Show HN: Balancing game for the mobile browser with increasing difficulty

Nice work! Some thoughts:

The camera is tilted instead of looking straight down, and my phone needs to be flat to be in the no movement neutral position. This is unpleasant in to ways: How I'm sitting right now makes it hard to look at my phone while it's flat; it would be much nicer to be able to set my neutral point so I could play with the phone mostly vertically. The combination of flat phone and camera angle is awkward, as when you're looking straight down at the flat phone it looks like the level is tilted, and the ball should be rolling. If you're sticking with flat always being neutral, the corresponding camera angle should be from directly above, imo.

After trying the phone and dying, I ended up playing on the desktop with the arrow keys, much more pleasant.

Your light is coming from a direction where the magnitude is the same in x,y, and z. This means there's no difference in shading between three of the visible faces. (Or, you're using shaders which does this for some other reason.) This may be an intentional choice on your part, but I think it'd probably look better with a light angle which gives more definition to the geometry. Especially the level text suffers from this.

On the last level, is the spinning obstacle at a slightly offset pace from the first moving platform? When I first saw the level, they were very poorly timed with the obstacle sweeping past where you'd go to get on to the moving platform right as the moving platform came closest. Waiting a bit seemed to slowly improve the situation, and I eventually got tired of waiting and just went for it. Still unsure if they're actually in sync or not.

I died the third time on the last level, and called it quits when it put me back at the start. A very harsh punishment.

having only 3 lives for all levels is a bad idea imo

Gave up once it started again from scratch, its not fun just re-doing all the levels to try again

Very cool! An issue I immediately had is that it seems to be coded for a horizontal plane being zero. This means I must hold my phone looking down at it, which isn’t how I want to hold my phone.

One idea is to sample orientation for a little bit at start, then consider the average to be zero. Then have a button that zeroes motion to whatever it currently is as a backup.

That way I can play your game without getting up from bed just yet.

It is cool, but having to redo from the first level after 3 drops kills the fun for me. Of course some would like that aspect, but for me as a casual fun game it's a no.

I'm unable to go forward. I'm using arrow keys.

Doesn't work in Firefox for Android.

Marble Madness vibes. One of my favorite nostalgia games.

I think having 3 lives per level with it resetting just that level might be better for starters, then the 3 lives for the entire game being a “hard mode”.

Didn't work on Brave on Android, but it did work on Chrome :)

Kind of fun

I lost a bunch of times on level 7 and then was sent back to level 1. Is there a way to avoid redoing completed levels?

you can speedrun by playing with the phone screen facing down. tilt it slightly and the ball will go super fast. you can sort of "fly", too, and climb up walls. i got to level 9 in like 30 secs like this

Nice. How did you build it?

When you put Smartphone upside down, the ball will fall up

I did it with arrow keys on desktop. Got lost 2 lives at level 9 and got frustrated so I hit full throttle ahead and basically bounced over all of the gaps. Then on mobile got to level 5. Cool! Thanks!

Doesn't work on Chrome for android. Mid range android phone though

I like it!

Unsolicited improvement suggestion: When I finish a level, let me see how well I did compared to others.

Awesome! Make it a daily Wordle-style game! I need something new in my morning routine.

I think having a universal 3-life max is very harsh. I died on level 9 and was sent back to level 1. No way am I going to do the first 9 again, so I won't find out what was on 10.

I think it would be more casual friendly to have infinite repeats in every level, but you could have a total count of deaths, for people who care about their score.

One of the first big games on the original iPhone after the App Store was shipped was “super Monkey Ball”, a port of a popular console franchise. It was basically this but with fancier graphics, many more levels and mechanics and cute characters. I remember being amazed how well it worked with the phone’s accelerometer and how good it looked back then. Hard to believe that was ~15 years ago already.

[0] https://supermonkeyball.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Monkey_Ball_(i...

This is awesome! Makes me wanna play Monkey Ball!

I was laying on my back. Started up the game without resetting my phone to a flat state. Then the ball fell off the map. No automatic reset like the other levels.

