First, apologies for the long radio silence, that’s just us working so hard to get The Splatters ready for release with not enough time to write a decent post! We are getting dangerously close to being done and the thought of wrapping up development and pushing on to launch is pretty scary.
Onto the subject at hand, which is one of main mechanics in The Splatters and the one I’m most excited about. We named it ‘The Flip’ – you’ll soon understand why.
Sandbox physics-driven play
The physics based game-play in The Splatters has a sand-box feel to its mechanics. Even more so the ‘Flip’ mechanic which is free to use, once you unlock it, whenever you want and without limit. This turned out to be so versatile and deep as a game mechanic that it opened up so many things to explore. It’s a bit hard to explain what Flip does and the best way to wrap your head around it is actually trying it out in the game. I’ll try, but no matter how I put it, it’ll either sound technical or just not as impressive as it turned out, but it’s one the game’s best features. Trust me on that ;)
So before we continue, here are few examples of Flip during real gameplay. Watch for the “LT” button symbol whenever the player is flipping.
Watch HD version on Youtube
Flip vs. Rewinding time
Our ‘Flip’ move looks like it’s rewinding time, but in reality it’s doing no such thing. When you ‘rewind time’ (like in Braid) everything goes back exactly to where it was, but with our Flip – it probably won’t.
In a very sterile environment where there is a single bomb flying in the air in one direction, hitting Flip will make it go back to the opposite direction, which might seem exactly like rewinding time – at least for a short while. But the main difference here is that as soon as you hit Flip and the motion changes direction, normal physics of the game kick back in and everything continues normally from there.
So for example, if liquid is falling down from the ceiling, it won’t start flying up just because you hit Flip. What it’ll do is go up just for a split second and resume its free fall right after that. You can hit Flip again and again to keep doing a little ‘Liquid Dance’ in mid-air - but the liquid will hit the ground sooner or later.
