This thread is to document the progress of Droppin’ Bombs, a collaboration between myself and Acumen.
The gameplay idea is simple. Bombs fall from the sky and each bomb has a random timer. Bombs change colors depending on how much time is left before the bomb will detonate. When the player taps a bomb, the bomb and all adjacent bombs of the same color are destroyed giving the player points and making new bombs fall in the destroyed bombs place. There will be various gameplay modes with special power ups/downs. More to come soon…
Initially an idea that went from concept to working prototype in less than 1 day, my goal was to create a simple game that I could release on the AppStore(free with ads) in around 2 weeks time just to test the whole App release process before I started developing a full blown game. Just wanted to make something simple yet fun to play with simple art…some basic bombs, simple ground and basic menu buttons.
That’s when Acumen PM’ed me out of no where just to ask a simple question, and it turned into a collaboration. After playing the prototype, Acumen convinced me that we should add polish and make a full blown game instead of a quick release, so my plans went out the window. After bouncing ideas back and forth, this is where we are now:
Top Left: Initial prototype before collaboration.
Top Right: Collaboration starts with initial environment idea.
Bottom Left: Mock-up of new environment, bombs, special items.
Bottom Right: Initial in game rendering with new environment.
Initial prototype:
Video of first prototyping stages.
Prototyping pulsating bombs:
Video of where we are now.
Have any questions or comments? Feel free to let us know!
Thanks for the feedback Ethan! It’s not 100% going to happen, but we’re considering putting up a webplayer once we’re a little further along with the project.
We’ll be posting an update in a day or two, so stay tuned!
So, we talked alot about the actual graphic style and decided to come up with a much more stylized approach to the environment and all the other assets. We loved the look of some shading techniques used in other games and decided to incorporate this style in our game. As you can see this is a mockup, as the elements are overlaid ontop of the other versions. Note: the gui is just a temp asset, will be replaced with something much more fitting !
This is what we came up with so far - what do you guys think ?
Would be cool to get some real feedback on this in order to know if we’re heading in the right direction
Don’t be shy !
The graphics are really neat! Give it a very… “Facebook”/Farmville look if that makes sense, Looks very promising and enjoyable, As a matter of fact I think it would make a great facebook game
Keep up the good work, And if you are ever looking to Collab in the future on a small project like this, Notify me Would be a pleasure to work with you!
Funny you ask, we do not do that yet. We felt using actual 3d objects but having them appear to be 2d would be more performant than using heavy alpha planes all around the game.
But the more this project grows, we’re stumbling on so much stuff we need to add in order to have a fully functioning game, all these menus are driving me crazy
Atm, it actually still uses 3d models with backfaces killed, but what would be even more performant is the test I did yesterday. I was tracing around a flat prerendered item, which resulted in like 40 triangles per object, yet no transparency/overdraw at all.
So far, we didn’t feel the need to tickle the performance side of things, since we’re doing quite well on the actual devices. However if we were to redo this project not much would be like it is now
We learned quite a bunch of tricks and necessities on this project for iOS developing - now act surprised
Make sure to check back often! 
