Hi! We’re Nord Unit – a game developers team, based in Kursk, Russia. A former web-design studio that turned into a gamedev team. Currently we’re working on cyberpunk arkanoid for iOS and Android devices.
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The idea of Hyperform was born in thinking of a game about rotating a 3D cube in 2D space. In short amount of time the idea become stronger and raised the fundament – the 2D arkanoid about a ball, destroying white cubes of 3D object. It was hard to imagine this gameplay. Concepts covered the blank spaces in understanding the project almost in a half. So we decided to delay other projects and start creating a mobile game.
Firstly, we tried Unreal Engine 4 by creating a simple demo almost empty inside and we got problems in starting project on our devices. The weight of it was too large and it was too strange. So, we took Unity3D as a primary and a main development tool.
Concept
First builds showed us, how objects in the game will interact with each other, how it can be played and the visual design of this insane idea. The ball hit the edges of device display and destroyed white cubes, rotation of the object was performed by a thumb and black cubes infected the nearest cubes as you hit them. The point was to destroy the object and don’t let the black cubes capture it. And the game was called – Cubenoid.
After everything we decided to make it more playable. We thought of flying platform, that will be connected with the rotation of the central object. The platform reflects the ball, collects modifications like Freeze or Fire, this modification projects on the platform and the ball gets improvement, that can help beating the object faster. But we thought that the infection of a cubes is not a good idea in arkanoid and the game continued walking it own different way.
Cubenoid has been changed. We discussed so much about using an arkanoid as a main genre for the game. At last it brought us to think in a different way. Gameplay become more like a sidescroller, and user got a character. Now you are a magician.
The game brings us to the isometric world, full of danger and creepy monsters. The main character has to walk through the cubic world fighting with the dark matters. Design changed a bit, but it has the same plot. User has to throw magic balls from the character’s wand with finger swipes, to destroy matters. Epidemic has to be stopped and the world will gain it purity.
Concept
The concept wasn’t bad and had a huge plot, but it was a different game, more difficult and required more time to implement. That’s why we brought back the original project and sought for new ideas and ways to fix the game. We included clear borders with gaps, so the ball can rebound and fly away. Modificators were integrated to the main object, as a cubes. And the main feature, that we included, is that we set the goal to the user – Cores. Core is like a heart of the object. Destroying the core will take us further. So, the main difficulty of the game is reaching the core.
The project began to gain speed so the new prototypes has arrived.
Concept
Light colors turned into dark. The design of the constructions depended on core so the cubes were built up on it. The idea began to look more like product, that we needed, but it was too far from perfection.
We came to the idea of writing a soundtrack that would react on the object’s condition. A little part of the track will repeat until the object be destroyed for some percent. After reaching the threshold comes the next part of track and everything repeats.
We’ve discussed this idea, looked through the different articles, wrote some parts for test, but refused it, and agreed that the soundtrack would be a rhythmic music that could help beating the objects with joy.
Little by little we’ve succeeded to curb Unity3D and we’ve learned some new aspects of development. Tested new builds on tablet device and the results inspired us.
Concept
Last builds were super playable. We have created several levels with different difficulties, and played them all day. Everything was good.
Included soundtrack that we wrote recently. Made a starting cutscene where the ball flew through the space, met the core and it activated the shield. The core was protecting against user and he needed to launch the ball to crash the object. Drew the launch zone and made an animation to it. Then we gave this prototype to our family and friends and we noticed, that we have made a mistake after watching them play. Users thought, that the animation of the launch zone meant the loading of the level and launched the ball after we told them. We’ve received many feedbacks, and started fixing them.
The game needed more control of an object. You could play one level for an hour and fail and succeed with one shot after a little break. It was too random and we tried to correct it.
The main problem was the handling. The object was rotating by your commands and was smooth and obedient. But when you tried to do it accurately, all attempts were in vain, and it rotated as it wanted. The rebound angles were random. There were problems with bouncing with a straight angle to the opposite wall, and rebounding from the wall with the angle that didn’t cross with the central object, and all of it has to be fixed. After some time, we have finally found the answers.
Concept
At first, we have corrected the rebounding angle with counting wall hits. If the ball touched walls for 5 times without hitting the object, it automatically changed it direction to the center. Sometimes it looked weird, but it worked. That crazy curves can be found not so often but they appeared.
At second, we tried to set the zones for the circle rotation to fix the control problems. The millimeter after zone of the central object was the zone of circle rotation. Inside the central object zone, it rotated as it did before. We also thought of putting the object to isometric space and rotate it on 90 degrees with swipes. Also, we thought of making a finger pressing zone an analog to gamepad sticks. The point was that pressing the screen the game drew an invisible circle around your finger, and you could rotate the object inside this circle as it was basically, and you could rotate in circle outside that circle. An interesting control system, also it allows to easily rotate the object without sliding the whole screen. You just needed to press the screen and feel it like you have a gamepad. All of these features were integrated to the game, but we accepted the other one.
After we improved the basic rotation we have achieved the circle rotation with 2 finger rotation. Pretty simple decision.
The music theme was almost done and with it came the game setting.
Concept
The game setting idea came to us after reading Dan Simmons book “Hyperion”. The fifth chapter describes us the system hacking. And we thought of making our arkanoid to be a visual part of hacking process. We liked the idea and continued making the story according to the cyberpunk style of sci-fi novel.
Hyperion book by Dan Simmons
The story tells us the confrontation of two forms of artificial intelligence. The antagonist is a centralized system with multilevel protection. We, as a player, present a copy of adaptive virus, trying to hack system. The virus is too weak alone and can’t oppose anything to the system. But all the players present an apportioned consciousness with one goal – a symbiosis with the system, that opposed to this.
It flows us to the philosophical plot of the story – a problem of losing the meaning of personality for collective mind. In the game process the system argues in favor of the person as organic whole, but the virus substantiates the benefits of the collective consciousness, such as equality, non-violence in such society and its functioning for the common good.
The gameplay is about destroying elements, that symbolizing security protocol. Every chapter with several levels has their own color. Passing the whole chapter, hacking the core and gathering helpful data to modificate the virus, we are exploring the brand new skill and getting a one-time perk that can be activated in a moment on every level from the menu pause. During repeating levels with the explored skill with a certain probability comes a corresponding perk, and the probability corresponds to the difficulty of the level. For each skill keeps only one perk and you should go back and gather it again if you failed to use it properly. The point is to pass some levels you need certain perks or their combinations.
At this moment our project has considerably been clogged with trash, we needed to clear the code and set it up to the functions and events. That’s why the whole code was rewritten. It was so good to open the project and continue working on it after clearing the trash without having to mess around with a bunch of unused text.
The time has come to write the design document that included the general terms, the modificators of the game process, levels and etc. The document was extensive and heavy. And we needed it all to understand the project progress and to mark the start point of it as a serious and meaningful project. All the ideas that came to us were filtered and written in the document that was constantly been complemented and corrected with fresh looks after our brainstorms.
In the end we printed it to gain more access to it and according to our setting we called the game – HYPERFORM.
First look at Design Document
Will definitely get this game once available.