Hole Punch: Sling your spaceship around gravitational fields

(notoriousbfg.com)

163 points | by trwhite 4 hours ago

27 comments

  • rkagerer 1 hour ago

    Great game, though the controls on mobile are a bit too imprecise.

    As you drag a hole, the size widgets should disappear so you can better see what's around it. They could pop back up again once you're done dragging.

    Personally I'd rather if you had to press a button or something (or long press?) to add a new hole. I keep accidentally adding new ones when all I want to do is adjust an existing one.

    Also spamming the user with the help screen right off the bat is a bit much. As long as they know it's there and can pull it up / dismiss it, I think it would be more fun to sort of discover the game mechanics yourself.

    Note several of the first 8 or so levels can be accomplished with a single minimum (8) sized black hole. Eg. I liked the simplicity of doing that on level 6.

    • adamesque 3 hours ago

      Fun idea, but kind of maddening that I can click and hold to add mass to a hole but if i overshoot, i can't do anything subtract mass or delete a hole.

      • gschizas 2 hours ago

        Click on the hole. There will appear 3 buttons, one to add mass, one to subtract and one to delete the hole completely.

        • rapidfl 2 hours ago

          also need a way to increase the sim speed. 1.5x 2x etc

          Definitely a fun game kudos!

          • 40four 3 hours ago

            The ability to subtract mass is definitely needed. All you can do is click “undo” and try again. You can drag the holes around too. Still pretty fun, I played 5 or 6 levels

            • trwhite 2 hours ago

              I just pushed an update. Click on the hole and controls will appear. I think you'll enjoy the later levels (10+)

              • hnuser123456 2 hours ago

                Nice domain name

                • trwhite 2 hours ago

                  Thanks. The important context is that I am 6ft 7 (and once knew all the words to Hypnotize)

              • msephton 2 hours ago

                Tap the black hole and it gives you ability to add and remove.

            • YeahThisIsMe 3 hours ago

              This is the year of old browser (and/or flash) games making a comeback in some form.

              • goolz 33 minutes ago

                I just spent a ton of time on this. Reminds me of the joy from those old flash sites like addictinggames.com. Bravo.

                • joshu 34 minutes ago

                  i've been making a bunch of fun physics games like this. i need to push out the latest one. try this one, torture a parking optimizer: https://truckslop.joshu.dev/

                  • amelius 1 hour ago

                    This one was cute also:

                    https://www.falstad.com/rendezvous/

                    (check the autopilot option)

                    • iamwil 3 hours ago

                      This is kind of a cool concept. It's like Space Golfing.

                      Another alternative is to make it like a turn-based Scorched Earth (Mother of all games), where you can either

                      1. launch asteroid size projectiles across star systems in a field of stars and black holes to it each other.

                      2. launch projectiles that then place black holes (perhaps either by timeout or signal--taking into account the speed of light!) to change the field.

                      It's a good start!

                    • baw-bag 1 hour ago

                      I love these kind of things and all of their quirks. Just interacting with a webpage in a fun way. More of this!

                      • jakzurr 57 minutes ago

                        Way, way more fun than expected. Played on desktop, though.

                        • kkhire 2 hours ago

                          Fantastic! Should add an (optional) instruction level, but would have loved this game as a kid.

                          • manlymuppet 2 hours ago

                            Never ignored a tutorial faster.

                            (This is a compliment.)

                            • chirau 2 hours ago

                              I know right? As soon as I saw the page, I had a rough idea of how to control things already. lol

                              • trwhite 2 hours ago

                                Thanks! I like the keyboard experience (space for start/stop), arrows to add/subtract mass. Maybe I will add tabbing

                              • fullstackwife 2 hours ago

                                Very nice, being busy with sth, and I could not go through all levels and reached the one with star(sun?), but the topic of gravity assist manouver was always inspiring for me, so I enjoy this game, congrats on making it!

                                • Love it. And thanks for the refreshing skeumorphism

                                  • GalaxyNova 58 minutes ago

                                    I don't know if it's that refreshing. Looks like standard Claude generated style.

                                  • mosfets 2 hours ago

                                    This is somehow surprisingly fun, a good game to play with kids.

                                    • simonjgreen 1 hour ago

                                      Well, this is going to be a fun problem

                                      • peesem 1 hour ago

                                        reminds me of Gravitee, except in that game the planets are pre-positioned and you're hitting a golf ball

                                        • eezing 41 minutes ago

                                          Very neat.

                                          • jonplackett 3 hours ago

                                            It’s nice but clearly designed for desktop

                                            It’s a mobile world. This would be so nice as a proper touch enabled game

                                            • trwhite 3 hours ago

                                              It sorta works. Hoping to do more testing (tomorrow)

                                              • leetrout 3 hours ago

                                                Just a few tokens away from a flutter port

                                                • toobulkeh 2 hours ago

                                                  Clicking too fast zooms the browser which breaks the click placement. Native Mobile would be much better.

                                                  Great concept!

                                                • leptons 2 hours ago

                                                  >It’s a mobile world.

                                                  Desktop and Mobile are at about a 50/50 split, no it's not exactly a "mobile world".

                                                • wat10000 1 hour ago

                                                  It might be a cheat, but I'd really like a mode where the projected path of the ship had unlimited length. The trial and error cycle is a bit too long for some of the more advanced setups.

                                                  • shantanujoshi 2 hours ago

                                                    wow wonderful game this is super fun! Would love it on iOS

                                                    • xixixao 2 hours ago

                                                      It launches on mobile safari but doesn’t seem playable, landscape on mobile safari sucks.

                                                      • trwhite 2 hours ago

                                                        Sorry, it very much began as a desktop game. Hoping to work on it if I have time tomorrow

                                                    • matheusmoreira 1 hour ago

                                                      Love it.

                                                      • NooneAtAll3 1 hour ago

                                                        Loved it! Played all 20 levels

                                                        Some missions have mass budget so large it seems to imply a "go fast, crash fast" solutions, but there's no time-of-flight score :(

                                                        ha, now I want to see a leaderboard, with players' score distribution (mass/holes/time mb?), like the zachtronics games

                                                        I had a blast. Thank you!

                                                        • mkatx 3 hours ago

                                                          Nice, a lot of fun!

                                                          • davelacy 2 hours ago

                                                            bravo - excellent game

                                                            • Razengan 2 hours ago

                                                              Feedback:

                                                              - It would be nice to be able to manually key in the matter; on Safari desktop clicking uses up matter too quickly to set precisely.

                                                              - Key to speed up time once running.

                                                              • mihaaly 2 hours ago

                                                                I love it! : )

                                                                • Loughla 1 hour ago

                                                                  Fun, but terrible on mobile.