New Game Mode: Numbers

As with real juggling, once you master 3-ball patterns, it's natural to add more balls to the mix to keep things challenge. This was a much suggested game mode and it's now implemented in the current release of Juggl.

Implementation

In Numbers mode, a new ball will be added to the pattern every 15 seconds. A blinking arrow will give you fair warning that the ball is coming, and you'll have to adjust your pattern on the fly.

The main development challenge here was fitting all of the balls onto the screen in a way that looked reasonable, while still being playable. I couldn't just increase the force applied to the balls, because then they would leave the screen. But if I kept the force the same, balls would have to be thrown is quick succession, and the difficulty would skyrocket. There's also a question of resizing the balls. Keep them the same size, and the screen would get cluttered, but too small and it may be hard to accurately catch them.

The solution I came up with is to:

1. Adjust gravity proportional to the number of balls on the screen. This way, the required throw frequency remains the same.
2. Reduce the graphical ball sizes. This is mostly done to reduce the clutter on the screen. It also makes the

Gameplay

So, is it actually playable? I found the difficulty level to be reasonable, at least on my mid-sized phone. At the very least, it's easier to perform the 5-ball cascade than in real life, since you don't have to worry about the pesky 3rd dimension. The trickiest part is handling the transition as new balls are added. The key is to anticipate the incoming ball and adjust your pattern accordingly.

The scoring system for this mode is based on the number of active balls. The multiplier is incremented for each additional ball besides the starting 3.

If you drop a ball, no worries. The multiplier will just be reset, and a new ball will spawn every 15 seconds.

Conclusion

That's all for this release. The new release should be live now, so check it out and let me know what you think!