Raindrops on a window, or an automatic simulation like this, are not games... But watching raindrops race against each other to see which one wins or if one can get to the end without being swallowed by a bigger one, or watching to see whether blue will defeat orange or if orange is going to get some crazy comeback and win; those are games. The participation and player input in this case is the very intent to "play" and the framing of them as playful activities. Even if it may be just about the bare minimum of what can be considered a game (even by my own, fairly broad definitions). Interestingly; while writing this I kept feeling that there was still some difference between the rain-racing and the marble-battle in terms of game-ness; and I think I've figured it out. I think that the raindrops game is actually more strongly 'a game' than watching this marble-battle simulation, because the raindrops present no story or question or uncertainty to resolve until the player decides to play; whereas your thing is arguably more akin to a story for the player to passively be audience to. On the other hand, the framework you've built to adjust the variables and conditions of the simulation is even more of a game than the raindrops thing; because of they way in which you can play with it for the purposes of exploring the possible outcomes. I feel like I could keep going and try to keep working out the nuances of this; but I currently do not have the time to do so, so I will stop here.
Thanks for taking the time to put all of that down, you make some good points. When I say in the video it’s like a TV show I really felt that urge, to shape the narrative and present a compelling linear experience. Of course we do the same for plot-led games but never to this extreme of linearity, even in visual novels which mostly have some element of meaningful choice. Another commenter mentioned that these kind of things are often referred to as zero player games, which is a cute name. But don’t games need players? Some might argue that the two sides (orange and blue) are players, but they have no autonomy - the outcome is driven by RNG. But then what about games of coin flipping? The two players have no autonomy over the result there but we would easily refer to that as a game. Unless, of course, you count the initial picking of sides, which is what a viewer of these videos would typically do too.
Yeah that's kind of why I didn't want to dwell on it in the video. I found the whole Roger Ebert thing snobbish and gatekeeper'y. Still, I appreciate the discussion here.
You could consider roulette to not be a game then, you're simply choosing a number and expecting it to win. You could bet on a roulette without the roulette operator ever knowing you made a bet.
I love how my interaction with these marble videos always goes as: "ah this stupid crap again, guess I'll watch one..." *3 hours and 12 videos later* "LETS FUCKING GO BLUE"
I was an Algodoo creator for years, I recently discovered channels like Mikan and it's quite insane what rabbithole it is. It's cool to see someone talk about it.
To quote my dorm supervisor: "Well, essentially it's colorful and moving"... He made that disappointed statement when the TV in the common room broke down and every body just stared at the autumn leaves swaying in the wind. Hope the guy is alright, he was 😎
It's a zero player game in the sense that a horse race is a zero player game from the perspective of a gambler. You just observe, possibly bet on what happens.
@@jeffcarey3045Betting with another human is a game with rules and hidden information (sometimes), don't get that confused with something a single observer watches with stakes they only invent for themselves.
technically it's a very VERY complicated coinflip :P also "free for windows and mac" is certainly one of the ways of describing " *used to be* opensource and crossplatform" -_-
Whether or not this is a "game" is an interesting question - it's not, technically, a game because there's no player input, but if you were to add pachinko-style player input (i.e. the player chooses when to dump the balls in), the intense randomness would remove any actual player *agency* from that choice anyway, so it would technically be "a game" but be functionally no different from the video version in the first place.It's a quasi-game?
@@IndieDevLab Thinking about this, I came up with an interesting idea of how to make it a "real" game with skill expression, by just adding one button: upgrade auctions! A random upgrade is offered to one of the players. The other player can hit a button to get the upgrade instead, but it will give the opponent extra balls. The first player can hit a button to out-bid again, but will offer the other player extra balls, instead. Repeat, back and forth, until a player thinks the long-term benefit of the upgrade is not worth the short-term loss of the extra balls being given to the opponent and lets the bidding finish. The nice thing is that this is self-balancing - the players decide the relative strength of upgrades for themselves, and will bid more/less based on that judgement :) Probably requires two human players (or two teams on a stream), or some work to make an AI that can make a reasonable decision on upgrade strength/short-term risk.
