CHARACTERS

In BlockBall Mania, you play as the Squirrel. One day, long ago, the Squirrel got trapped in an indestructible bubble. Nobody knows how.

The main antagonist of this demo is the Evil Guy. The Evil Guy is an industrial wood chipper, and is trying to turn the entire forest into mulch. 

The enemies are loyal supporters of Evil Guy and will do whatever it takes to ensure his success. The enemies try to stop the Squirrel from getting to Evil Guy as much as possible.

Enemies

The enemies in BlockBall Mania are stationary. Their main form of hindrance is to shoot lethal projectiles at you. Although they can also block you from breaking bricks until they are killed. Luckily it's easy to kill them, just one tap and they disappear.

Although, some of the enemies seem different...

These are Special Enemies. The Special Nail Gun does not have different traits besides what it drops. The Special Enemies drop Items when they are destroyed.

ITEMS

Planned Items

There are a few more Items that have been planned but not implemented.

• Fire Cube - eat this and you'll be able to shoot fireballs right back at the Enemies!

• Spicy Pepper - This one lets you jet forward at blazing speeds and crash right through bricks!

• Thunder Shock - Get this and you'll be able to shock any enemy you choose! Choose wisely though, as this one can only be used once.

Planned Mechanics

There were some mechanics that had to be scrapped to meet the scope of the current project. For example, I wanted to make the game into a roguelike. After every two or so levels a shop would appear and you could purchase upgrades to blaze through the game. However, I deemed this low priority and scrapped it in favor of fleshing out other game aspects.

Planned Designs

Currently the game uses a pixel art style. However, my girlfriend offered to help design assets for the game to replace the placholder-not-placeholder assets!
There are some great ones in here! For example, the main player character is planned to be a squirrel in a bubble. The bubble will be shot at the bricks, which are now rocks. The paddle was transformed into a trampoline so that we can ensure a safe landing for the squirrel. The main enemies of the game are now nail guns, and the Big Boss at the end is an industrial wood chipper.

Accessibility & MDA

My game incorporates a few key accessibility features. One of my favorites is the alternate playstyles. When the player presses Y, the game switches from controlling the paddle with the mouse to controlling it with WASD. Along with that, when the player presses Return on the main menu they can choose how quiet or loud they want the sound effects to be.

BlockBall Mania follows the MDA Framework closely. The goal of the game is to beat each level in order and then beat the final boss. Levels are beaten by destroying every brick in that level. When all of the bricks are destroyed, the player wins and they advance to the next stage. The Aesthetic I aimed for is Challenge. The game is centered around the challenge of breaking every brick and getting past the enemies. However, my Designs are deceptive and depict a cozier forest scene, at first. The enemies are designed with a construction theme to contrast the nature themes of the rest of the game. The main enemies are nail guns and the Evil Guy is an industrial wood chipper.

Original Vision

The original idea for the game was relatively the same, but a lot of core aspects have changed. The original game was meant to be a randomly generated rogue-like, similar to Nubby's Number Factory. The levels were going to be randomly modified based on presets I would create. For example, I could make a base level and add objects that could block alternate paths or get in the way of items. Then, the generation would randomly choose which ones to enable. This way the game would have a lot of replay value and wouldn't be as simple as finding a strategy that works and sticking to it. Another thing I originally visioned was a branching map. When every brick in a level was cleared, three holes would show up throughout the level. These three holes would lead to three different levels. When you fall into the hole and clear the level, a world map would appear showing your journey and the upcoming level. I put these ideas to the side to focus on the core mechanics of my game. I wanted to make sure it was fun to play before making sure it had in-depth mechanics like these. 

Future Plans

I plan on continuing to work on this outside of school. Creating this game has been very fun and I would like to see it through. I plan on implementing all of the ideas you've seen here eventually, no matter how long it takes. By the time I'm done, this game will be a fully realized version of all of my wild ideas I had in mind for the game. It's a wide scope to try and implement them all, but if I stick with it and don't quit I think I will be able to get most if not all of them implemented. I am going to continue with the hand drawn art style as well. I am planning on drawing them myself in the future, even if it's just for practice. This way I can nail down my own art skills and be able to design characters exactly how I think of them. I am also planning on creating more levels and level designs, along with adding more types of rocks and level conditions.

MEDIA