Bounce House Brawlers: Blog 1

Starting A New 495 Semester

So this is a new semester of 495 and this semester I'm a leading a project for 495 as a game designer. However, I'll still be doing level design for the game as well.

First off to start the project, my team and I created a document defining all the categories of the game level design, animation, programming, 2D art, and 3D art. This was to make sure that we were all on the same page for the design and vision of the game. The game is called Bounce House Brawlers and here is the core concept:

Bounce House Brawlers is a 2-4 player couch co-op arena fighting game. Players fighting each other are using a basic kit (Block, Basic Attack/Charge Attack, Uppercut, and Jump). Every punch/attack will knockback your enemy instead of doing your traditional “damage”. The more “damage” the players have taken from enemies attacks the more drastic the knockback becomes, progressively stacking until the player dies. The player’s goal is to knock the other players into the hazards on the map, the hazards will kill the player in one hit. Players will have 3 lives in a round whoever is the last one standing will win the round/stage.

This document that we worked on can be seen here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TX-NuJ-AW-8wBG1_XuKTw3YzPIFlGQvIZcqYcijZMIo/edit?usp=sharing

After the core concept of the game was nailed down we headed directly into paper prototyping to test out the core concept of the game. The main thing we wanted to test was the bounce mechanic within the game. This was actually relatively hard to replicate for a paper prototype because it's hard to replicate the physics of the game but we gave it our best shot.

Ultimately the game was kind of like a rock, paper, scissors fighting game. Where the player would flick their quarter at their opponents quarter to try and knock them into hazards.

Here is a look at the rule sheet for the game:

We also made 3 arenas for the playtest so players could play at the same time and could test multiple levels. I split the team up into three groups of 4 to make all three levels.

Here is the level I helped make with my teammates:

The playtests went pretty well overall but the biggest issue was that some people problems flicking the quarters well. Other than that playtesters seem to enjoy the game and thought it was a good core concept for the game. 

After paper prototype, we moved directly into the electronic prototype. I delegated all my team tasks to do so that we have a good vertical slice of the game. Right now we are planning for one level to be in the electronic prototype but we are hoping to get more in. We still have a week left so only time will tell but during that time I have also made annotated maps along with my other level designers so that we can start discussing concepts for arenas within the game.

You can check out links to my first three maps explained here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a14BUJBwcccW3BByO4Vjech-o9yB1Ico0Md-kNNmuNU/edit?usp=sharing

Here is a link to another map that I did last week:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uBrPyDPfp9VE7WCP0XKuusKkm1qYOduVKr_MU21kYa8/edit?usp=sharing

The other level designers have also made assets lists and color palettes for modeling and 2D art that way they can start working on assets and backgrounds.

Overall we are on track to finish up the electronic prototype soon. Tomorrow I'll have a better idea of where we stand as far as how many levels we can get into the prototype but the core loop should essentially be done. From there we can spend this next week polishing, implementing the levels, and adding in assets that modeling has finished. The first level should be relatively complete because we already have the concept that we want to do and I have the team working on assets, backgrounds, etc. for the level. So the first level should be pretty polished. I'm excited to see how the prototype goes and look forward to sharing the progress and feedback.