Brick Battle

February 2021

For the jamgame "Brick Battle" I facilitated the design, prototyping, and playtesting process as well as making pixel art assets for the game and assisting with programming. The game was developed with 2 others during a 48 hour weekend. Play the game here.

Game Design

Brick battle is a casual multiplayer game for up to 4 players. The players are competing in a 1-minute free-for-all where a player win by building the highest tower.

To build their tower, players move their crane left and right to drop cargo onto platforms. There are 4 different types of cargo which are spawned onto the players crane randomly at regular intervals. Cargo is dropped automatically after a short period of time, giving the player a chance to adjust their crane according to where they want to drop the cargo.

The dynamic in the game is created by the 4 cargo types. Regular blocks stack, freezeblocks freezes the regular blocks, explosive blocks makes cargo shoot away in all direction (unless it is frozen), and slime blocks adds a green layer onto the cargo making it bounce around (even if its frozen!).

The variety in cargo types creates a rock-paper-scissor dynamic where the player needs to consider how to use each block strategically to either secure their own tower height or mess up for the other players. Any player can drop any cargo onto any platform.

How I would improve "Brick Battle"

If I had more time to work on this game, I would improve it by:

Adding exaggerated visual effects, screenshakes, sound effects, and a more intensive and goofy soundtrack to increase the "fun factor"
Add controller support to make the multiplayer experience less crowded and more couch-friendly
Add a score-counter that displays the number of cargo boxes stacked by each player

Personal Responsibilities

In the project I was mainly in charge of facilitation and art. Tasks included:

Facilitating the conceptualization phase (where we decided on the game idea)
Facilitating playtesting and evaluation
Creating and adding pixel art to the game

Learning Experience

This jam showed the benefits of going with a simple idea. As the game was so fast to build in Unity, we managed to finalize multiple cycles of prototyping, playtesting, and tweaking. This resulted in several changes to the core design of the game and a lot of necessary balancing. Thanks to this, the movement became a lot smoother and the idea for the rock-paper-scissor dynamic of the different cargo types was given the chance to be implemented.

Since I was focusing a lot on art for this project, I also grew more comfortable with the pixel art tools. Having assets for every detail in the game made a huge difference on the look and feel, and it gave me an understanding for how important the visual aesthetic is for the gameplay experience.

Tools used

Unity (prototyping and testing game)
Asesprite (for pixel art)