Hello! I've decided to start doing 'End of the Jam Bonus Time' inbetween the end of ratings and before the results are announced. Here, I will show off concept art, sketches, design musings, and other little bonuses.

Here we go... Baserackcanball! You can play it here, if you haven't yet.

Some Words...

I loved creating this game, and I'm super proud of what I accomplished. It only took me a few hours to come up with an idea, and it was mostly straightforward from there! The concept was inspired by the theme (of course,) memories of making up weird sports & fashioning stuff out of scrap wood and duct tape, my love of Autumn, and my time as a Blaseball fan. I did lose some time to a sudden dip in energy on Saturday, but I was luckily able to recover and finish the game before the end of the Compo.

The sound effects were made with a combination of LSDJ generated noises and jingles, along with real-life foley. Yes, a real-life can was real-life smashed to get that clink-clank sound! (Don't worry, I drank it first. It was pomegranate sparkling water...)

I used Aseprite to create the art. Fun fact: the character's top and bottom halves are separate sprites so they they can walk and use the bat/racket freely, blending together those 'states'. This creates, I think, a very fluid feel. :)

The cool 'critical hit' effect is accomplished by having the can create lots of little dust objects with randomized upward-movement and animation speeds as it flies. The 'fairy ring' magic effect is achieved similarly!

A lot of players had issues with the controls, and how the bat/racket ranges and states were conveyed- understandably! There's lot of ways I could improved things, but unfortunately just didn't have time. But, it could have been worse! Those big 'control reminders' were added pretty late, and I think the game would be even trickier without them. Huge shout out to my friends 'Jan' and 'M.' for playtesting multiplayer and giving great feedback, which lead to me implementing the 'control reminders', as well as me GREATLY improving the play balance. (Thanks to 'Adam' too, for testing out single player!)

Concept Art and Such

Characters! Drew this right after coming up with the idea. The second character here didn't end up playable, but she shows up on top of one of the old storage containers in single player along with P2. I was very happy to include her after all, because I don't like leaving characters behind.

Sketching out the bat/racket configurations and planning out how they would work.

General court, layout, gameplay, and GUI planning.

Placeholder sprites to plan out character proportians and feel

Initial design for the playable characters

Finalizing the bat/racket sprites

One of the WIP versions of the court

Fun glitches! Hehe...

Parting Words

This was a great LudumDare, and I'm excited to see how I did! Best of luck to all, and see you in April!!