@@arabidllama Yes! I really like those games that offer upgrades, but with a poisoned pill downgrade that you have to take too, like Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate. There are many ways you could make these things interactive, but this is definitely an interesting one.
A fun roguelike style game would be a zero-player game like this where the player gets input to edit the conditions after each round - but that's kinda limited. Another way to take this would be a different style of zpg, like an AI only match of a strategy game, and let the player interact with it in ways they usually wouldn't - eg. The player can not directly place buildings or control his faction but he can edit the world in some way that hopefully benefits him.
Hmm. If you use this as a baseline I could see a game popping out of it. I'm half asleep so I might be crazy but what if you added these: 1. A deck mechanic, so the player can decide what abilities the gacha can spawn 2. Different maps that have different moving obstacles, which interact with projectiles in different ways 3. Abilities that affect the shield. Like counter explosions that stop nearby projectiles from affecting other shield bubbles 4. A tournament bracket where you go up against other people who won. You get to steal a card from the loser for your deck, or replace/strengthen a random card between rounds to mix things up. This is pretty cool as is though.
This becomes a game the moment you stake on which side is going to win, since at that point you are either going to win or lose yourself. Same with watching raindrops race. If you want a specific one to win, you can lose and it becomes a game, since you can be strategic about which raindrop you root for.
You could add a bet system to this. Player can also change which side they are betting on during the play, but the reward then depends on how much health this side has (for example, if orange is on 90% health and blue on 10%, reward for betting on blue at this point would be much greater). Rewards you win can be spent on unlocking stuff - like, another games, some new utilities for unlocked games (like new weapons), or maybe even some player abilities to slightly push one side closer to victory. Pretty rough idea, but i think with this you could actually call it a non-zero player game)
Hey awesome concept! Imagine a mode where this is player controlled and each side can move those static circles near the top corners around, in a way that could potentially influence where the marbles go?
@@IndieDevLab Please do! This would be so fun to play on a smartphone with someone! I think it would work best with only one or two inputs. One button to change the position of a cover over the ammo types. And instead of the scale thing in the middle, replace it with two pinball flippers. Each side would control the opposite flipper to try and knock balls back to their side.
This was really fun. It strangely reminds me of the table top RPG design I've been doing recently. I love the control panel style design you came up with in the end to make everything very legible. That's a big thing that I enjoy in "games" or whatever you want to call this.
Interesting that I discovered this genre of video only a week or so ago, and now I'm seeing this in my recommended. I'm glad I'm not the only one fascinated by these silly little simulations.
This might do well on twitch. Make players marbles, and allow them to track their own progress, damage output, win rate, etc. You could even let them upgrade or boist their marbles by spending points they're earning while watching / interacting.
I could totally see this being an auto chess like game where you choose what you want each funnel to be and then let your cannon duke it out in hopes of winning
Please PLEASE consider packaging this into something we can run on our machines as something like a screensaver that we can just have on and watch, and just resets a minute or two after a win.
This strongly reminds me of playing with The Powder Toy and playing with all kinds of things like CONV life, reactors, and its implementations of CGOL (particularly Star Wars with a 3456/278/6 ruleset)
You SHOULD make a user interface, but it only works on the conveyor up so you can open it and have it naturally play out, or barricade for a limited time to unleash a bunch of attacks at once
Why not make it a game , where a player or 2 can control cannons , it's got all the hallmarks of a fast passed high score classic or is kind of a combination of a bunch of them . looks like it could be a fun game to iterate over , little additional things like every time you hit a marble , it changes to your canons color and if it's hit by the other rocker , then it resets but blows up the rocket before it can get to you . I'd play it as much as I'd play a modern tetris, or paddle or or pinball,pong...list goes on
This is like going to an arcade hall without money. Except that the big boys would hit small boys watching in the face when they died. So this is progress.
For some reason watching the thumbnail preview play I got the thought that someone should make a Wintergatan (machine that plays music by dropping marbles) simulator.
