Last week I covered where I was on my game for the visually impaired, but this week for me has been all about another game, one of the most ridiculous games I've ever made. Ball on a Stick.
Ball on a Stick is a mobile game I'm working on with my friend Danielle Sweet for Android. She does the art, I do the design, we share the code duty. Our goal was to make the simplest game we possibly could, while still making it fun, and making it look pretty.
And thusly, the game is incredibly simple. You have a ball and a stick. The ball is balacing on top of the stick. You can control the subtle tilt of the stick by tilting your device left and right. Doing so gently will allow you to keep the ball on top of the stick. The goal of the game is to keep the ball off the ground for as long as possible.
We've been in something of a crunch over the last week, making huge breakthroughs on key systems and late tonight, we officially made our first alpha testing build. Over the coming weeks, we will be testing the game with our friends and family to see how people react to the game and see what sorts of tweaks need to be made to it.
While the game is being tested, our goal is to now work on starting to add more of the "fancy" elements to the game. Currently, we have the core functionality at what we consider stable, all of the basic functions work as they should. Now with this second phase of design, we want to start getting fancy and really start showing off a little what we can really do.
The game at it's core is a game of concentration. So to add a challenge to the game, we want to add some "random events" to the game, to spice things up, and try to shake the player up when they least expect it. To truely master this game, a player will need to have rock solid concentration and patience.
What kind of distractions can the player expect? All of them. Don't expect any spoilers here.
Our goal is to release Ball on a Stick early this summer, keep an eye out for updates about the project here.