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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT2BKzfSPpE

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.

Timing is everything

While activating the flip requires a single button press (actually pulling either trigger on the controller will do), the choice of when to time it becomes the most significant choice. If you flip before a Splatter hits a wall, it will come flying back pretty much from where it came from. But if you let it hit the wall, which will absorb some of its energy, then hit flip, you get a totally different result. The same goes for when you push some bombs away by slamming hard into them. If you flip before your splatter is “liquified” they might not all get soaked. But if you wait a little and let your dude explode to liquid and only then flip, you’re much more likely to get them all.

Of course this is not as ‘binary’ a choice as I put it (before or after), it’s much more nuanced and ultimately (after some practice) gives you an impressive amount of control with a single key-press. Also, it integrates so well with the game’s stunt/combo system, giving players even more ways to execute stunts in unexpected ways. Some you’ll only discover after spending a lot of time with the game and experimenting with the controls.

It also turned out that overusing Flip has its own disadvantages built-into the game, so we didn’t have to limit the player’s use of it in any way. He is practically already ‘penalized’ for using it too much and it’s up to him to figure out just how and when he wants to use it. This is done in two ways:

• When you flip too much, without generating new stunts, your combo will eventually time-out and reset.
• The way liquid is simulated, flipping too much after the Splatters explode will eventually make the liquid explosion cover a smaller area just by a result of the liquid simulation’s dampening forces.

Keep your finger on the trigger

Overall, we ended up having a control mechanic which seems to have all of these properties, which I think is pretty amazing:

1. Easy to use (just a single button press).
2. Profound – the effect of this mechanic is felt everywhere on the game.
3. Versatile – can be used in a wide variety of game scenarios with a different effect to each.
4. Requires skill to execute well – the choice of when to time. Notice this is not a ‘timing challenge’ – there is no concept of a ‘correct’ time.
5. Self-Immune to player abuse – we didn’t need to implement any limitation on using the mechanic as it, in itself, was not useful when used excessively.
6. Integrates and complements the rest of the mechanics/rules of the game.

Granted there were a few ‘special conditions’ I had to code into the game to make it as useful as it can be, but my objective was to keep everything flowing naturally so only the very keen observers will notice the game actually behaves a bit different during the flip period.

Next post I’ll cover a totally different aspect of the game, which is how we addressed the issue of ‘teaching’ people how to play without resorting to over-tutorializing the game. Hope you enjoyed this.

Niv

If you were at PAX and stopped by to check out “The Splatters” – Thank you! People played pretty much non-stop from the entire time the show floor was open, three days straight.

We got so many positive responses from people, so we did the long trip home with lots of motivation and excited to be back to work and get it done! We also learned so much from watching people play with it that I can honestly say the game will be so much better just because we attended PAX.

Not only that but they all played it running off an XBOX360 which I’m especially happy about since it was such a big effort to get it running in time. This being the first time I’m developing for the XBOX is no easy feat – luckily I had Daniel join in time for the last push.

Some press coverage

PAX is a big event with so many things going on. This being our first game we’re so happy to get any coverage that helps spread the words and hopefully people that care about games like ours will find out it exists!

So a big thanks to all the media members that visited – here is some of the Press coverage “The Splatters” got as a result:

“It was the most instantly gratifying game I played at PAX” - Jordan Devore, Destructoid

“It’s a tough game to describe, but there is one word that sums it all up – fun.” – Zach Martin, Piki Geek

There’s also a video from GiantBomb covering all the PAX 10 selections of this year.

And lastly, a really cool podcast from “A Jumps B Shoots”.

– Niv

“The Splatters” now have an official place in the Xbox marketplace and you can already go and check out the latest information, screen-shots and our announcement trailer through your xbox. It’s also available at the online marketplace.

Two locations to play The Splatters

That’s it. We packed everything and off to PAX Prime in Seattle. As i’m writing this post our latest build is being uploaded – come and check it out if you’re at the event, we think it’s awesome! It’s been a crazy ride getting this build ready to demo at PAX and we really can’t wait to see how people respond to it. Now we only have to get into a car, drive 30 minutes to the airport, stand in some lines and fly almost half way around the globe ;) The Splatters will be playable in two locations. One, the PAX10 booth #6301 along with the other great winners (where you’re most likely to find us hanging out). Second location is the XBOX 360 booth #432 where there will be another kiosk playing “The Splatters” all day long! I know, it’s crazy!

T-Shirt alert

On top of it all we’ll be bringing limited edition T-Shirts to give out at the show, we’re still not sure how exactly you’ll ‘earn’ those – but most likely you’ll need to show some skill with the Splatters. There’s also a ‘tradition’ of sort with PAX10 developers having an open panel to take questions and discuss what’s on our minds. The developers are split into two groups and we’ll be on Sat’ 27th 6:30pm at the “Unicorn Theatre”.

See you soon,

– Niv

Hi Everyone,

If you haven’t noticed by now, we recently announced to the gaming press and the entire world that The Splatters will be coming to XBLA in 2012. Not only that, we’re excited to share that it will be published by Microsoft Studios – which is, in our minds, the best partner for that platform.

