Inception
Volleyball was actually the first sport that we took from the initial prototype to a fully fleshed out sport for people to play! Volleyball was the best sport to explore with our 2d focussed gameplay and we quickly found that building up a volley between 2 players felt really fun! Our simple control system had you focussing on returning the ball as the intensity builds with each impact. When that ball finally hits the ground on the other side you feel that immense sense of victory of a volley well played as your opponent has their head in their hands!
Ball Velocity
We absolutely loved the intense rush of adrenaline this sport mode gave you and wanted to supercharge that even further! We found that volleys could get quite predictable with to-and-froing between 2 skilled players so we wanted to add an element that made it more difficult with each return of the ball. So we made the ball build up velocity with each impact! This meant that the longer the volley goes on the more speed and power it picks up making it harder and harder to manage and even more rewarding to return!
Skill Level
We were super happy with how this sport was developing and as developers, it was easily one of our favorites! However, as we started taking this to consumer-facing events across the U.K. to see how players interacted with our game we quickly realized that Volleyball had a higher skill cap than other sports, like Football. We saw players fumbling a little more and sometimes not even managing to get it over the net - therefore not even getting to experience the fun we were having as skilled players. Furthermore, it was the first sport on our menu list so was the most frequently picked as well!
We did a few things to combat this! Firstly we put football top of the list which almost acted as a training mode where players could super quickly teach themselves the controls and core concepts of our game before diving into more advanced sports. Secondly, we changed the spawn position of the ball so that it was closer to the net for that first serve. With these 2 simple changes, we saw people being more confident with the game as a whole and more importantly having more fun! We were okay with some sport modes being more challenging than others so we didn’t want to make any drastic changes but we also wanted everyone to have the most positive experience they could when hopping into our game!
Character Shapes & Volleyball
Another one of our core concepts that shines on this sport mode is that all our characters are different shapes. Volleyball forces more aerial gameplay where you need to anticipate the angle the ball is coming in so the character you choose will drastically change how you are able to return that ball! We wanted to give players a whole roster of different character shapes so that when they hop into a sport they need to carefully think about what character they are best at playing but also what character they are best at playing on that sport!
Following on from this, another thing we noticed through watching players play at events was that there was no consistency with which character shape people chose for different sports. Everyone had their own playstyles and reasons for choosing characters in different matchups which were exactly what we wanted! Where one player may struggle using Square’s flat edges on volleyball another player would use it to their advantage and dominate! The player choice was so important for us so that there were infinite possibilities of matchups where players could learn what works best for them!
Special Moves & Volleyball
Something else we developed with this sport was the concept of special moves. Not only would you choose your character shape but you would also choose a special move to go with it! We developed these to offer slight but not guaranteed advantages to players that they could build up over time and choose to utilize! We designed these to help balance the disadvantages you may feel that a character shape has and offer a lifeline at, particularly intense moments. Below you can see Eggasaur using a small cake mine to save their opponent from scoring in volleyball and return the ball instead!
Volleyball Prototype
Volleyball has been pivotal to the wider design of Squishy Sports but we hope this also highlights the importance of getting your game in players’ hands as soon as possible! Below you can see where it all started with the initial prototype right through to where it is at now!
Thanks so much for reading - we can’t wait to get out to more consumer-facing shows! More news on that coming soon . . . !
