How i changed an idea that stuck for 4 years
Project Collider
I first got inspired to create a hypercasual game four years ago when I visited the exhibition "All Possible Paths", featuring the life and works of Richard Feynman.
Light takes all possible paths from point A to point B.
I was also heavily intrigued by the inner workings of the Large Hadron Collider,
also known as a particle accelerator.
The idea of getting a particle to go as fast as possible with the intention of colliding it sparked a hypercasual game idea in me.
The eventual death of an endless runner game can be a success, not a failure.
The purpose of accelerating a particle is to, eventually, collide and destroy it.
The original mechanics was to move a particle left and right to avoid enemy particles coming from the front and back and accelerate when you are on top of a resonator.
games relying on colliders and collision seemed wildly appropriate, which is why I had the working title of Project Collider
Project Entropy
However, while developing my game, I realised that I wanted and needed a One-button game. (Thanks to a glitch with the new input system in unity)
I had to reinvent my design for this game, and another inspiration came, which was the film, Tenet. This film also happened to dabble in pseudoscience; The idea that time could flow in either direction was fascinating.
This idea led me to have a particle that can go forwards and backwards at will but cannot stop. I renamed my project Entropy.
the enemies now came from the sides and not the front
And I went for the outer space theme because I needed enemy particles to come from the side, which does not happen in an experimental particle accelerator.
Backwarp
after some playtesting, I realised that I needed a name that would tell the player how to play the game despite the deliberate lack of instructions. Thus I came up with backwarp, which did help justify my outer space theme.
What went right.
I did numerous playtests with my colleagues and friends, some of whom were from esports. I managed to get the player and enemy speeds just right. Thankfully I did not have to manipulate the timescale at all.
I was also able to use my shaders knowledge, using GPU programming to blend backgrounds in real-time and move it according to world space to give the illusion of a moving environment.
I also had time to build the particle effects and postprocessing to give the top tier visual polish.
What went wrong
I did not consider that something would go wrong with displaying on different screen size as I assumed that Unity would adjust it automatically.
I had to re-do the functional space and orthographic camera and re-calibrate the physics variables.
Thankfully, this did not make much noticeable difference in the gameplay experience.
Files
Get Backwarp
Backwarp
One button game go backwards or forwards
Status | Released |
Author | MagicJammer |
Tags | hypercasual |
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