Swing Ball Loop Mania!

This is my submission for the 'Loop' themed Game Jam 2025. This is also my first official game made in Godot 4. This was made entirely from scratch within the 4 day window, mostly using scripting and physics logic. I hope you get some amusement out of it.

There are 2 modes:

• Versus mode against the computer (very simple, predictive AI, it's not very smart)
• Loop mode: Just a bit of fun really, I increased the cap on the speed limiter and tried to make a goofy mini-game

Rather than going for the obvious time-leap/roguelike genre, tThe idea behind this game was to use the 'loop' theme to re-create the iconic children's garden game Swing ball/Tether ball as the main objective of that game is to loop the string in your direction so that the other player can no longer hit the ball.

Initially, I created the physics around the ball moving in an orbit to simulate the perspective of the game, getting smaller away as it moves to the opponents side. I then started to create varying speed based on consecutive hits of the player's bat.

The player, unfortunately due to scope and timing,  is only controlled using the space bar to hit the ball. I toyed with the idea of using the mouse, directly affecting the swing speed, but it was getting too difficult to program.

Things I would like to do if I had extra time:

• Some of my inspiration came from a Punch-out style game where you come across increasingly challenging enemies with proper personalities. I don't have any artistic talent but would love to develop some sprites and animated them to represent the different characters and difficulties
• I was also inspired by 'Lethal League' and would love the game to have some kind of hit-stop feature (which I implemented slightly in the versus mode, you can get a perfect hit, which plays a different sound effect) where it gets more and more hype, the more you have a back-and-forth rally.
• I think introducing rounds, rather just a single versus game would make more sense
• Better music
• Greater range of sound effects
• Improved visuals/animation

Additional credits:

Music: 

Paradise Found

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Font: 

Kenney Fonts: Kenney Future.ttf

https://kenney.nl/assets/kenney-fonts