- Added local and online co-op
- Added a completely new way to play: Pogo Stickman Mode
- Remade Hardcore Mode
- Fixed and improved physics and collision issues across the entire game
- Removed the old (shitty) music and added a brand-new soundtrack. Ya like jazz?
- Added a new ending with your final run stats
- Added online leaderboards
- Completely remade all menus, with tons of new settings and options to personalize your experience
A bit of extra context on all of this...
Bald Ball was my first commercial game, and I made it completely for fun. And fun I had. Tons of it.
Now, more than a year and a half later, I already feel nostalgic thinking about making and playtesting it at my friend's house with a bunch of people. I think we had more than 10 different friends playtesting the game while we had beers (and some other stuff I won't mention). There was a lot of suffering because the game was unfinished and brutally hard, but more than anything, there were a lot of laughs.
Funny enough, the original idea wasn't even about a bald man inside a hamster ball.
Originally, it was supposed to be a bald man on a pogo stick, inspired by Happy Wheels. I could never get the controller to work the way I wanted, though, so I eventually went with the simpler hamster ball idea.
The concept itself was simple: make a brutally difficult level, but design it carefully enough that every area eventually feels fair once you've learned it. The first time my friends finished the game, it took them around 2–3 hours. Now, some of them can finish it in about 30 minutes (and I can around 20 hehe).
And with version 2.0, I've expanded the game even further and given it much more replayability.
There are now proper local and online co-op modes, a completely remade Hardcore Mode (good luck with that lol), and, as an extra, I finally implemented the original pogo stick idea.
So now you can play through the entire game either as a bald man inside a hamster ball or as a bald man bouncing around on a pogo stick.
And lowkey... the pogo stick might actually be more fun.
On top of all that, I've finally made proper menus with tons of settings and customization options, so you can tweak the experience however you want.
With all of this finished, I can safely say that this is the definitive Bald Ball experience.
The original vision is finally complete, and now I can peacefully move on and continue working on the rest of my games.
Please, enjoy.