A perfect application would be Wallpapers! If there was one of these as a Wallpaper on Wallpaper Engine I would love to have that one one Screen. It could be a never repeating wallpaper you can watch whenever you are idle and maybe there could even be user interactions in the form of some kind of "World Events". But I am getting carried away. Please make this a Wallpaper on wallpaper engine, I would even pay a one time fee to have that!
You should make some new weapons and have it random which appear in each battle, so if you make more of these the locked weapons will have more suspense because they’ll be different every time.
Whats hilarious to me is that what looks like an absolute mess requires a solid grasp on game design to pull off in the first place. Cool use of pacing and degrees of prominence
I think it itches that same part of the brain that Line Rider vids did back in the day. A zero player game with multiple marbles is the exact opposite of Line Rider. Pointless, but entertaining lol
this would be a game if you just added user options that when used properly could result in more balls coming to your side. like maybe 0 gravity or extra gravity, a ramp that redirects things for a few seconds. ect.
Have you ever played the boardgame "snakes and ladders?". This game has about as much userinput as tossing a coin. *I think there are two things that make this type of game enjoyable.* 1) This game plays into the same emotions that you feel when watching a sports competition. 2) This game allows us to apprechiate the skill of the person making that game. Sure this is not the most difficult type of game to make. Quite the opposite. But rarely do you see the whole complexity of a game all on the surface and all on a single frame. Usually the complex part of games is hidden in some abstract layer of invisibility ot most players. And that is pretty appealing in itself. *Let's assume you wanted to add user input. What do you actually want to improve?* 1) If you want to enhance the feeling you have while watching a sports competition then that is pretty pointless, as the sports competition are already a purely passive endevour. Any participation in that part makes the outcome more biased and therefor causes a feelling of shallowness. And I wouldn't add a multiplayerfunction as games where 95% of the performance is luck don't really make for great multiplayer games. Theoretically you could take a slice of the "snakes and ladders" game and make it so that the user input, even in the multiplayer form, would have 0% influence. But then you probably would also have to make it turnbased somehow and force the players to be in the same room. 2) I don't think you can actually improve the apprechiation you can have for the game developper. You could make it more complex or add more dept to it, but there is only so much you can fit on the screen and user interaction won't really change anything here. In that aspect thinking outside of the box with new storylines would probably be the best way to foster that feeling of respect. That may include to go away from the space missle theme. 3) One thing you could actually do is mix it with other genres. Then it would be a different game, but at least you can add something to it that is not halfhearted and makes coherent sense with the rest of the game. *Here are a few genres that come to mind:* - First let's go with the most shallow one I wouldn't want to do myself. You could add some gambling element to it. One of that kind that a guy can sit in front of the gambling machine and just press a button for the rest of the day. - Sports betting/Finance market would be a more involved way of playing the game of chance. You could make it so that the user can bet on the outcome or at possible future trends. - Roguelike dungeons could probably work pretty well with this type of game. Instead of rolling a dice, you have to enter a battlearena were the balls determine the outcome. And in case you win, you can get the upgrades which your balls gained during that run. Prehaps you can enter several levels with different elements. Or when you intitialize the game, you can make it more difficult as your skill also increases in power as time goes on. - Another genre that uses a passive gamestyle are the idle clicker games. Perhaps there can be some game hidden in there which I can't think of on the spot. - Perhaps a rythm game where the randomness of the balls lead to music which creates notes you have to hit could work as well. That way the player doesn't influence the game and instead has to deal with the outcome. - Make a game that is either some form of plant vs. Zombies or some Creeperworld 3 type of game. This random world of balls create the ressources so that you can create defenses and missiles. And with these defenses and missles you have more chance of getting more ressources. Actually I can't think of another game genre that could combine nicely with this type of game. Do you know any other game that relies mostly on either luck or on a very passive playstyle? By the way, since you just launched a channel purely dedicated to that type of content, feel free to take any of my ideas and run with them. It will be much more likely to result in a game that way than if I have to do it myself. And as someone who watched this video in the first place, it doesn't come as a surprise that I enjoy passively watch an idea coming to live just as much as doing it myself. Just don't sue me if I eventually do that roguelike dungeon concept as well five years down the line. :D Despite me throwing in a bunch of ideas how it can be turned into something other than a zero player game (yes, I've read the other comments too), the advantage of this raw type of game is that you can upload it on UA-cam and therefor it requires minimal effort on the consumer. This is a good thing in itself already. Perhaps make a zero player game inspired by your raindrops next.
