I had a strong love for my game Bombin', but I knew that it was far from perfect.
A little while after completing Bombin', I started developing iOS games at Studio Piña. I wanted to create a game that would be a hit: one with the mass appeal of a casual puzzle game. So, I worked on a few ideas until I decided that I would try porting Bombin' to iOS.
Once I worked out how to fit all the important elements onto the iPhone's screen in portrait orientation, I started work on the game design.
The game needed more appeal, so I picked through some old character designs I had done and ended up choosing Pengi, a top hat wearing penguin character I had designed as an enemy for my unfinished game "Powder Keg: the adventures of Little Barrel" which was based on "Dr. Pineapple: Intergalactic Privateer", a comic book that I self-published for 2 issues.
Here's some animations from that unfinished project:
So, now that I had an appealing character for my game, I started on the game design.
The game needed to be more than just a port of Bombin', as that game was a little too simple for what I had in mind. I wanted this new game to be wild, crazy, totally out there and exciting. Much akin to the exaggerated western concept of what a Japanese gameshow is like.
What I came up with was a zany experience, Bombin' interspersed with randomness and mini games, the ability to collect 'hens teeth' and exchange them for power-up's, roulette wheels, and other weirdness that did nothing but make the game weird.
As much as I wanted to make that game, I started looking at how many new art assets, extra sound effects, and hours of additional programming would be required, and realized that the scope of this project was beyond what I could handle by myself. So, I scaled back, and worked on what was the most important: to take Bombin' and make it a better game.
Aside from getting rid of the numbers from the bombs and redoing all of the art, I focussed on making any gameplay improvements that I could.
I added a little randomness to the timing of the exploding bombs to make it a little less mechanical.
I changed the Skwid Blasters punch card to give you a couple more matches when you completed it.
I added the Boulder item, which is a giant stone that takes more hits to destroy.
And I added Brushy, a 'helper' character who sucks the color out of one bomb, then paints every bomb he touches the same color. This, of course, can help you to create larger combos, or help you out of a jam when you just cant make any groups of 4.
One other small change I made to the game was to drop in a fully charged bomb whenever you cleared a group of less than 4 bombs. This helps to get the player un-stuck when they can't seem to make any combos large enough to earn them any new matches.
A straight port of Bombin' with a new coat of paint, a few new elements and re-balanced gameplay was a good start, but I wanted the game to be more than just an improved port. I needed to do something with all those fun ideas I came up with earlier, so I decided to add a couple more game modes:
Aqua, a mode where you blow up bombs to lower the ever rising water level, and Twitch, a mode where you need to be quick to succeed.
These 2 modes were more of an afterthought, because the new game mode that I put the most time into designing and building was Quest mode, a puzzle/rpg hybrid that incorporated some of the original ideas I had for the sequel and allowed me to introduce Pengi the penguin as the game's spokes-character.
To be continued...
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