New team member

It’s also a great time to announce that SpikySnail has a new team member joining – Daniel Ridner. Both Sagi and myself have worked with Daniel before and aside from being a great guy, he is one of the few remaining original code ninjas (we always like to have those around). Super happy to have him on board!

New Box art

Sorry for the absence of blog posts recently, we’re just swamped with work doing the Xbox integration and preparing for PAX at the same time. But keep sending in questions and inquiries – we’ll respond to ALL of them. Let us know what you think of the box art – I think Sagi nailed it (and on the first pass too!).

Life’s short – die with STYLE!

– Niv

We’re thrilled to announce that The Splatters was chosen as one of the PAX10 winners for the PAX Prime 2011 show.

So far we’ve been showing our game mostly at industry events but now this is the first time we get to show The Splatters directly to gamers which is VERY exciting for us!

Niv and I will be going to Seattle on August 26 to show off The Splatters and, looking at the dates, it looks like gamers visiting our kiosk will get to play the nearly-final version of the game – which is quite awesome.

So to celebrate our winning, check out our fresh teaser trailer for The Splatters. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKluTCkCGRE

Watch HD version on Youtube

– Sagi

It’s done. After almost a year and a half walking around, showing off a game by the name of Confetti Carnival – we’ve finally decided to give our baby a new name – “The Splatters”.

Confetti Carnival was chosen back in the day when we needed to write something under “Name of game:______” during a submission to a games contest. Since our game was nameless at the time, we started throwing names in the air until we hit Confetti Carnival. It was a combination of the Confetti that comes out of bombs as they blew up + the general ‘let’s put on a show’ spirit of the game – enter Carnival).

Is this the last header with Confetti Carnival in it?

Probably.

Confetti Carnival has its pros (like being at the top of the list for the IGF contest :)) but it also has its flaws. And the more we showed the game to people, the more we realized that the name doesn’t tell anything about the game. This could sometimes be a good thing and add to the curiosity of the one hearing about it for the first time. But in our case, it didn’t charge some people’s curiosity in a good way.

SO. Even though we started liking the name a lot and got attached to it in a weird way - we always knew, in the back of our heads, that we’ll need to find a new name someday…

Someday is here: Confetti Carnival is now named Splatters (a good line for the search engines, don’t you think?).

Hope you like it…

Last message from a fan…

And to really say goodbye to our previous name, we would like to show you our first(!) and probably last(!) fan-art we received for Confetti Carnival. It was created by Roel Schenk from the Netherlands and we were absolutely excited to receive it!

Thank you Roel.

– Sagi

Besides some really nice touch-ups and visuals that add more focus to each stunt you perform, we also implemented a really cool technique to use in the game’s introduction mechanics (our kind of tutorial). So far I’m really liking the results and while not perfect I think we found a really cool way to teach players new moves without it feeling too ‘tutorial-ish’. When we’re done I’ll probably write something about it.

Also, we are making great progress on getting the project published so expect some announcements in the near future :)

Can’t have a post without a pretty picture, right?  so here you go,  from our “Swan” level.

Niv

In this post I’ll take a closer look at the actual gameplay mechanics (with some new footage) of Confetti Carnival and share my thoughts on an issue that we’re dealing with for a long time.

I’ll start by teasing with a little video showing 5 different ways of getting bombs in Confetti Carnival. We’ll get back to that video later on so you might wanna watch it again after your done reading.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keTuGoHejpk

Watch HD version on Youtube

A little background on the game

Before I go into things, I need a few words to explain the core concepts of the game to those who haven’t played it yet (which is almost everyone, since the game is still in development).

In Confetti Carnival, each round (of each level) introduces a group of blobs called Splatters and a set of Confetti Bombs. Your goal is destroy all the Confetti bombs on stage using the Splatters your given to play with. The way you destroy the bombs involve flinging your Splatters onto walls and watching them break up and spill their liquid. When bombs are washed by liquid they ignite and explode into confetti.

You play each Splatter at a time. You just point in the right direction and hit the ‘Slam’ button – the rest of the action is performed by physics simulation and learning to anticipate it is part of the skill the player needs to hone.
As the simulation unfolds the player can intervene at any time by hitting the ‘Flip’ button. What it does is reverse the motion of the entire scene (Splatters, bombs, liquid … everything!). This, turns out, is a very powerful and yet simple way of manipulating the simulation and players will consistently find new scenarios where it comes in handy. On top of that there is a cool (in my opinion) stunt and combo system that rewards shots that are more challenging, stylish or otherwise impressive.

Designing for different play-styles

Our design was aimed to enable players to ‘choose’ how intensely they want to play it. They can take their time carefully considering each shot or just go ballistic on it and try to clear the entire round (or even an entire level) with a very long combo of moves. This was mostly achieved by two main design decisions:

1. There is no time limit on rounds/levels at all.
2. If you wait for too long between stunts (~3 seconds) the current stunt combo will end (and score multiplier resets).