I dunno, I feel like this could be a really good game is you added a betting mechanic, maybe let players tip the scales a bit in favor of one or the other, but still ultimately letting chance decide. I think a sorta stock market game where you can buy and sell stocks but instead of a market that goes up and down you have 10 variants of this running and your stocks change in value depending on whether the team you bet on is doing well would be really fun.
If you just made it so abilities queue up until the player pressed their respective buttons and made this an online multiplayer, maybe even mobile, I would be very happy.
This is a simulation game. Another paid simulation game with the same basic concept, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, has a higher all-time peak of Steam concurrent players than some AAA games that are still available on Steam.
Raindrops on a window, or an automatic simulation like this, are not games... But watching raindrops race against each other to see which one wins or if one can get to the end without being swallowed by a bigger one, or watching to see whether blue will defeat orange or if orange is going to get some crazy comeback and win; those are games.
The participation and player input in this case is the very intent to "play" and the framing of them as playful activities. Even if it may be just about the bare minimum of what can be considered a game (even by my own, fairly broad definitions).
Interestingly; while writing this I kept feeling that there was still some difference between the rain-racing and the marble-battle in terms of game-ness; and I think I've figured it out. I think that the raindrops game is actually more strongly 'a game' than watching this marble-battle simulation, because the raindrops present no story or question or uncertainty to resolve until the player decides to play; whereas your thing is arguably more akin to a story for the player to passively be audience to. On the other hand, the framework you've built to adjust the variables and conditions of the simulation is even more of a game than the raindrops thing; because of they way in which you can play with it for the purposes of exploring the possible outcomes.
I feel like I could keep going and try to keep working out the nuances of this; but I currently do not have the time to do so, so I will stop here.
Thanks for taking the time to put all of that down, you make some good points. When I say in the video it’s like a TV show I really felt that urge, to shape the narrative and present a compelling linear experience. Of course we do the same for plot-led games but never to this extreme of linearity, even in visual novels which mostly have some element of meaningful choice.
Another commenter mentioned that these kind of things are often referred to as zero player games, which is a cute name. But don’t games need players? Some might argue that the two sides (orange and blue) are players, but they have no autonomy - the outcome is driven by RNG. But then what about games of coin flipping? The two players have no autonomy over the result there but we would easily refer to that as a game. Unless, of course, you count the initial picking of sides, which is what a viewer of these videos would typically do too.
what is a game?
are games art?
what is art?
Anyway thanks for reminding me of the raindrop racing thing. I had forgotten I ever did so long ago. 😊
Yeah that's kind of why I didn't want to dwell on it in the video. I found the whole Roger Ebert thing snobbish and gatekeeper'y. Still, I appreciate the discussion here.
Well said.
You could consider roulette to not be a game then, you're simply choosing a number and expecting it to win.
You could bet on a roulette without the roulette operator ever knowing you made a bet.
I love how my interaction with these marble videos always goes as:
"ah this stupid crap again, guess I'll watch one..."
*3 hours and 12 videos later*
"LETS FUCKING GO BLUE"
Yellow is my anchor
dude fr tho u just get sucked into it
can you please exit my brain, you're hitting all my thoughts perfectly
Red fans are in constant suffering
Green gang
I was an Algodoo creator for years, I recently discovered channels like Mikan and it's quite insane what rabbithole it is. It's cool to see someone talk about it.
Oh wow, nice! Mikan is the GOAT at this stuff. Nice channel btw!
MIKAN IS THE BEST PERSON EVER AT MAKING THESE SIMULATIONS. THE BEST.
yeah, mikan videos are awesome
but mikan uses unity..?
@@SillySolarz he started off with algodoo
To quote my dorm supervisor:
"Well, essentially it's colorful and moving"...
He made that disappointed statement when the TV in the common room broke down and every body just stared at the autumn leaves swaying in the wind.
