Pluto Strikes Back
This is the third done-under-7-days game that I have created. It was inspired by a very weird dream I had and the cruel treatment of planet Pluto. Or as it is now-a-days called dwarf planet Pluto.
I’m still looking for cruel criticism on my games, so don’t spear the comments.
Pluto Strikes Back
Download
The newest version
Pluto_r1.5.zip (4.4 Mb) (Release 1.5)
The original blog post version
Pluto.zip (4.4 Mb) (Release 1)
Instructions
What happens when a planet living on the edge loses its identity? It goes mad and releases its fury on to the unsuspecting solar system.
Your job is to control the huge baseball bat that is circulating Pluto. Try to hit the meteors so that they will cause damage to other planets.
Esc - Will quit the game.
Alt + enter - Will toggle fullscreen.
Credits
Game Design, Code & Gfx: Petri Purho ( petri.purho (at) gmail.com )
Music: De Zwervende Keien (The Drifting Boulders) - Wooden Shoes In Tirol. The song is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 -license.
Sound Effects: from various sources: The Recordist, Tintagel’s Free Sound File Archive and Brandens.net.
Thanks
Physics model is based on Markus Ilmola’s tutorials.
Inspiration source: Experimental Gameplay Project.
Pluto Strikes Back uses: SDL, SDL_Image, SDL_Mixer and SDL_RotoZoom
November 1st, 2006 at 4:05 pm
I found your blog about 2 weeks ago and am following the results of your experiments with interest.
The idea for this game is great btw, quite original. Here are some of the things I thought about whilst playing the game:
1) At first I found controlling the bat hard, but it gets easier if you keep the mouse near to the planet.
2) I found the gravity of pluto a bit too large compared to the other planets.
3) I think the game should be timed.
4) The asteriods should impact on the planets and explode, once the planets have received a lot of impacts they should explode too.
November 1st, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Thanks David for the suggestions and critique.
My original idea was to make planets explode when they got damaged enough, unfortunately I ran out of time and didn’t put high enough priority for the destructable planets. But now that I think of it, the destructable planets could create a better, more clearer goal for the game: Destroying the solar system (instead of just damaging it or getting a good score).
I think I’ll have to create another version of the game
Btw. What kind of score’s did you guys get? Anything over 25 000 is pretty good.
November 2nd, 2006 at 11:39 pm
First off: this is great, I love it! Second: I agree with the destructible planets idea. Maybe integrated into a level system (change planet locations, start orbitals?)? I’m just glad you’re thinking about it.
At some point during my playing, I think it may have been after getting a “New Moon”, my score started rising really quick. It stopped eventually, I think after I dislodged all orbiting asteroids, but it had gone to ~700k. After that it acted normally, untill I lost, when it did the same increasing at the end screen. This isn’t normal, is it?
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:25 am
@EOTistatron: I’m happy that you liked the game. And yes, your right. It has to be a bug if you get higher score than 30 000
.
Someone else also reported the bug where you get some (small) random scores at the end screen. It’s probably because the game is running in the background. (Yes I know that’s not the right solution to do the end screen, but it was the quickest to implement.) But the endless score from orbiting asteroids is more interesting. I’ll try to reproduce it on my computer and figure out why it’s happening.
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 am
After few games I got 11345 points. Great game.
November 3rd, 2006 at 10:35 am
Great game with great sounds! I like it.
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Thanks mikeful and andios for the positive feedback.
November 5th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Me again. *waves* I’ve been playing a lot, but haven’t had another instance of the super-high score thingy. On a recent play, however, I got a score of 44615; I’m not sure if this is a glitch, given your previous statement, but there were no rapid increases this time. Most of the points were due, I think, to multiple Sun hits, but I’m not sure if that’s bad.
Yeah… Igonowbye.
P.S.: You rock like The Little Planet That Couldn’t… Until He Got A Bat.
November 6th, 2006 at 12:40 am
@EOTistatron: The “anything higher than 30 000 has to be a bug” -thing was a joke
Mainly because my best score 25 105. 44 615 is a very good score.
Thanks for the compliments, but the best compliment was the fact that you returned to the game and played it more than once. Usualy people just test once and forget. So thanks.
