Game Designer
Blade Bombers
About
My Role: Game Designer, QA-Tester, Wireframe Designer, GDD-Writer, Voice Actor
Genre: Sports
Players: 4
Time: 9 Weeks
Platform: Playstation 4
Engine: Tengine (In-house engine)
My Role
I worked with gameplay mechanics, tweaking of the mechanics, making wireframes, writing the Game Design Document and voice acting.
Design
Much like in Cubic, the designers held many meeting where we discussed the game mechanics and how to balance them.
Original Idea
Blade Bombers started out as a completely different game. The original idea was for it to be a multiplayer survival shooter. The idea had to be scrapped due to issues with programming the enemies' AI.
When we worked on this idea, my role was largely the same as in the final product, but I also was in charge of listing the components we needed to be able to tweak.
Tweaking & QA-Testing
The tweaks I made to the game that made it into the final product were the characters' movement speed, the bullets' movement speed and the guns' range.
We discovered pretty quickly that a Player could essentially win a match without moving from their start position since the reach of the weapons was too long. To fix this, I limited the reach to force the Players to move around.
Summary
Blade Bombers is a fast-paced sports game where the Players team up and face each other in a game reminiscent of air hockey.
The game is played in teams of 2. Each Player is armed with a rifle that they fire at a puck to affect its trajectory and velocity. Aside from the regular shots, the Players can also detonate the ammunition on command to further manipulate the puck.
The team that has scored the most goals in 3 minutes is the winner. Should the score be tied when time is up, the game goes into overtime, where sudden death is in play; Here, the game continues until one team has scored a goal.