Hope the guy is alright, he was 😎
It's a zero-player game. Wikipedia has an article on it!
Thank you!
It's a zero player game in the sense that a horse race is a zero player game from the perspective of a gambler. You just observe, possibly bet on what happens.
Gameness confirmed.
@@jeffcarey3045Betting with another human is a game with rules and hidden information (sometimes), don't get that confused with something a single observer watches with stakes they only invent for themselves.
@@jeffcarey3045the horses and their riders are players in this game, there's a lot of skill involved.
technically it's a very VERY complicated coinflip :P
also "free for windows and mac" is certainly one of the ways of describing " *used to be* opensource and crossplatform" -_-
Totally Accurate Marble Emulator
It's not a game, it's a T.A.M.E!
Whether or not this is a "game" is an interesting question - it's not, technically, a game because there's no player input, but if you were to add pachinko-style player input (i.e. the player chooses when to dump the balls in), the intense randomness would remove any actual player *agency* from that choice anyway, so it would technically be "a game" but be functionally no different from the video version in the first place.It's a quasi-game?
The thought had crossed my mind! I think there are a lot of places you could take this is as a fully interactive game.
Connect the game to a live stream for every audience member a ball.
a donation super powers a ball or a powerup
infinite money glitch
@@IndieDevLab Thinking about this, I came up with an interesting idea of how to make it a "real" game with skill expression, by just adding one button: upgrade auctions!
A random upgrade is offered to one of the players. The other player can hit a button to get the upgrade instead, but it will give the opponent extra balls. The first player can hit a button to out-bid again, but will offer the other player extra balls, instead. Repeat, back and forth, until a player thinks the long-term benefit of the upgrade is not worth the short-term loss of the extra balls being given to the opponent and lets the bidding finish.
The nice thing is that this is self-balancing - the players decide the relative strength of upgrades for themselves, and will bid more/less based on that judgement :)
Probably requires two human players (or two teams on a stream), or some work to make an AI that can make a reasonable decision on upgrade strength/short-term risk.
@@arabidllama Yes! I really like those games that offer upgrades, but with a poisoned pill downgrade that you have to take too, like Shotgun King: The Final Checkmate. There are many ways you could make these things interactive, but this is definitely an interesting one.
@@arabidllamaidea sounds sick, nice. upgrades like?
A fun roguelike style game would be a zero-player game like this where the player gets input to edit the conditions after each round - but that's kinda limited. Another way to take this would be a different style of zpg, like an AI only match of a strategy game, and let the player interact with it in ways they usually wouldn't - eg. The player can not directly place buildings or control his faction but he can edit the world in some way that hopefully benefits him.
Hmm. If you use this as a baseline I could see a game popping out of it.
I'm half asleep so I might be crazy but what if you added these:
1. A deck mechanic, so the player can decide what abilities the gacha can spawn
2. Different maps that have different moving obstacles, which interact with projectiles in different ways
3. Abilities that affect the shield. Like counter explosions that stop nearby projectiles from affecting other shield bubbles
4. A tournament bracket where you go up against other people who won. You get to steal a card from the loser for your deck, or replace/strengthen a random card between rounds to mix things up.
This is pretty cool as is though.
Ugh, the number of otherwise decent games ruined by deckbuilding mechanics these days is sky-high.
This becomes a game the moment you stake on which side is going to win, since at that point you are either going to win or lose yourself. Same with watching raindrops race. If you want a specific one to win, you can lose and it becomes a game, since you can be strategic about which raindrop you root for.
My win rate is below 10% because many of the races I see have more than 20 colors to choose from 😆
I used to watch these videos so so much. It gives me nostalgia to see someone influenced by falling marbles and uncopiright music
Anyone know the name of the song at 0:22?
From BFDI to Dev Lab, the Algodoo community has a really long story to tell.
BFDI was made in/with Algoodoo?