November 7th, 2006 at 3:58 am
I just though I’d drop by and say that I love the game, the first time I played it I ended up playing it for maybe an hour I didn’t exactly check the clock though.
The only problems I see are:
1) Bat position uses the position of the mouse to determine swing, it’d be nice if the bat moved around the planet based on how much you moved your mouse left or right with a set sensitivity (Much like a First person shooter).
2) Moving the bat too fast causes it to bend resulting in a goof up, sometimes the heavier asteroids can’t be hit because of this.
3)It’d be nice if the game was a more accurate gravity simulation, but that might not fit into the type of game you wanted to make. However I can see any number of ways you could expand Pluto into a bigger game (It deserves it, it’s fun as hell.).
November 8th, 2006 at 7:43 pm
@c–b: Thanks for the compliments and criticism.
I actually tried the bat moving you suggested in #1, but it didn’t really work as well as I had hoped. But I tried with the mouse cursor showing, maybe it would work much better if the cursor was hidden and moving right would turn the bat to the clockwise and left the other way. I think I’ll have to give the control scheme another try.
Your right about the #2. That’s actually a real problem if you try to hit with great speed. I’ll have to fix that one.
Yes the more accurate gravity simulation could work. But it’s another thing I’ll have to test. It’s possible that it ruins the game completely. But it could also change for better.
And please tell us (or me) your ideas of how to turn Pluto into a bigger game. I’d love to do that if I get enough ideas to do that.
November 12th, 2006 at 8:10 am
I’ve not been able to reproduce it, but I got a bug that put my score just shy of two million. I think it was getting a combo or two, combined with a double slam. Trying to get it again, to see if that was it.
November 12th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Just an addition. The way the million + point glitch works is to get a rock stuck between earth and mars, then hit them in just such a way that the rock gets crushed between them several times.
Could be fixed by just moving one of the planets, I think.
November 12th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
@Felekar: Thanks for the bug hunting. It really helped me out. I made a quick patch that fixes the “endless” score bug and also helps little with the controls. Now a lot that was hard coded has been moved to config file that can be found in the subfolder data. Just extract the .zip to the Pluto folder and overwrite the autoexec.txt and pluto.exe -files.
Pluto_patch1.zip
I’m also working on a “deluxe” version of the game. Which will feature destructable planets and a hiscore list. Unfortunately I have very little free time and I have no idea when it will be ready. But I hope I can release it soon.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:37 am
I’ve been playing with the settings, and I’ve found that the planets seem to ‘feel’ a bit better with the gravity radius of each increased by a bit. maybe by about 50-100%.
I’ve left the force of the sun down, though, because it’s quite easy for rocks to get stuck there.
And a potentially easier thing might be a ‘user mod’ page, so people can submit their own settings to the site.
And great game, too. ^^
November 15th, 2006 at 10:57 am
@Felekar: Can you send me your configurations? Please email me at petri [.] purho [ät] gmail.com. I’ll would like check them out. I’ll try to publish them with the new version.
And the ‘user mod’ page isn’t a bad idea. Unfortunately at the moment there is very little to mod. Or the modding takes alot of effort.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
[...] The feedback on Pluto Strikes Back has been surprisingly positive. So I thought I’d write a little bit about what’s up with Pluto. [...]
November 19th, 2006 at 6:59 am
This game is brillant. Fun idea, great concept, superbly made. Congrats! Thanks Petri. Thetri.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
[...] A little bit over month ago I released my third experimental done-in-under-7-days game: Pluto Strikes Back. The game has gotten a very good response from players and it’s a game that even I still enjoy playing. Here are some of things I learned from the development of the game. [...]
December 11th, 2006 at 2:37 am
I’m not sure if the link you have at the top is the newest version, but I had the endless score bug when playing that one.
I agree that Pluto’s gravity is too high. Maybe I’m just not very good, but even after playing 10 games I’d occasionally have trouble getting a rock to leave its field.
December 11th, 2006 at 2:40 am
Oh, and being able to move the window around would be nice. Your game doesn’t let the mouse leave the window, and after going to another window and dragging the title bar, it zoomed down off the screen.
