Velocity is a two-week game project
that I pitched and designed at Night Owl Studios.
I had a team of interns help me with the project,
and the main mechanics and art was done in 3 days!
Here, we see the core game loop and mechanics in play!
The game only tells you one thing - AVOID THE BALLS
and the rest is taught through experience in playing the game itself.
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Main Game Mechanics:
1. A new ball is spawned every 5 seconds
2. Walls are divided into segments, which can change a ball's size, speed, and direction
3. Picking up coins will increase your score
And with just these 3 mechanics, we are able to create a game that provides challenge in a way that twitch, observation/awareness, risk management, and multitasking are required in order to master the game.
And now, let's see how these skills are applied:
1. Twitch
This is self-explanatory for a dodgeball game, but it raises the bar even higher with this game using tilt controls. It becomes more challenging to dodge, and the added immersion of moving your device while you play.
2. Observation / Awareness
The walls are divided into segments, with each having its own properties. And if that's not enough, they are constantly revolving around the screen!
Observe how the ball was able to hit the player. Who would have thought that those 2 seemingly random segments will lead the ball towards the player?
That's why observation is needed in this game. Observe each ball's direction, which segment they will hit, and determine the best course of action. Where is it safe to dodge?
3. Risk Management
Coins are spawned in-game to provide bonus points to the player. But most of the time, we tend to get too greedy for a few points, leading to these kinds of death:
Which makes it necessary to think about whether getting that coin is worth it or not. Take this for example:
In these kinds of situations, you may as well give it up, don't you think?
Besides, new coins will always spawn after some time
4. Multitasking
And now that we can do twitch gameplays, observation/awareness, and proper risk management, we have to use them all together.
Which means that you will be constantly observing the segments and balls, all while dodging around - plus split-decision making of whether to get that coin or not!
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And this is what we achieved in two weeks:
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But we won't be satisfied with that!
Gameplay Overhaul + Powerups!
So what has changed?
1. Visual Information
One of the problems of the first build is that there's just too much information. It tends to overwhelm players, looking at arrows, moving circles and boxes, that grid that tend to produce optical illusions. The screen is just too busy.
So what we did is simplify it even further, getting rid of the grid and arrows. Which made the balls move unpredictably, leading to a change in a few game mechanics.
2. Ball Lives
One issue with the early version is that it gets impossible to survive once there are more than 10 balls in the screen. So, we made it so that balls get destroyed after a set number of bounces. This made it possible to get scores higher than 150, which led to more competitive leaderboards.
2. Additional Ball Types
Yellow Ball - known as the support, all balls that hit it will be moving towards the player
Violet Ball - known as the assassin, moves slowly in the dark but becomes bigger and faster when near the player
3. Powerups!
Here, we can see barrier, spike, and slow time powerups in action!
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