You could add a bet system to this. Player can also change which side they are betting on during the play, but the reward then depends on how much health this side has (for example, if orange is on 90% health and blue on 10%, reward for betting on blue at this point would be much greater). Rewards you win can be spent on unlocking stuff - like, another games, some new utilities for unlocked games (like new weapons), or maybe even some player abilities to slightly push one side closer to victory. Pretty rough idea, but i think with this you could actually call it a non-zero player game)
You could try to make a level editor to build custom levels easily
Hey awesome concept! Imagine a mode where this is player controlled and each side can move those static circles near the top corners around, in a way that could potentially influence where the marbles go?
Yeah, so tempting to make this into a “game” game
@@IndieDevLab
Please do! This would be so fun to play on a smartphone with someone!
I think it would work best with only one or two inputs. One button to change the position of a cover over the ammo types. And instead of the scale thing in the middle, replace it with two pinball flippers. Each side would control the opposite flipper to try and knock balls back to their side.
@@IndieDevLabi got the video the thumbnail is from right under this one lol
You’ve just unlocked an
old memory with that raindrop racing thing
2:50 you can shorten this part by iterating from 0 to 5 in for loop and increasing angle~
you should add a glow or something the bigger the ball is, to make it easier to keep track of the high value marbles!
This was really fun. It strangely reminds me of the table top RPG design I've been doing recently. I love the control panel style design you came up with in the end to make everything very legible. That's a big thing that I enjoy in "games" or whatever you want to call this.
Interesting that I discovered this genre of video only a week or so ago, and now I'm seeing this in my recommended. I'm glad I'm not the only one fascinated by these silly little simulations.
This might do well on twitch. Make players marbles, and allow them to track their own progress, damage output, win rate, etc. You could even let them upgrade or boist their marbles by spending points they're earning while watching / interacting.
Really really cool idea! Never seen something like this, but I love passive and "random" games like this!
"Cars are sleeker"
Show's the least sleek car ever devised.
i became one of the 2.5K subs from this vid, hope u gl on 5K, 10K, 25K, 50K, 100K and beyond.
If the post effect reacts to a eurobeat music, this visualizer would be at the god tier of everything.
god i love these types of marble videos. awesome stuff
I could totally see this being an auto chess like game where you choose what you want each funnel to be and then let your cannon duke it out in hopes of winning
This is just as much of a game as Candyland (i.e., not a game)
No, this is Multiply or Release - Tournament - Algodoo Marble Race™®©
Core Destruction my good sir, since "multiply" and "release" are not the only 2 options here.
I totally did that as a child where I watched raindrops race against the others. Glad I found someone else who did it lol
Oh no, not these marble videos again...
I'm about to miss my job interview, aren't i
Your job interview is now at the MARBLE FACTORY haha!
Really nice seeing something fresh
i love these kinds of videos! really interesting seeing the development that goes into them
its nice to see a video about marble games like these. i loved these s a kid, but no one even talk about it.
Please PLEASE consider packaging this into something we can run on our machines as something like a screensaver that we can just have on and watch, and just resets a minute or two after a win.
This strongly reminds me of playing with The Powder Toy and playing with all kinds of things like CONV life, reactors, and its implementations of CGOL (particularly Star Wars with a 3456/278/6 ruleset)
scratches the same itch as conways game of life. predetermined but utterly unpredictable mayhem.beautiful zero player games.
"I picked a random raindrop on the window and watched it race against the others"
Yup. You're definitely somewhere on the spectrum xD
You SHOULD make a user interface, but it only works on the conveyor up so you can open it and have it naturally play out, or barricade for a limited time to unleash a bunch of attacks at once
this reminds me of some complicated ball bearing clocks and coin banks i had as a kid
wake up hun, new "dopamine machine go brrrr" just dropped
Why not make it a game , where a player or 2 can control cannons , it's got all the hallmarks of a fast passed high score classic or is kind of a combination of a bunch of them .
looks like it could be a fun game to iterate over , little additional things like every time you hit a marble , it changes to your canons color and if it's hit by the other rocker , then it resets but blows up the rocket before it can get to you . I'd play it as much as I'd play a modern tetris, or paddle or or pinball,pong...list goes on
This is like going to an arcade hall without money. Except that the big boys would hit small boys watching in the face when they died. So this is progress.