December 11th, 2006 at 2:45 am
Oh sorry my mistake, the download link isn’t really to the newest version. You can download the new version from here. I think I should edit the original post to include the download link to the newest release.
The reason why the game doens’t allow the mouse cursor leave the screen is that the game cannot update baseball bat’s position if the mouse is outside the window. And that really sucks when you try to play it.
December 12th, 2006 at 8:49 am
I was playing the new version (1.5) and I think I encountered the endless score bug. An asteroid got stuck between Mars and Earth and my score shot up, but it scrolled up only for a few seconds as I died soon afterwards.
Asteroids also have a tendency to appear inside the playing field, rather than at the edges. Other than that, your little game is quite fun, though. I’m still trying to break 25k, but I’ve only gotten 22k.
December 12th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
How big was the score you got from the asteroid stuck between Mars and Earth? I hope that you didn’t get too big score
I limited the “endless score” bug to 5000, which is a big score, but not as big as it used to be. But there is a change that you can get the 5000 multiple times in row, but the changes are very slim.
I’m still trying to figure the invisible asteroids bug.
Glad to know that you enjoyed the game.
January 19th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Great game, I love it. I’ve gotten 53360 in 1.5 version (5000 twice during that game). Some improvements would be great, at least a highscore list. And maybe I would prefer higher difficulty (more asteroids), because the most fun I have when defending against two or more asteroids at the same time.
January 19th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Thanks Kael for the feedback.
The future of Pluto is still a bit open, so I don’t if there will be a new version in the near future or not.
But I agree with you, the game definitely needs a highscore list. And I also feel that the 1.5 version is a bit too easy.
January 21st, 2007 at 4:01 am
Wow. You made 1up’s list of the best free games on the web!
http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=2&cId=3156339
Congratulations!
January 21st, 2007 at 11:33 am
\o/ Thanks for the good news.
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:58 pm
This game is great! I’d like to see destructible planets too. A level system would be nice too, with a Level Editor.
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Thanks for the compliments.
I have been secretly dwelling on the idea of a level editor for Pluto Strikes Back, but I know it’s an awful lot of work and the end result is usually something very buggy and unusable.
January 24th, 2007 at 2:55 am
First off I love your game! It probably caused me to fail an English test, but, nonetheless, I love it!
My biggest issues are:
1) The lack of a pause button
2) The lack of a saved high score
3) If you hit an asteroid with another asteroid and the second asteroid hits a planet, you get no points. (This upsets me cause I would have gotten a rediculous combo with it.)
I second the idea for levels, but I want the infinite play mode left in.
And I don’t like the destructible planets because it would mean less targets ^^
January 24th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
I hope you managed to pull off that English test
The pause button is a feature that is has already been implemented, but I didn’t enable it or bind it in the game’s original release. I should probably.
Someone suggested that there could be a separate “Billiard” bonus that you would get if you managed to strike an asteroid so that it would hit another asteroid and that would cause damage to a planet. I liked that idea very much, but there are small issues in the implementation that I haven’t figured out yet.
You have to be the first one to not want the destructible planets
January 24th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
I am a visitor from fun-motion.com. I come in peace :]
The game is hilarious! Excellent idea, nice graphics and lovely music!
I especially like the funny choir.
I understand that the pluto’s strong gravity is cause by the magnet to gather asteroids, so it’s obvious that it has to be stronger than the rest of the planets.
The only thing missing is the highscore and maybe a ‘restart’ button.
Thank you for your work!
January 25th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Thanks a lot for the positive feedback. It’s always fun to know that my work is appreciated.
I happened to run into the song by pure accident. It was playing in my WinAmp while I was play testing the game and I fell in love with it immediately. I don’t know why, but for some probably perverted reason (it’s from a collection album of music from porn movies) it seems to fit the game so nicely. Don’t ask why I had it on my hard drive
January 25th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Where is version for Linux, *BSD or other OS?
January 25th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Pichi: Your timing is perfect, I was just contacted by a fellow developer wanting to port Pluto Strikes Back to Linux
So it could happen, we will have to wait and see what the future brings us.
