Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Ludum Dare 41 entry - Type Ball

We decided to participate in the Ludum Dare Game Jam. This was my (Yanni) first time entering this contest. I would previously do game jams after a big project, or if I saw it on someone's feed.

At first, when I saw the theme, we were discouraged. It was such an awkward ask - "2 Incompatible Genres." After brainstorming for hours, we had a whiteboard of different ideas. My issue was that 2 Incompatible Genres would mean incompatible gameplay, but that isn't really the case. It was really more of a high-level thinking, then getting into the mechanics. A game at its core should be a fun experience.

We went with sports with a typing mechanic. This felt polar opposite to us. I started concepting some pixel art as KP worked on the typing mechanic. By the end of Saturday, we started to have a thing. KP had handed off the typing mechanic and I implemented it into the animations and UI I had mocked up. It felt like it was really coming together.

By Sunday afternoon we had the base game all revved up, and it was time to tweak and polish. I had used nodes to determine the path when you shoot but found it felt super fake. If you were close to the basket it would be SUPER weird. I spent awhile iterating through the different math to get the animation to look better. Then there was a weird bug with the ball not rendering on screen sometimes.

After crushing the fun-defying bugs - we started to work on music and sfx. By the time I was editing the sounds in audacity I realized we were running out of time. By Monday night I was still playing with a few more features to add extra fun but ultimately decided to keep to the core.

We are both really satisfied with the outcome of the game. It is currently being hosted on itch.io and is free to play. Feel free to check it out and let us know what you think :)!

A basketball Typing game!

In Type Ball, you play a basketball player taking some free-throw practice shots. Your coach wants you to get better, but you also need to learn to be quicker on your computer. The solution is making every free throw go in if you type out the word on the billboard correctly. Get shots and level up. Time to get good!


Play now:
https://yannage.itch.io/ludum-dare-41-type-ball

Ludum Dare Page:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/type-ball

Gameplay:
https://youtu.be/M1V29BQtZeU

- Yanni & KP

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