it.
But we've seen from the dislike of SpikeDislike3 that when I DO bother to bulk up the game in new and unique ways... ... People just want the simpler one.
So, do I give more for those who pay, or do I do that evil thing of just slapping the basic version online, but with a price tag?!

Hmmm...

You can Download Classic SpikeDislike here.

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