January 28th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I really like this game how it stands so far. My top score is 76,585… with one instance of the 5,000 glitch. (I’ve gotten fairly good at playing defensively and prolonging the game.)
If you implement destructible planets, do you think you’d be able to include a “Classic” or “marathon” setting so it’s similar to how they are now, and you just try to rack up the points? High Score tables would of course be great (one for each mode), but for now I’ve taken to taking screenshots of my best scores. (I’m also waiting for 6,660 or 66,600… since Pluto is god of the underworld…)
January 30th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Hey, there we go.
http://www.petridish.net/pics/20473/Pluto%20Score%20066665.jpg
66,665.
(This ended in a high score of 91,260… I got mobbed. You know when one comes in slow, then another one fast, and they both hit you at the same time? No way to block that…)
There were two instances of the 5k glitch in both this and my high score game. It seems to happen most often when there is an asteroid that’s hitting a planet a lot, but not enough to get you points… then it gets knocked into another planet, maybe unleashing some sort of combo. Earth and Mars are the most prevalent, but I’ve had one result from the smaller gas giant to the left (without rings, I really can’t tell which is which… Neptune and Uranus both have small ring systems, but Uranus’ would be vertical).
And yes, it is an extremely fun game… I just really long for a pause button so I don’t have to ignore everything else going on for a half hour straight per round!
January 31st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Hey there, I wanted to say that this is a really great game, and i was wondering if it is intended that, when you hit a planet with an asteroid strong enough so that the planet rams into another asteroid, you get a +5000 bonus? It happened to me once.
February 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 am
@Boter: Glad to hear you enjoyed the game. And I was happy to know (I checked post dates of your comments) that the game had enough replay value for you to enjoy at least for few days.
And thanks for reminding me that Pluto is the god of underworld. I somehow remembered that Pluto was god of War. Underworld is so much more cooler.
@knl: The 5000 glitch isn’t really a bug as it’s more a very elaborate combo sequence that’s score has been limited to 5000. It used to cause the “endless” score bug, reported higher up in the comments.
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
This game is one of the best and most original freeware games I’ve ever played! Not only it has a brilliant concept and unique gameplay but it’s also delivered with top-notch graphics and a quirky yet fitting soundtrack (though it gets EXTREMELY annoying after a while :)). Way to go, man! Please make more games like this, there’s never enough of them
February 4th, 2007 at 2:46 am
@Venca: Thanks for saying such a nice things about the game. It’s always nice to hear that my games are appreciated.
February 7th, 2007 at 1:04 am
This game totally rock!
I was SO close to fulfill my dream, a 100,000 score without any buggs…
offcourse after an halfhour of playing 3 meteors came at the same time when i had 4,000 left -.-
Anyway, i have some ideas to make the game better for the next version (if there will be one)
1. Destroyable planets and several game modes. Easy - 50 hits each (or a little less for the small and little more for big ones) Medium - around 100 Hard - around 200 and Pluto FRENZY - around 500 per planet
2. High score Game mode - immortal planets, but meteors keep coming faster and faster, in the end you will die, and hopefully have beaten your last highscore
3. Able to change playlist, be able to change backround song to mp3 of own choice
4. a list in the game - all bonuses - what you need to do to get them - and how much you get.
Ill probably add more stuff to the list later, and you, just read all of the above and keep upgrading this wonderful game
Later
February 7th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Yeah, i just thought of another way to make it better!
meteors come from random angle, at random speed, but its really annoying when the come from below really fast so you dont have time to parry them
Later
February 7th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
@MinaX: Thanks a lot for your feedback. It’s cool to know that there are some hardcore fans of this game
Your right about the difficulty levels. The game kinda requires something like that to keep it interesting enough to play, when your getting really good at it. The increasing speed of the meteors is a good idea. It could make the game more intensive to play.
If you want to get rid of the background song (I know that listening it for hours can make it a bit annoying), you can just delete or rename the .ogg file in the data/sfx/ folder. The game should work just fine without it, but you can listen to your own choice of music through any media player.
A list of the bonuses is also a great idea and could make the game a bit more fun to keep track of.
