Button Bashers
"Button Bashers" is a frantic arcade-style game where players aim to achieve the highest score! Dash between four buttons to collect points while avoiding diamond-shaped enemies that could lead to a Game Over. How high can you score before the challenge overwhelms you?
Role
System/ Game Designer
Genre
Arcade-like
Made with
Godot
Concepting and sketching
I performed a lot of sketching in the beginning of the project to establish a clear vision. I created feature breakdowns of the various mechanics and pitched the concept to stakeholders.
Diamond Enemy Behaviour
Mine Weapon Behaviour
Game Mode Sketch
Below, you can find the feature breakdowns for every mechanic as well as the game pitch.
Coding the object functionality
Since the project required the game to be made in the Godot engine, I had to teach myself GD Script. I had to learn a lot of new concepts to translate my ideas into playable form.
Setting the diamond enemy´s speed, velocity and direction
Deactivating active button on player collision
Resetting timer on player collision
Quality Assurance
Throughout the project, I maintined an overview of the state of quality for each mechanic and observed whether they contained any bugs.
Playtesting and Iteration
The game was playtested multiple times, which led to tweaks being made to optimize the gameplay experience.
Below, you can find some tweaks which were made in response to player responses.
Improving player feedback
The frozen diamond enemy was perceived by many testers as a pickup. Simply adding some spiky icicles made it look a lot more dangerous. I also added a timer bar to show when it de-freezes.
Throughout the tests, I had to explain the controls and rules to the players. To make the game feel self-contained, I added a HUD that would convey the most crucial information and visually encapsulated the feel of a fast-paced arcade game.
To give the game a bit of juice, I had a “+1 Score” Tex pop up when the player landed on a button. A lot of testers also complained that they did not know when the swarmer enemies arrived on screen and thus were unfairly killed by them. I added a crosshair to alert their appearance.
