Qong pre-alpha release

Hi! I'm super excited to let Qong out into the world for the first time.

My goal with this project is to experience all aspects of game development and level up my skills in the process!
Qong was born out of a simple idea: what is the simplest game I can make but still complex enough to learn new things from.
I aim to build this game in small, consistent increments and build it out bit by bit to fulfill my vision and bring bite-sized moments of chaotic fun to anyone's day!

I'll be recording my journey in these Devlogs. I'll be straight with you, this is my first go at this, so I don't have a solid plan of how this will go. I'm thinking one of these Devlogs will come out roughly once a month for now while I get into the swing of things and start getting an idea of what kind of content I can put up here and how to share my journey. This is something I do for fun, in my free time and I have a full time job and a family so this is a pace I think I can realistically sustain.

Current State

This is the first working prototype release. Be warned that it has only the simplest gameplay, is missing many customization & accessibility options and is still using many placeholder art & sound assets.
But it does have:

• And end to end slice of singleplayer gameplay
• Scoring and a timer
• Menus and HUD
• Intro and credits animations

I'm sure this sounds like the bare bones of a game, that's fair but there's plenty more to come!

The game is available to play straight in your browser or as a free download for PC. Full disclosure, when online multiplayer becomes available I may begin to charge a dollar or two for the game and this may increase as more features get added.

Vision/Roadmap

My ultimate vision for Qong is to build a chaotically fun experience for 1-4 players to enjoy lasting 5-10 minutes per match. 

Right now we are at square one: player input causes paddles to move, ball moves around, score increases each time the ball hits a paddle and a stopwatch keeps track of how long the ball stays in play. By next month I plan to get to local multiplayer. This should include:

• Controller support
• Control mapping options
• Altering the paddle markings to show which player controls which paddle
• Randomized paddle assignment
• Per-player scoring 

An idea I'm playing around with is to offer two distinct game modes: cooperative where the game ends as soon as the ball exits the play area, and versus where the player who misses the ball is eliminated and last player standing wins! I'd love to hear from the community which game mode you'd be most interested to play with your friends.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg, I have many ideas for future game modes, power-ups and traps to dramatically alter the moment to moment gameplay and keep everyone on their toes! I hope you'll forgive me if I keep those under my hat for now. There needs to be cake for icing and sprinkles to enhance after all.

Thanks for reading! I hope you'll join me on this journey and please don't hesitate to let me know what you think in the comments below.

Take care!