In a few days I try to post a bit about the future plans I have for Pluto.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I just tried to beat the massive 100,000 again
after 25 minutes and 88,000 it spawns 2 meterors RIGHT NEXT TO pluto 
this is a pretty seriously problem and I don’t know if it’s easy or hard to solve…
Anyway, keep rocking 
and i got another idea of game play, instead a certain hits destroy a planet, you could use force, the faster the meteor travels, the more damage
Later
February 7th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I tried fixing the invisible meteors, but it seemed to be bit more difficult thing to fix than I had hoped. There seems to be some kind of a bug in the graphics engine that happens on random and that makes it pretty hard to debug.
The original idea I had for the destructible planets was to use the force as a damage to the planet. This way it could be possible to destroy a planet with a one good clean hit.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Sounds good, well I hope you’ll figure out the meteor problem as soon as possible
Later
February 14th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
For now, my personal highscore is 94,310 points ( http://czyste.lapy.pl/pluto.png ).
Unfortunately the more I try, the harder it comes. If I’ll ever beat the 100,000 it will probably be by accident
February 15th, 2007 at 8:17 am
Didn’t read all of the posts here, so if the following has been covered, sorry.
Firstly, great game. I enjoy it a lot.
Every once in a while I can get a good solid hit/double slam on the planet next to Saturn. When this happens the planet flies off into the void. I thought it was really cool the first time I did it. But then, a meteor was bumping into empty space and a second later the planet was back.
I think it would be a great idea that if this were to happen, we should score a bonus for it. You could call it “Rogue Planet.” As in, this planet has been kicked out of the Sun’s influence and is a smallish gas ball hurtling through space without a star to call home anymore.
I like the weirdness that happens when you get a meteor stuck between the planets nearer the Sun. It’s really hard to time everything just right to them with another meteor and score some bonus. I think the reports of millions from that is definitely buggy, but I’ve never encountered that much before. I get 1-5 thou points for doing that. It should be left in to a certain extent. Not the outrageous points that some reported, but not gotten rid of altogether.
In the vein of expanding the game, I think there are a couple of things you could do. You could have a timed mode, a limited number of bats, or “level” goals(like only touch each meteor once, hit every planet X number of times, etc.). I think it would be great to have mode choices. The basic game as it is, timed, etc. Also, a stats record would be nice as well.
One last suggestion, possibly make some way to regain planet health.
February 15th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
@red_forman: That’s a pretty good score. I think you just beat me in my own game
@jiggy: Thanks for taking to time to write such a good feedback.
You’re the first one to report the Saturn void bug. It’s really not intended to work that way. It’s a bug that’s probably cause because the Saturn leaves the screen and after the graphics lag little behind and that’s why you really can’t see the planet.
But I think it would be a great idea to make there a certain distance and if you manage to strike a planet beyond that distance the “spring” would snap and the planet would be loose on the play field.
I left the 5000 points for the meteor stuck between planets on purpose. In the release 1.0 there is a bug that causes the scores to go wild and you get like millions of points for doing that. So it’s fixed in release 1.5, so that you can only get 5000 points from it. I realized that it’s a bit hard to get and when you get it you should be rewarded.
February 18th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Hi again!
My highscore still stands att 96,000 cuz i haven’t played since then, BUT i did manage to get 107,000 on cacodemon, WOHOO!
I just tried your other games but i must say Pluto is still the best
Keep rocking
Later
February 18th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Whooza! (man i post often -.-)
everytime a meteor gets alot of combos it should be combo - combo x2 - combo x3 and so on instead of getting alot of 60 points combos 
Tell me what you think
I just remembered another thing to improve PSB
Later
February 19th, 2007 at 6:46 am
@Minax: I’m happy to know that Pluto was your favorite game of games I have released. It seems to be the favorite of many others as well. I mean just look at the number of comments
The combo thing is a good idea. I originally intended to do that, but then I ran out of time. Making the graphics for all the possible combos is a tedious job, and I’m lazy
March 1st, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Hi there! I’ve read through all the comments but it doesn’t seem that anyone has mentioned it before so I will. Is it coded on purpose that when you point the bat right at the incoming asteroid it gets amortised and you can harmlessly land that asteroid on the Pluto’s surface. It therefore let’s you gather asteroids.
