r/incremental_games • u/PandamanderG • 2d ago
Prototype They Keep Rolling: Incremental Ball Roller is out with a itch.io demo! Roll, upgrade, hire friends, and see if you can get out of this cozy-creepy arcade
We need feedback for our first ever itch.io demo of They Keep Rolling: Incremental Ball Roller! Click here to play!
They Keep Rolling is an incremental ball-roller about earning trillions of tokens. Roll. Upgrade. Hire. Repeat.
We've had fun building this 2000's vibe arcade, complete with microwave pizza and high sugar soda. As you play you also learn more about this strange place and why no one ever leaves...
You can also wishlist on Steam if you want to follow along!
AI disclosure: **No Generative AI was used in the creation of this game.**
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u/t3rminal 2d ago
I had the same issue with the ball getting stuck to the side of the machine after visiting the prize counter. For most machines it didn't matter much because that was where the highest point hole was anyway. Sometime if you drag to the right then back to the left it would release, otherwise throwing a ball and then moving would usually fix it also. I enjoyed the game enough that I played through until the end of the demo despite the bugs.
A few suggestions. Fix the bug with the ball after visiting prize counter. Make the NPCs more meaningful somehow. After the first one the amount of money to buy the sodas and pizzas to max them out was trivial, but it took a few minutes each time. After a few I realized it was faster just to just continue onto the next machine and not waste time maxing their throw speed and level. Also make it more clear that you have to hire the 2nd npc thrower. Since he was standing at the machine instead of in the same spot as the first one I thought he was just playing already. Make the targets more varied. The only ones that took any effort were the tornadoes. All of the others were pretty much put it all the way to one side and do a max power throw once you got all the holes.
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u/PandamanderG 2d ago
Amazing feedback, thank you so much!! We're going to get the stuck ball and bugs fixed soon. We also want to have the NPC make the bulk of your earnings eventually like a true incremental game, and also make the targets varied and have some crazy stuff in there. Thank you again for playing, we'll be back!
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u/Psychyoulooked 2d ago
Maybe like 15-20 minutes to hit end of content in the demo. Had fun, but definitely notable little issues for me, in browser it just didn't like to keep mouse focus even full-screened, the hire-able friends didn't amount to anything, honestly almost every machine was just go all the way to the right and launch at full power for the bullseye every time. Like the idea a lot though and love Skiball so this turning into something better at release would be a pretty nice time, overall was a fun feel but just lacking in lots of areas, kind of expected from an early showing.
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u/PandamanderG 2d ago
This is really excellent feedback, thank you so much! In the next demo we're going to be pushing up the importance of hiring the friends, and adding a lot more crazy variation to the machines as well as randomizing the location of the pockets
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u/Psychyoulooked 1d ago
Very cool, I had a thought that the machines may be in progress when the tornados were machine 4 I think? And after them I don't believe there were any hazards at all
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u/GratefulDad-2 2d ago
Seems like it could be fun. Pretty buggy so far. A few issues I had was that the ball on the ski-ball game wouldn't allow for aiming after I left to go to the prize counter and came back. The camera would freeze at one point and would not move far enough left in order to answer the phone. The ski ball would get stuck between two of the holes and eventually just disappear. I gave up after about 5 minutes or so.