BasketBalls

Basketballs is a physics based sport puzzle game. The unofficial sequel to the game Soccerballs made in conjunction with Longanimals.

Soccerballs was a really popular game but we did have a bit of a rush on that game as we wanted to get it out to coincide with the world cup and as a result I didn’t spend a lot of time on the artwork so it really didn’t have  a lot of art content. The levels were also a bit hand holding on Soccerballs and it really didn’t start to become a challenge until you get to level 20, which was a bit easy to start with.

For Basketballs the main game play is fairly similar, with passing switches, destruction etc, we did add a new objects to the list and made the destructible slightly nicer. The game play changed in terms of the goal of the game as we added proper baskets and made the referees a bit of a bonus rather than the goal of the game.

It started off we were going to base the whole game inside a gym so I did wood floor tiles and a brick texture for the backdrop, which I think looked quite nice but it did feel a bit bland over 30 levels, so I ended up doing a variety of other background styles. I also thought graffiti would make the floor areas a bit more interesting. Overall I’m quite pleased with how it came out, and it definitely looks a more polished product than it’s predecessor.

The initial reaction on Kongregate wasn’t that great though, it seemed people generally liked the game but we had put in medals on levels for times. The times we’d set were too hard to get golds and a lot of people complained. Its a common problem we have had before, most people just want to play and complete the game, gamers dont really want anything which is too much of a challenge anymore. Its more like games have become an experience like a film rather than something which you are actively trying to beat and if they can’t do the game they think that it’s the fault of the game, rather than having patience to try and work it out.

Im not saying that’s a bad thing, there’s still a place for challenging games but when you are being paid by plays it’s often best to just give the average user what they want.