Maybe this is a speed run tactic that can be used later ;)

Finished all levels without falling at once. Great game!

BUG: If I make it to under the finish square by accident (falling off right before the end of a level), it still counts as a win when it should count as a death.

Doesn’t work on ipad? I can click Start, but in the next screen nothing reacts to input.

got to level 8 and gave up but this was very fun could be better with changing camera angles

The ball just falls off and then endlessly falls through space…

You can get the ball off the ground if you turn your phone upside down. Then you can just sort of fly over the places where you'd normally fall. Takes maybe a minute or two to complete all the levels.

Cool game!

Level 9 made me realize there's some inner dread deep within me when it's about playing web-based games with mazes.

Especially for those where you can fall off the path.

This reminds me a bit of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyRoads_(video_game)

I'm so grateful for all the feedback and suggestions. Thank you!!!

Here is a link to the repo: https://github.com/nargaw/Balanc3d_game

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_dev_

If you had a great time and want to support the project: https://natedev.gumroad.com/l/balanc3d

Idea: It would be super cool if the camera angle also shifted a bit when you tilt your phone, making the level look more like a real object. You would have to assume the relative position of the phone from the viewer, but that assumption is already being made (given that the view of the level is not from directly overhead currently).

Suggesttion: Have a button where people can "zero" their phone orientation.

Looks good!

Absolutely love this! Well done OP!

In zoom meetings, I prefer this one, based on "Knot Theory": https://brainteaser.top/knot/

Not sure I learned anything about Knot Theory from playing this, but that was fun.

I liked it - thank you.

Can I suggest that you put something like “hold your phone flat and face up” On the instructions / landing page

And make sure the start button can be seen in landscape mode

I gave up and it’s only because HN gave me those hints that I got tomplay at all

But - well done - you shipped ! Brilliant :-)

It doesn’t have a privation aspect but if you like games like this you might want to check out “Road to Ballhala” [0]. I haven’t completed it yet but I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit. The “dialog” is very well done.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/425410/Road_to_Ballhalla/

Nicely implemented; controls felt very intuitive on the keyboard.

Create a webapp from it. The typical usecase for an installable version. Add service worker and a manifest.json. that way on android phones you have an icon.

Managed to make it through by only losing a life on Level 6. The last two were very scary (and I think I got very lucky on the last one).

But I guess I played enough Super Monkey Ball as a teen to still have a lot of practice for this.

Nice! I would like it more without the "lives" though.

The keyboard controls are particularly satisfying. Well done.

A leaderboard for speed runners would be interesting :)

I'm extremely disappointed to learn that Firefox allows access to motion sensors by default and provides no option to make it ask for permission. It can only be disabled completely but this silently breaks legitimate uses like this one. This is a privacy nightmare. There is so much that can potentially be inferred from motion data, like user identity, mode of transport (maybe even location), what they're likely to be typing in the url bar or in an iframe, emotional state, a bunch of health information...

edit: Nice game, though. I wonder what it's made with. There seems to be a huge amount of generated shader code in the js. I wonder if that could be avoided.

What engine / library was used to make this?

very nicely done with all the graphics and motion. One thing i would add is autofocus attribute on the next button so that i just have to hit enter.

very cool, I enjoyed this. One stupid random idea -- have a tiny pet or human running in the ball.

Nice and very precise. I was expecting controls to be less reactive.

Awesome work Nate!!!

I’ve been following your work ever since that Lightning talk on Three.js at the Carolina Code Conference. You’ve got a lot of talent and motivation, which is a killer combination.

Nice. I made one where you should guide a sphere into a hole a few years ago. It was in 2D and I don't think it worked all that great. I'll see if I find it and post it here

Extremely well done! I didn't know you could access gyroscope from the browser.

this has the feel of an old game called Ballance ... it was amazing and begging for level editor.

Amazing job.

Very cool game!

Needs to have some visual feedback of the orientation. Also the ball is too heavy & slow. And as someone else said the perspective is wrong.

Very responsive; can't say the same for most browser games so well done.

I managed to complete it in one shot. The old dog still has it :)