For those of you who haven't followed the TINS competition, this post is about our entry, Ballz!

The game is a platformer with some puzzle elements. You take control of a ball which is genetically modifed by the British secret service. Your mission is to rescue captured British soldiers from a prison in Iran.

This final version fixes some bugs that we found in the compo version after the deadline, most notably a missing level and a slightly bugged level. The bugs were not very severe and the compo version is also fully playable and completable.

Windows version: http://darkbits.org/db-tins07-ballz-final.zip
Source version (linux, etc.): http://darkbits.org/ballz-1.0.tar.gz

If you have problems running the windows version, get this package from microsoft which should install stuff needed for MSVC 8 binaries:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=32BC1BEE-A3F9-4C13-9C99-220B62A191EE&displaylang=en

Obligatory screenshots:

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I hope you enjoy our game!

I did! This. This is really good.

[edit]
Okay, when I first played it this morning, I was half-awake and barely able to make a complete sentence (with words vanishing at will). Now that I've had a nap, I decided to start the game back up. And guess what? I still stand by what I said earlier.

I'm really impressed. You guys gave 110% and your 72hr game is extremely polished, with good gameplay and great design. I played for over an hour and only made my way to level 13 of 19. The difficulty really ramps up around level 10, but that's appropriate for a game that only has so many levels.

The only thing it lacks is a death counter, because I've lost count. Well done.

I'm glad to hear you like the game!

We first thought we could add at least 30 levels, but we soon discovered that wasn't possible considering the time limit. Many of the levels after level 10 were designed in a haste with very little testing. The fact that the comp version of the game is completable is just pure luck I think.

You guys wrote this in 3 days? From scratch? Bloody hell! This is sterling, and a hell of a lot better than plenty of stuff written in 3 months...

A fantastic effort.

Opps, I think I'll check it out, looks good. Hey, you say that it was done in 72 hours? You must be kidding, my gods...

Yeah it is terribly addictive.

I like the way it is , only two button but the game is still nice !

Good work for only 72 hours !

Thanks for all the kind words!

And yes, it does get pretty hard after level 10. I just now managed to finish the crazy level 18 with taking all the stars, myself .

By the way... Has anyone had any problems with running the game? It seems some people can't start it. Thought it may be because we don't supply msvcr80.dll in the package?

[EDIT]
Oh, and out of curiosity, has anyone finished the game yet? Or even collected all 152 stars?

There is a bug with the line endings in the level loading code. On some systems it's alright, but on some other systems (including Linux), there is an '\r' or maybe an '\n' at the end of the line which gets interpreted as tile, and you get an "Tile not found" or something like that Exception.

I don't have the code here right now, but I think you can figure it out. After I fixed it (cut off CR/NL at end of line), the game worked with Linux, too.

I've played to Level 10 yet, I think.

Yeah I noticed that today when I tried to compile it in Linux. I'll make a decent source package sometime during this week.

Edit: Source package is now available: http://darkbits.org/ballz-1.0.tar.gz

I enjoyed it, it was really done and fairly neat. I did find it a bit too hard for my liking and I also stopped playing at level 10.

The song reminded me off the batman song from the NES, and according to wikipedia, that game is supposed to have some of the best NES music ever so I guess that would make it a compliment.

Good job.

Don't stop there! I did the same thing, trying to beat level 10 for forever. Finally, I just went back to older levels and got enough stars to where I could skip level 10. In level 11, you get a new ability which makes it easier to gets stars in 10.

Oh, that's good. I've just tried that and I must say that it's really original idea. For 72 hrs game really polished. You did a whole lot of work. Congratulations.

Amazing effort for 72 hours. Well done!

It made it to The Independent Gaming Source thanks to Zaphos, check it out.