Pretty standard stuff, but what we are seeing so far, is that most players start by playing it slowly, which is expected since the game has quite original game mechanics. What we’re trying to do now, is slowly push players towards playing faster and doing longer stunt combos. When you try and achieve long combo strings, you need to play faster and adopt a more ‘reactive’ play-style where you roughly aim your shot and then use the ‘Flip’ and ’2nd shot’ mechanics to correct your move as needed. But that’s not the whole story – the rational behind our combo system is to deliberately make shots to generate more stunts even if the ‘easiest’ way to clear the round is more direct.

Get Creative

It get’s really interesting when players realize they should get more creative with their shots. And it’s really best explained by a video demonstration.

You can see in the video a sequence of 5 different ways to clear the same round – starting by the most direct (and stunt-less) and ending with a more impressive x5 stunt combo. Notice that stunts are generated for using the environment (riding slides or using spikes), making more difficult shots (long distance shots, reverse shots) and using the additional controls (2nd Shot and Flip) to catch two separate bomb groups or catch the bombs as they fly in mid air. That’s only a single shot, next up you’ll play with your next Splatter to try and get the remaining bombs. If you do it quickly enough you’ll string the combo and generate more points and confetti :)

Designing the combo system

We really wanted a very ‘interesting’ stunt combo system, so we loosely defined what we think will make them so:

• A stunt should reflect something cool or challenging the player does in game.
• Stunts are NOT a result of a specific button combination but rather of what actually happens in-game.
• Stunts should be ‘orthogonal’ to each other – meaning each stunt tracks a separate thing and does not depend on other stunts.

By following those rules the resulting system actually achieved these (mostly) very desirable properties:

• Each individual stunt is quite trivial to achieve.
• You need to think a little creatively to achieve several stunts in a single shot.
• Stunts can occasionally occur without actual player intent – but to generate many stunts/combos you have to know what you are doing.
• Doing many stunts/combos makes the game more challenging and interesting.

From very early on we wanted to avoid developing a ‘straight-up’ puzzle game, not that there’s anything wrong with it – I personally enjoy many puzzle games. We had several reasons for that choice, but I won’t go into that now.

Challenges

Our challenge of the moment is how do we get players to understand these concepts during play and what design decision we use to push them towards this stunt-combo-based play style. Because this is where we think Confetti Carnival absolutely shines and the rewarding feeling you get, when you succeed, is everything we love about video games.
The trouble is, as much as we wanted players to immediately play this way, we found that we were too optimistic and that the learning curve for new players dictates that they need to get some of the basic skills first before there is any chance they’ll make any big combos. Of course, the amount of time / skill it takes depends on the individual player and the game should feel interesting and rewarding throughout.

What we’re really happy about is that we’re still getting better in the game and finding out new cool ways to get better – which means the amount of depth in player’s skill improvement is there to satisfy the most hard-core of gamers – if they’ll be willing to play a game that doesn’t involve either blood, gore, shooting or dismembering ;)

Another concern is, if players start out playing more ‘puzzle-like’ and continue to do so for a while, they might get too accustomed to it and miss out on the combo/stunt goodness that awaits them. If we ‘force’ the players to do these combos too early in the game they might find it too challenging too early and bail out.

Where is it going?

Our current thinking is to break down the game into game modes – each one focuses on a different aspect of the game that represents the different play-styles. There is also a good chance to make things progressively more challenging, but that also goes for the level order in each of the modes.

• There’s the initial mode where you mostly learn the basics of the game and the basic stunts.
• An ‘advanced’ mode where you are faced with more challenging scenarios and stunts.
• A ‘Master shot’ mode where focus is on perfect execution of a single move (the puzzle side of things – but it get increasingly hard).
• And finally, an ‘extreme’ or ‘survival’ mode where you have to put all your skills together and complete challenging scenarios while stringing your combo for as long as you can.

It’s important to say that these are not modes where you play the same levels over with different rules – each one has a unique set of levels that are designed with that mode in mind. There’s still a lot of details to resolve about this break-down to really ‘distill’ the essence of each mode by manipulating the targets / rewards and mechanics in each mode, but we hope this will lead to most players at least tasting each of the various possible ways to play the game before they focus on their favorite.

Wow … long post ;)

hope you enjoyed it,

Niv

Check out this great interview Niv gave at the last GDC expo.
The interview was done by Ben Mears from design3. A small, Santa Cruz CA. based company that teaches game development through the use of video tutorials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6jhLqnPt1c

I can totally relate to the fact that, when asked to describe in one word the entire process of developing a game for the last couple of years, Niv simply replies – Insane.

Thanks a lot Ben for doing the interview!

- Sagi

Confetti Carnival

PC Gamer just put their Preview of Confetti Carnival online.

We’re so happy with how that turned out as it seems they really enjoyed the game and picked up on so many things that we’re excited about in Confetti Carnival – but weren’t so sure players will get if they only played it for a little while …

Big thanks to the PC Gamer staff for their support.

We LOOOVE you PC Gamer ;)

– Niv