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Toy Analysis

Saeed Sabke's Toy
A downloadable game for Windows

For my toy, I have made a bouncy house. The idea behind this is the fact that exploring a small, open area is inherently fun in most 3D platformers. However, adding a sense of challenge to the player's movement also makes it fun  and satisfying to master the controls. Since this is a simple toy with no real objective, making the player jump constantly was a great choice for this approach. After all, bouncing high repeatedly is inherently thrilling. I also adjusted the physics to be additionally rewarding, allowing for 90 degree wall jumps and even one sided wall jumps if the camera and character are aligned just right. There's a sweet spot that allows you to keep bouncing upwards to the top of structures, and I made sure that sweet spot was just easy enough to be easily recognizable, but also challenging enough to require a level of mastery from the player. The slopes are there to give players the easy gratification of jumping from a higher place, while the three layer structure is built to tease players who want to reach it's top. Reaching the top of the whole level is medium difficulty, but staying up there is the hardest thing to do in the area, requiring precision in each bounce to stay on the narrow path. Overall, the bouncy house is designed to be fully explored through learning the controls of the bounce, thus leading to maximum fun.

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