I've never heard a word spoken in these kinds of videos so I am kinda shook to hear someone talk about it XD
I would absolutely watch a documentary about the evolution of these things
Make this into a level editor game and gamers would love this!
not even a minute in and I can tell I like this already! my kinda guy!
The first thing that came to mind was “algodoo core destruction”
For some reason watching the thumbnail preview play I got the thought that someone should make a Wintergatan (machine that plays music by dropping marbles) simulator.
A perfect application would be Wallpapers! If there was one of these as a Wallpaper on Wallpaper Engine I would love to have that one one Screen. It could be a never repeating wallpaper you can watch whenever you are idle and maybe there could even be user interactions in the form of some kind of "World Events". But I am getting carried away. Please make this a Wallpaper on wallpaper engine, I would even pay a one time fee to have that!
You should make some new weapons and have it random which appear in each battle, so if you make more of these the locked weapons will have more suspense because they’ll be different every time.
Using Unity and then hooking this up to Twitch's API would let you do crazy stuff with channel points and the like.
Это же намного лучше выглядит чем всякие другие видео с подобной "игрой
"
Very cool video, keep them comming!
i think this is a toy, an amazing toy. great video as well :)
Whats hilarious to me is that what looks like an absolute mess requires a solid grasp on game design to pull off in the first place. Cool use of pacing and degrees of prominence
That is a brilliant game idea!
I think it itches that same part of the brain that Line Rider vids did back in the day. A zero player game with multiple marbles is the exact opposite of Line Rider. Pointless, but entertaining lol
I watched Mikan for years and was waiting for some footage or talking about him lol
The absolute GOAT of this type of video
@@IndieDevLab yes! and you also made a great vid cant wait for more :D
did that raindrop thing too as a kid
Hey, a game that plays itself is still a game. And this is a pretty cool one. Raindrop watchers as kids high five! :D
this would be a game if you just added user options that when used properly could result in more balls coming to your side. like maybe 0 gravity or extra gravity, a ramp that redirects things for a few seconds. ect.
I did NOT expect to see this after just watching Mikan lol!
0 player games are really fun :)
Have you ever played the boardgame "snakes and ladders?". This game has about as much userinput as tossing a coin.
*I think there are two things that make this type of game enjoyable.*
1) This game plays into the same emotions that you feel when watching a sports competition.
2) This game allows us to apprechiate the skill of the person making that game. Sure this is not the most difficult type of game to make. Quite the opposite. But rarely do you see the whole complexity of a game all on the surface and all on a single frame. Usually the complex part of games is hidden in some abstract layer of invisibility ot most players. And that is pretty appealing in itself.
*Let's assume you wanted to add user input. What do you actually want to improve?*
1) If you want to enhance the feeling you have while watching a sports competition then that is pretty pointless, as the sports competition are already a purely passive endevour. Any participation in that part makes the outcome more biased and therefor causes a feelling of shallowness. And I wouldn't add a multiplayerfunction as games where 95% of the performance is luck don't really make for great multiplayer games. Theoretically you could take a slice of the "snakes and ladders" game and make it so that the user input, even in the multiplayer form, would have 0% influence. But then you probably would also have to make it turnbased somehow and force the players to be in the same room.
2) I don't think you can actually improve the apprechiation you can have for the game developper. You could make it more complex or add more dept to it, but there is only so much you can fit on the screen and user interaction won't really change anything here. In that aspect thinking outside of the box with new storylines would probably be the best way to foster that feeling of respect. That may include to go away from the space missle theme.
3) One thing you could actually do is mix it with other genres. Then it would be a different game, but at least you can add something to it that is not halfhearted and makes coherent sense with the rest of the game.
*Here are a few genres that come to mind:*
- First let's go with the most shallow one I wouldn't want to do myself. You could add some gambling element to it. One of that kind that a guy can sit in front of the gambling machine and just press a button for the rest of the day.
- Sports betting/Finance market would be a more involved way of playing the game of chance. You could make it so that the user can bet on the outcome or at possible future trends.