I don’t perceive it as anything bad, it just makes the game easier. Maybe the other end of bat should harm Pluto in this case?
Great and addictive game, btw.
March 1st, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Yep, it’s semi-intentional that you can gather up the asteroids around Pluto. The feature that you can absorb the impact of an asteroid by pointing the bat towards them is intentional. It’s actually a very good tactic.
March 2nd, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Is this the most fun a person can have on a computer without clicking the mouse button? Probably. Super-simple, tons of fun, and a great soundtrack (you know it’s catchy when you find yourself humming the tune while doing dishes).
Where’s the “donate” button? I’ve spent as much time playing this game as I have played others that cost money. Maybe you should get paid for that…
Oh - high score of 92,xxx
March 2nd, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Wow, I’m glad to know that you’d actually pay money for this game
That’s probably one of the best compliments I’ve heard. Unfortunately it’s illegal in Finland to collect money from a web page. Don’t ask why.
March 4th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
it’s a really cool game, but I find it easy, my top score is 85000 and I get 60000almost every time… Love the music!!
March 5th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Did I mention that I love the music? Seriously, it’s the best music possible for this game.
Just wondering if there were any updates, and a 1.6 coming down the pipeline at all…
March 12th, 2007 at 3:48 am
[...] pluto strikes back- a fun planet phsyics type game, made in less than 7 days! very fun. [...]
March 17th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
You should really thank the band of De Zwervende Keien for the great music and for fact that they released it on Creative Commons so I could actually use it.
The updates are a bit of kinky thing, since I really don’t have that much extra free time. And there’s also another thing I meant to blog about, but now I’m not really sure if its going to happen so…
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:35 pm
[...] Kloonigames Offizielle Seite: http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/pluto/ Download: http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/pluto/ System: [...]
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:00 pm
great game, coworkers and I tried to make physics games at one point (kinda lost interest halfway through coding im afraid
) sending this to em to inspire them and maybe get the group together someday again hehe.
my high score is 126,110. took two screens for proof too
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/3337/pluto2oh2.png asteroid at bottom got me tho.
http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/2826/plutorv0.png the end
you can probably tell but my tactic was the absorbing impact with bat, made several asteroids collect at the inner planets, then slam one in and get boatloads of combos, this tactic netted tons of points as the combo bonus gets into the thousands (hit cap of 5 thousand at least 5 times with this method)
March 22nd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
(hmm, hope i didnt double post) nice game, music suits the mood nicely, i would like to be able to blow up the planets (perhaps another game mode, Destroy (planets could be blown up by points scored against them instead of number of collisions? jupiter 10,000 pts while mercury 3,000?)) and classic mode would just be Survival. under 7 days, i dont know if i should be inspired or ashamed that i lose interest midway through coding (been 4 months or and my friends and i would barely have an alpha :P)
High score: 126, 110 (got screens to prove it lol)
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:23 am
@Nidor: Akismet (the comment spam plugin) thought you where spamming my site. Probably because of the image links. Well I despammed your other comment.
Thanks for taking the time write the comments. I really appreciate that. It always nice to hear from your players
I hope you and your coworkers finish the physics game. Hack it together if you have to. It always a great feeling to get a game finished.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:12 am
Haha man! This game is awesome, you finished it in 7 days? I want more 7-days-games then
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:42 am
Thanks. I think the game was originally done in 6 days. But I did spend at least one extra day on the update.
April 8th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
cool game! ITS REALLY FUN!!!!!! I was studying about space, and I stumbled across this game…. It’s been keeping be busy for the last few days…. heehee
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Cool game and concept. I have a few suggestions for things that could be changed/fixed:
1. Even though you get three lives, your lives are not displayed and you lose your score at the beginning of each
2. Make a highscores system. It would be even cooler if you made it online highscores, if you don’t know how to do this than email me at spacelashaerulez@hotmail.com and I can tell you.
3. Make an account at http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/ and submit your game. That site is a great network of developers and gamers and is not run by me so this isn’t advertising (assuming advert’ing is bad on this blog but it might not be idk). If you submit it there I’ll add it to my gamelist of favorite games.
