Ow My Balls! The game

After a bunch of playtesting we decided that we really need to change up the positions of the buildings in the background. The initial area just has way too much open space and we need to fill it in. So Tim has made a heroic effort and completely reworked the backdrop in almost no time. Much respekt. Check out this video.

Whoever said that the last 10% is 90% of the work is wrong. It’s 99% of the work. That’s cool though especially when you’re making a game about people getting kicked in the balls. So we keep cranking like mad through the polish stage getting ever so closer to shipping. Our goal has been to ship this Sunday March 15th and at the moment we’re on track to making that happen. Can’t wait to get this out!

Got a lot of good feedback from the playtest about UI. A couple of the major points were:

• Score and points need to be bigger
• Get rid of buttons wherever we can
• Should flick to kick rather than use the power meter
• Replay should be on a post-game pop-up

So we’ve made a bunch of these changes now and here’s a video highlighting them.

The playtest went awesome. The best way to learn if your app is working or not is to watch people use it. Got a lot of great feedback and ideas from people. Some of the stuff was easy, some was hard, but the bottom line was people did like what we had so far. I’m going to be cramming to make a bunch of adjustments based on the feedback we got. Thank you to everyone who came and especially those who played the game for more than 15 seconds.

Pretty amazing progress for 2 weeks, don’t ya think?

Just got the first drop of character animations from Tim. Friggin awesome. Dropped them in and the game is way better. It would have sucked if we did the playtest with a stick figure.

Going balls to the wall for the playtest. Cramming like nothing else. By the way did you know that the statement “balls to the wall” is not actually in reference to balls? It refers to airplane pilots pressing the ball of the throttle against the wall of the front of the plane.

Here’s another video update….

So the playtest is tonight. We’re close to ready, but I’m cramming like mad on the code. So many little polish things that need to get done. Super excited but at the same time nervous. So begins a long day of coding and testing. Fingers crossed.

We’re facing a difficult decision. Gotta be serious here for a minute. Early feedback on the game seems to indicate that the backdrop is not wide enough. The original idea was that the character would fall more height wise than width wise, which is why we went with a thinner backdrop. But watching people play and getting feedback it seems that people expect it to be wider. Twice as wide in fact. Expanding the canvas is a tough decision because it means more objects, more collisions, more everything. But if it’s needed it’s needed. This is a really tough decision and we’re going to have to talk about it and think about before diving in.

Tim and I spent the day working together on the game at his place. Made monster progress. Lots of objects placed and animated now. The object animations are looking friggin wicked and the game is actually starting to be kinda fun. Check it out for yourself in the latest video.

More good progress today. Spent most of my time making the leveling system works. Here’s the basic idea. You earn more points, you get more farts, and you unlock more videos to watch. Pretty simple, maybe too simple, but that’s how it’s working for now.

Tomorrow Tim and I will be co-working all day on this game. Can you believe we’ve been remote almost this entire time? This will be the first time we’ve been in the same room at the same time working on it. I’m hoping it doesn’t explode cause you put together two minds like that and shazam it can be like crossing the streams in ghost busters. We’ll see what happens. In the meantime enjoy the latest vid, ya dig?

The pressure is on. We’ve invited a bunch of friends over on Sunday to playtest the game, which means we’ve only got a few days left to actually make it into a game. Pressure is good. Deadlines are good. Embarrassing yourself in front of your friends is bad. Unless it’s funny, which this might be. Anyway we’re cranking hard all around. I’m cramming on code. Tim is cramming on art. We’ll get there by Sunday.