- Roguelike dungeons could probably work pretty well with this type of game. Instead of rolling a dice, you have to enter a battlearena were the balls determine the outcome. And in case you win, you can get the upgrades which your balls gained during that run. Prehaps you can enter several levels with different elements. Or when you intitialize the game, you can make it more difficult as your skill also increases in power as time goes on.
- Another genre that uses a passive gamestyle are the idle clicker games. Perhaps there can be some game hidden in there which I can't think of on the spot.
- Perhaps a rythm game where the randomness of the balls lead to music which creates notes you have to hit could work as well. That way the player doesn't influence the game and instead has to deal with the outcome.
- Make a game that is either some form of plant vs. Zombies or some Creeperworld 3 type of game. This random world of balls create the ressources so that you can create defenses and missiles. And with these defenses and missles you have more chance of getting more ressources.
Actually I can't think of another game genre that could combine nicely with this type of game. Do you know any other game that relies mostly on either luck or on a very passive playstyle?
By the way, since you just launched a channel purely dedicated to that type of content, feel free to take any of my ideas and run with them. It will be much more likely to result in a game that way than if I have to do it myself. And as someone who watched this video in the first place, it doesn't come as a surprise that I enjoy passively watch an idea coming to live just as much as doing it myself. Just don't sue me if I eventually do that roguelike dungeon concept as well five years down the line. :D
Despite me throwing in a bunch of ideas how it can be turned into something other than a zero player game (yes, I've read the other comments too), the advantage of this raw type of game is that you can upload it on UA-cam and therefor it requires minimal effort on the consumer. This is a good thing in itself already. Perhaps make a zero player game inspired by your raindrops next.
If it was even SLIGHTLY interactive, I would buy it for $10
I feel like I would classify this as a two player game, with two computer controlled sides.
the next step is to run a live stream and have bits create the marbles
Thats a fucking high quality video!
Racedrop racing is so real
I dunno, I feel like this could be a really good game is you added a betting mechanic, maybe let players tip the scales a bit in favor of one or the other, but still ultimately letting chance decide.
I think a sorta stock market game where you can buy and sell stocks but instead of a market that goes up and down you have 10 variants of this running and your stocks change in value depending on whether the team you bet on is doing well would be really fun.
bro check out marble kingdoms its cool
underrated channel ❤️❤️
If you really wanted to do a pick a raindrop thing, you should make the player choose which side wins in the beginning as a gamble
I guess this can be a good screensaver
- "what even is this"
- *looks inside*
- game
"Is this a game?"
I feel like it's more of betting. Like Sabong in the Philippines. Is *that* a game?
would be neat if a download was added [a dueling pinball one would be amazing]
My immediate thought: The dark souls of peggle
Maybe i was a weird raindrop racing kid too who knows
I’m not alone! ✊
I raced rain drops too
i was too
It's possible to make it a rouge like game, by allowing players to upgrade the weapons
Hey I too watched raindrops race! But from inside the car 🙂
You could make it a game by giving it an editor mode like Mario maker. Make your own marble machines and see who wins.
It is a game. It's called a zero player game in game theory, a game with no interface, just set initial conditions and press go.
I really thought Mikan was having a crisis from that thumbnail
haha
I didn't know you could use Java with Unity like this!
Sadly Algodoo doesn't work with latest version of Mac OS.
Noooooo
This is great!
If you just made it so abilities queue up until the player pressed their respective buttons and made this an online multiplayer, maybe even mobile, I would be very happy.
This is a simulation game. Another paid simulation game with the same basic concept, Placid Plastic Duck Simulator, has a higher all-time peak of Steam concurrent players than some AAA games that are still available on Steam.
Reminds me of pinball. Could add a pinball like interaction system.
Incredible. Any plans to open source this?
No plans as yet!
@@IndieDevLab Thank you! Love your videos by the way.
What is the chiptune song at the very beginning of the video?
pls
mikan is something fr
I'm sure this would pop off on twitch.
Me watching: it's evolution of plinko
i also raced raindrops
this could totally be a casino game XD
How about value based ball battle simulation software?
What do all the things do? Like the + and the flower and the unlockable thing