If I think of anything else I’ll let you know.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:17 pm
my bad about suggestion number 1.
I thought you had three lives because I didn’t see the game over screen the first two times but I think I just clicked too fast and missed it…
May 24th, 2007 at 9:58 am
@Abugah: Glad to know I managed to disrupt your studying.
@biancagames: Thanks for your feedback.
1) Actually the number 1 was very helpful to me, because I was thinking that, that might be a problem that you can just click over the “game over” screen too quickly to actually see it.
2) The highscore system seems to be a big demand. I’d really like to do an online highscore for the games, but that’s pretty difficult to make a safe one. And also it might take more time than I have to spare. But who knows what will happen in the future.
3) I actually have an account on greatgamesexperiment, but I haven’t submitted my games there yet. I’ll try to find time to do that.
May 25th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
oh well, 157 010 … awesome game
May 28th, 2007 at 12:21 am
@PIPboy: Thanks for the blog post
May 28th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
no problem
oh by the way theres that stupid bug - sometimes really fast asteroid just appears from nowhere few centimeters from pluto and hits it pretty badly - those are quite deadly and pissing me off
May 29th, 2007 at 1:09 am
Yeah, I’m aware of that bug and I’ve managed to fix it. I just should release the new build, but I’m too lazy
June 21st, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I love that game! My only problem with it is that the bat is hard to control(And that sometimes asteroids appear right next to you with no warning, but let’s not get into that). Allow me to explain:
You need to hit asteroids hard to get them away from Pluto. However, after you’ve hit the asteroid, the cursor is halfway across the solar system. You lose time going back to Pluto, which makes it next to impossible to defend yourself with multiple asteroids on the screen. If I lower my pointer sensitivity, then the cursor doesn’t fly off into space, but I can’t hit the asteroids quickly enough. So maybe the cursor should be invisible(like in Cacodemon) and restricted to a small radius around Pluto. That would make the game much more fun.
Thanks for the game!
\,,\_(-_-)_/,,/
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:48 am
Thanks for kind words and suggestions. I should really test it how, well it works with the invisible cursor. Maybe it could work a little better that way.
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I am horrible at this game! I love it! I agree that a little more time on it would make this one great(er).
Very fun! There that’s as mean as I can be!
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:49 pm
My first reaction: Hahahah– what a funny little game! Great fun and cute.
My later reaction: Geez, I die easily. It’s not a game for the lazy. But I would like some floating cheese, or hamburgers or cupcakes to help keep my health a little longer. It could add to the fun too– smack an asteroid into a cake and they stick together and you don’t get the health boost. Oh maybe that’s not an interesting idea. I think I’m just hungery.
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 pm
@Crimson King: Thanks for the encouragement. I agree with you on the fact that Pluto is one of those games that could easily be improved if it would be developed further.
@Tracy: Thanks for the suggestions. The floating health idea would be an easy way to make the game more interesting and to make it last it bit longer. It was originally meant as a quick 5 min game, so that’s why you die in it so easily.
July 4th, 2007 at 11:25 am
‘been playing your game for quite a while now…
my high is 126 110 (isn’t that a striking suprise)…. I,ve figured that bug considering asteroids appearing in the middle of the screen is actulaly 2solved” if you move your cursor all of the time. In my experince asteroids only apaer in the midle of the screen if the curosr is not moving…hope that helps…
and needless to say-love the game….
August 14th, 2007 at 1:13 am
thanks friend
August 15th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
PLOTO DOSE NOT HAVE HI^ GRAVIDEY IT IS THE MEDEOR MANET GUYS
August 15th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
SOLERY I SBELD IT WRONG
August 15th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
OH I LOVEED THE GAME OH I JUST PLADE THE NEW VERSEN AND LOVEED IT PETRI.PURHO
August 18th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I love this game and I don’t know why I love it this much but I just do… Seriously, the graphics are really nice, the music fits nicely even though I would never listen to it outside the game and the storyline still makes me laugh. I though the controls sucked when you want to hit a meteor real hard and the cursor flies at the end of the screen, making it real hard to be ready when it rebounds right back at you.
