The Gameplay / Ball Overhaul
I’m not afraid to admit that the moment to moment gameplay can be tedious in 0.4. And Demo 2.0. Sure crafting a line of Arrow blotters is nice, but if it takes you 10 rounds of contemplative planning to get there what's the point? To address this, I’ve made some rather sweeping changes to the gameplay, resulting in a much more unpredictable and chaotic experience. These things always seem stable on my end before I like to release to you all, but there’s just so much stuff cram packed in this update that I don’t even know if there are any bugs I have yet to see, but it all seems clean so far! I’ll be looking towards gameplay from testers and demo lovers to get ideas on how to balance all of this, so please share feedback with me on these new systems after you’ve given them a fair shot! Although I don’t think any amount of OP balls are going to save you from the fury of FEVER 10...
PLACING INDIVIDUAL BALLS NO LONGER GRANTS SCORE. To score, you must now get a bingo, passive item, or blotter effect. Don’t worry, it will be happening a lot more often.
Balls now have various special types with special properties and strange behaviors!
Any ball has a 1/10 chance to be a Special ball (gold or blotter).
Gold balls grant money when placed
Blotter balls carry a specific blotter that is applied to the space when placed. These can OVERWRITE existing blotters.
After getting a base type, the ball then has a separately rolled 1/10 chance to be an Effect Ball. All effect balls are considered Attributeless which means they may be placed in any space, but they have no inherent symbol or color. They do still have numbers.
Wild balls count as all symbols / colors for placing and sets.
Shuffle balls reroll the colors, numbers and symbols of every space/ball on the card.
Lock balls make the space temporarily locked until you either blackout that card or win the round, but grant 3 money when placed.
Line balls come in horizontal and vertical variants and place an entire line of balls.
Bomb balls place 4 random balls around the bomb in a plus shaped pattern. Blotter bombs will also apply their blotter effect to the affected spaces.
Meat balls move to an adjacent space when you draw balls. They will stop moving if scored in a line. Gold meatballs will grant a dollar with every move, and blotter meat balls will reapply their blotter to every space they visit.
Magnet balls push/pull all of the balls on the card in the direction specified by the magnet.
Major gameplay additions
Added a Ball Hold slot, which allows you to save a ball between draws and rounds.
Added the ability to “Forget” Balls by pressing the F key while hovering over them in the draw cache or ball hold slot. Forgetting a ball will reroll its attributes, with a chance at generating it as a special/effect blotter. Forgetting costs $1 the first time, increasing on a curve with every forget used in a round.
Added a free blotter selection menu, which will grant a free blotter when you enter the shop after completing every round. That’s 26 free blotters just from consolation prizes alone!
Minor changes/additions
Changed the border on filled spaces to stand out even more.
Added a dedication screen to the game’s startup sequence to pay homage to the elders throughout my life that inspired me to make this game
Steam Next Fest + 3.0 Demo Update
Bingo Betty was recently accepted as a participant in this upcoming Next Fest in late February! To commemorate all of my new (hopefully) fans, I’d like to expand a bit on the content offered in the demo, while simultaneously bringing all of these sweet juicy gameplay updates to it as well! The 3.0 update of the demo brings all of the updates seen above as well as unlocking an additional character besides Betty to play as! Update and play with your shiny new gold meat balls now!
What’s next for Betty?
I will continue to lurk around and stalk everyone playing this game on the internet (JK, or am I?) for feedback, bugs, and suggestions. If you want to stay on top of all my worst memes and dev posts, be sure to join the official discord! The next update will focus on polishing up those sweet new balls and fixing any (hopefully not a lot) of bugs from these new gameplay enhancements. I'd like to do some cool animated effects and fancy sound effects for some of the more exciting balls, but it may take me some time to really hone those in how I'm envisioning them. I’d also like to look at fun ways of engineering the RNG behind your ball draws, so you can get more powerful balls consistently, but I’m not sure how that will take shape yet.
As always, Thank you to each and every one of you reading this, playing the game, interested in the game, watching the game, or even to anyone who has written hateful paragraphs-long comments about how terrible the gameplay is. I couldn’t make this game, and make it better without you all!
Till next time,
Eli