Breaking the silence, we’re going to do a series of blogs each weekend detailing the features of Kabounce until we reach release. Yes, yes, we’ll share our release date very soon too! We’ve just been absolutely slammed with working on improving the game.
Our first series of blogs this weekend we'll focus on a subject which is the very core of our game, the movement.
Movement Design
One subject that has always been front and centre at Stitch Heads while developing Kabounce is: satisfying movement. Tight controls and visceral feedback, your input should feel gratifying and impactful. At the same time the controls in Kabounce should have a skill curve and reward dextrous control and quick reflexes.
Another foremost intent was to keep the game accessible, it should allow someone to quickly pick it up and just play. In that sense you can completely play and enjoy the game with just WASD on keyboard or the left thumb stick on controller. However, Kabounce gives you many more options to improve your momentum and control, and of course impact the game in a meaningful way. Lets look at some of the movement options.
Advanced Movement:
The more advanced movement really allows players to keep their momentum up and rapidly change their direction; however, don't get too predictable or you'll get eliminated and your points stolen.
Basic Movement
In comparison, this is the basic movement using just WASD/or left thumb stick on controller (You didn’t see me jump, no. That one time didn’t count):
To get on the topic of some of the more advanced movement, a particular feature I want to highlight in this blog in the movement series is the ‘Spin’. The Spin essentially gives you control to add ball rotation in specific directions:
Spinning
Side by side comparison of using a quick Spin (left) or a regular bounce (right), you can already notice that even a quick Spin affects your forward momentum.
Other than momentum, use Spinning to rapidly change direction:
Or use the Spin for vertical movement:
To use the spin you only have to press a button while in the air. When you have air time, simply press the Spin button and a direction - as soon as you hit a surface or the ground - you're off!
The Spin increases in intensity the longer you hold it, to make it more digestible and predictable we’ve ensured there are two ‘steps’ of intensity, and you’ll generally want more air time to build up your spin and reach the second step. In most of the gifs you’ll see one of our devs use it on the fly to intuitively change to their desired direction.
Initially, the Spin is always something that seems very unusual and unique to new Kabounce players – but once they play around with the Spin and start practicing, they find it easy to learn, and it opens a world of options in Kabounce.
A lot of the challenges centralise around this core mechanic to not only increase your speed, but adapt your movement. Pixel perfect timings and landings after applying the spin can greatly improve your results of a timed run when doing challenge modes.
We hope you enjoyed, tomorrow (Saturday) is the next blog post, covering the dash! Sunday we’ll reveal the powerslide,a relatively new mechanic.
Thank you for reading! Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
-Tim
Drop by on Discord where you can usually find us dwelling and have a chat!
https://discord.gg/Kabounce