One thing I would like to see implemented would be a juggling bonus: when you hit a planet and the meteor comes back to you and you hit another one, it would be nice to have a juggling multiplier that adds 1x the bonus point each time you successfully send the meteor back.
Also, some kind of analog joystick support would be great for that game as an alternative to the current mouse control.
I’ll be looking out for all your future projects and telling my friends, keep up the smacking good work
August 18th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Oh BTW, my high score for now is 79,625 and I rarely ever get less than 25k but mostly between 40 and 50k.
August 18th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Sorry for the consecutive posts but I feel like this is worth mentionning: When you directly hit the sun with a meteor it doesn’t give you anything. The way I’d do with is when you hit the sun the meteor would become red-blazing hot and if it does hit another planet afterwards, then you get a bonus. Also I think the mouse button(s) could be used in some way but I’m not sure how.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:42 pm
[...] Version “Crayon Physics Deluxe” ist in Arbeit!) Auch von Kloonigames kommt “Pluto strikes back” - das mich von der Thematik natürlich besonders anspricht ! Als die Pluto-Bewohner [...]
February 24th, 2008 at 8:35 am
[...] (Original post at Kloonigames) (direct download) Sphere: Related Content [...]
March 6th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Hello peeps
March 6th, 2008 at 2:19 am
whats up. I love space
April 4th, 2008 at 2:50 am
HOOOOOOOOORSCH, excuse me. I really loved your spaghetti sauce recipe. “WHADDYA WANT MA?” “I”M ON THE COMPUTER DOIN REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF” Like I was sayin I really liked your pizza sauce recipe. Keep up the good work, and have an orange.
Little Dumplin
April 4th, 2008 at 4:18 am
Was very exited when it completed download, only to find the cursed .exe on the applications.
Me and my son are SO SAD about pluto, and SO SAD about no mac support.
disappointing : (
April 20th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
First of all, this is a GREAT game!
I only just started playing it, but I have faved your website and will continue playing your brilliant games - carry on making games like these.
My best score is 45,030, you said any score above 30,000 is probably a bug BUT I thing this one might have been for real, two meteors were stuck in between mercury and venus so I hit another meteor in to them and I got loads of combos and my score went up quite a lot. Can you tell me if this is a bug or not??
Oh, and could you possibly make a highscore board, this would incourage people to play your games more!
April 26th, 2008 at 3:12 am
30,000+ is a bug? I just got 30,100.
This is definitely one of my favorite games, plus Rolling Boulder.
April 28th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Nice little game to pass a few minutes with. The only thing I miss is a pause feature. I do have one question also: What determines the Bat Mastery bonus? From my experience it is something like hitting the asteroid three times without it touching anything else in between and then hitting a planet.
May 4th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
On the subject of destroying planets, one person wrote that thered be less targets, but if you could smash the planets into smaller bits, that would leave alot more targets, which could also be used to enforce the “billiards” effect, so if you smashed a planet, the pieces would then be floating around, you could hit those pieces and get an ultimate combo or something,
this game is a little hard to play on laptops,
but all in all, Great game
June 21st, 2008 at 1:09 am
first of all i love this game playing it evry day for a few minutes
well since your louking for tips for an update or a part 2 here are mine
1 a black hole wich sucks up meteors and gives a score it should be small and some where in the richt upper corner
2 some way to regenerate life not much but juist a little in a while
3 make the planetes move ( i know that can be hard to code XD but its juist a tip )
4 start whit the asteroid belt juist few meteors will do it like 4 or so make them stand still and then fly free when hit
5 and well mayby some more music i like the tune a lot but after a while i juist turn of the sound and put on the radio XD
oh yeah my high score at the moment 26.865
August 17th, 2008 at 12:26 am
I just posted this to Jayisgames.
Anyway, I don’t know which I like the most — the idea, the gameplay or the music — and I’d be more than happy to see a full-scale game out of this with more game modes (classic and destruction to begin with — oh, and maybe something with asteroid juggling: keep as many asteroids in orbit as possible without being hit), random asteroid flight paths (now they seem to have a limited amount of speed and angles to enter the screen), billiard effect — and of course highscore.
I deeply hope that we can expect a Pluto Strikes Back 2!
/Innovative-game-loving Liffon