GlassBox 2.0

After 3 years of thinking and keeping in the side of my head different way to update the game, I finally found the strength to update GlassBox as I believe I should have for a while now.

Basically in this update, for those who want to get it quick:

1. Bronze medal required to unlock the next level

2. New Level Menu

3. New Ball Menu

4. 5 Save Slots

5. Camera & FOV fixes

6. Ball physics & VFX tweaks

7. Moving‑board exit fix

8. Music remaster

9. UI rework and slight optimisation

Bronze medal required to unlock the next level

So I've been mostly testing the game by myself and I've only saw people playing only few times.

I realised most player didn't really care about the timer and so didn't really were challenged by the logic of each level, sometime letting the ball roll by any luck out of the box and level that could be done in few seconds where made in many minutes and didn't give any sorte of gratification to the players.

I made this decisions to force each player to find the best way to finish a level in the lowest time to beat, I did that to enhance the involvement of the player and so the satisfaction of completing a level.

So yeah, from now on you will need to get the bronze medal time to be able to unlock the next level. Trust me, even if it sound harder it's for the best.

New Level Menu - New Ball Menu

This is probably the main improvement that push me to do this update

Basically we now have an improved Level Menu, more align to PC UI, where we can see what each level Box, the times to beat, the Ball to unlock in the level, the Medals you obtain and your Best Time

And in the Ball Menu, you can now see the main ball characteristic such as the Weight, the Bounce and the Grip.

Save Slots

There is now the possibility to switch games Saves on 5 different slots, before that if you wanted to start the game over you had to lost your progression, well now you can switch between 5.

Camera & FOV Fixes

There were few bug and desynchronisation of the camera position when you switched from Ball cam to Box cam, now it should be fix and share the same zoom value at all time.

Moving‑board Exit Level

So, for the moving board level, I added a mechanism eject the ball out from the exit entrance, instead of letting the player make a crazy 90-180 degrees move to get the ball out.

I believe it is better, not perfectly clear yes but better, so I might look for a better way to do it in the futur, depends on you.

Ball physics & VFX tweaks

A lot of balls were very unique in their behavior making it kind of funny to play with but quite negatively unbalance making them less usable, especially the early unlocked ones, So I tweaked each ball physics to get them a bit more usable with more subtle differences.

I also reworked the VFX sliding logic of each ball, it just wasn't right.

Music Remaster

I've spend most of the update time on the music, I believe I was keeping the music too low for mobile and probably because I wasn't really proud of some track, so yeah I did a LOT of mastering and rebalancing of the music and I also removed track that I couldn't keep because ... I hated them.

Now the game have 11 soundtrack that I'm cool with.

UI rework and slight optimisation

On my way of doing all that, I rework some aspect of the UI, change some design, did a little word wave animation instead of a button pop, moved few buttons here and there, redesign the game title and animated the NEXT button just for fun.

I basically did the equivalent of changing the living room deco by moving the couch and adding some picture on the wall, is it better? I would say... it's refreshing.

I let you discover it and juge.

Now, Now... What is gone?

Well well well, as of now there is few thing I decide to get read of for few reason :

• Removed the Lock Axis buttons

The lock axis buttons was giving an optional way to rotate the box by keeping the rotation on the same 2 axis from the camera position.

The issue with it is mainly that no one used it... and when people did, they were even more confused on how to play the game, and it was the same for me, i never use it and only thought that maybe someone might like it... I believe I was wrong, the main gameplay have quite a learning curve, this options was making it so much more confusing.

• Removed the French text (for now)

I initially made a French localisation because well, I'm french, but I also had a long section to explain how to play (what was the cringiest thing I ever read, I still wonder what I was thinking at the time) that I now have reduce to 1 page.

So for now I removed it, but I'm not against localising in few different language the bit of text in the game at some stage.

Patch Notes

Gameplay

• Bronze medal to unlock

• Remove the lock axis

Added elements

• Save Slot (5 slots)

• Level Menu (hover shows medals & times)

• Ball Menu (shows weight, grip, bounciness)

Improvements

• FOV reworked to follow camera

• Scroller zoom synchronized between Ball cam and Box cam

• Balls physics and SFX reworked

• Light tweak on few levels colliders

• Camera reset keeps lateral orientation

• Moving board exit improved to avoid extreme rotations

UI

• Button hover replaced with wiggle text

• Minor type and layout tweaks

• Simplified How To Play section

• removed French localisation

Bug fixes & optimization

• Global code cleanup and optimization

• Fixed music stopping issue

Music

• Remastered 11 tracks

• Removed tracks that I hated

So yeah that's it, the GlassBox 2.0 Update is up now and I hope you will enjoy it, please let me know if you find bugs or have question or subjection for the game in the Steam comments.

I'm going to try to stick to the game for as long as I can, I have few things plan for what next, so thank you for sticking up and until then, take care people.

Talk soon.