I think my girlfriend said it best when I showed it to her: "I wouldn't pay 50 cents for that."
Aaaron's Ping-Pong is Pong. And that's all. This is the sort of thing you might expect to be a special bonus feature on a real game, but to release this in this form is just insulting to our intelligence. The only original thing about this game is what they call "original music"--the sort of bumping techno you can find royalty free anywhere on the net (UPDATE: the music is, in fact, original). This is the sort of game someone learning XNA might make--and never release. I'm sure if you Google "pong xna tutorial" you could find any number of tutorials telling you how to make this exact game. Only, just so it's "original," you could find a different techno song. As it says in the credits: "Developed during a few consecutive Sunday evenings..."
Had they gone ALL OUT, added new graphics, cool particle effects on the paddle collisions, and a trippy space background... well, it would still be just a Pong clone. Unless there's a strong desire for pong on the XBox, I see no reason for this game to exist at any price. If anything, this game is the strongest argument I've ever seen for having free games on the XBox. To put such little effort into making it something "original" is insulting to the other developers who are busting their asses to make something cool. I hated Dokee and the Magical Rain, too, but that guy's in another league compared to these guys.
Even assuming this was a game that was somehow worth buying, there's no reason to. You can play several games within the eight minute free trial. If your game has less than eight minutes of gameplay, you need to go back to the drawing board.
Post Comments
Add Your Comment!
Log in to leave a comment or Create an account
Thanks for the feedback! Assuming I ever get my own game out, I'm going to invite anyone whose games I've reviewed to do guest reviews (and hopefully be just as ruthless). I'm still polishing all the rough edges on the site, which includes more than just CSS and backend stuff. As we play more community games and write more reviews, I imagine the tone will become more detached. Even reading the review now, I'm surprised by the fact that I tried to intuit the designers' intentions instead of sticking to the game itself. Aaron's Ping Pong isn't the worst game I've played (you're correct in stating that everything works as intended), but I still don't think it's worth 200 points--ultimately, the most important review criteria.
I'll be looking forward to more games from you guys, because you seem passionate about it.
Actually, we had every intention of giving the game away for free. Unfortunately, when the Community Games system launched, there was no way to release a game for less than 200 points. If, in the future, it becomes possible to re-price games for free, we will probably do that.
The fact that the game can easily be played within the trial time limit is actually a good thing. If someone chooses to buy the game, I can assume it's because they enjoy it and want to support the developers. In the meantime, they are welcome to play it as much as they want.
The soundtrack, by the way, is completely original. Audrey worked on several musical concepts while Jason and I wrote the game code, and we settled on this one. You'll hear more of her work in our next release.
Yes, it is a very simple game, and we never pretended it was anything else. During the beta of the Community Games system, there were no less than 5 similar games, and every one of them had at least one critical bug that made it essentially unplayable. Most had flashy effects and backgrounds. But you know what? They didn't work. So we decided to make a ping-pong game that actually worked, and to forget all the glitz.
We used no tutorials, we created all our own sound and and graphics assets, and just made a simple game for fun. We added a basic single-player mode and ensured it was beatable (i.e. the computer player isn't perfect), and just put the game out there for people to enjoy.
We're not trying to break any new ground here, we just figured there might be people out there besides us who like to play simple, classic style video games. If that's you, we hope you'll like Aaron's Ping-Pong.
Thanks,
Aaron
» Comments RSS