BOY BEATS WORLD
Responsible for: Game Design, Level Design, Pixel art and animation, Script, Sound FX
Hit the beats to beat the bots and have a little adventure.
BOY BEATS WORLD is a top-down rhythm adventure game in which you preform actions on the beat of the music.
Reviews
“Underrated and criminally overlooked”
“If you enjoyed Crypt of the Necrodancer to any capacity, then you’ll definitely find a tune to dance to here.”
“This is a fun and fast-paced adventure through a fascinating post-apocalyptic world”
Game Design
Some details on the main game design mechanics and choices for BOY BEATS WORLD.
Forward feeling:
During development the game evolved into a linear game in terms of exploration. With the music constantly pushing you forward it felt strange, non progressive and slow when the player has to go backwards (backtrack to previous places). Going back also makes the player feel less in tune with the music. Always going forward going along with the music has the opposite effect, and brings the player in. To make up for the linearity the room types and enemy spawns are random to certain degree. Making every attempt or second play feel be/feel different from the last.
Rhythm game experience:
The game was made to not punish the player when missing a beat. They actually don't even have to hit each beat at all, the player can pick up the rhythm whenever they want. This creates a more relaxing, less stressful type of rhythm game. The player becomes one with the music versus adhering to the music's rules and beats. This is also why the player movement is completely free and unrestricted by music/beats.
No rhythm UI:
To commit to the idea of a game about zoning into the music, the game has no UI elements telling the player exactly when to hit the beat. Instead, the level is designed with animations that play on the music to help the player find the rhythm and flow. Things bounce, change color or animate on the beat, including aspects of the player itself. All to help find the flow.
No HP:
The player has no hit points or hp bar, this is because we always wanted to player to be able to keep moving forward, not going back or overly preparing for the way forward. Instead the player can get hit twice. The first time the player gets hit they will lose Daisybell (the talking radio), if they get hit without Daisybell on their back they will "die" and respawn. They can pickup Daisybell again after 4 beats have passed and will immediately be shielded by her again like before. It's similar to how Yoshi's Island handles getting hit, making for a more relaxing game experience, no need to worry about anything, until you get hit.
Enemy HP bars:
Enemy HP bars go from left to right. This is because thematically the robots processors are being overloaded. But also because it feels better when the players soundwave actually gets absorbed by the enemy, filling it up so to speak. When the bar is full they explode.
Accessibility:
We wanted the game to be more accessible for more types of players. So we added a freestyle mode in which players don't need to hit the exact beats. They can follow their own intuition. The game and difficulty is still fully functional in this mode.
We also added a special beat indicator UI that can be turned on. The design is a circle around the player so it's prominently visible at all times. This is for the in between players that do need some more visual aid but are not a-rhythmic.
Design Commentary video
Level Design
Some info about level design choices in BOY BEATS WORLD.
The game has an open world feel in which all locations are physically connected. But the general structure in the game is as follows:
Town, Overworld, Border, Town, Dungeon, Boss, Town, Overworld, Border, Town, Dungeon, Boss, etc.
World/overworld design:
With the idea in mind that the player always keeps moving forward, much like the music. (as mentioned above at the game design section). We also made it so the player always has to go up/north. This is visually indicated by pipes that go from the start of the game all the way north to the end of the game.
Whenever a player enters one of the "dungeons" the way forward becomes horizontal, towards the east. This is because it's a challenge that needs to be overcome before being able to continue north.
Hand-tweeked randomness:
All the enemies, traps and buffs are randomly spawned to a certain degree. Each of these elements can be assigned to possible spawn locations within the room. New enemy types can only appear from certain points in the game. Explainer/tutorial rooms will always appear at the same time/place. This made balancing the game quite a lot easier and especially quicker than in our previous game Luckslinger.
How lengthy a dungeon or a chuck of the overworld is, can easily be tweaked by changing a few numbers.
Dungeons and progression:
Dungeon 1 teaches the player about traps that do actions on beats. It also teaches about the player dance mechanic and the interactivity with the environment.
Dungeon 2 adds moving traps to the mix but also forces the player to use the roll/dodge mechanic.
Dungeon 3 consists of only battle rooms. The player can't continue in any other way besides beating the enemies. The player is also learning to fight when being surrounded.
Dungeon 4 is special because it hosts no enemies, only traps. Therefore it's 100% focus on dodging.
Dungeon 5 is a wild mix of all previously learned skills.
A world that evolves:
I really wanted the world to change based on the players actions. Therefore all the towns the player visits have 3 versions.
The version when you first entered the town.
The version after you beat the boss.
And the version after you defeated the final boss and are on your way back home.
This was an immense task. But worth it...to me
Development and key learnings
- Focus on being able to create great looking gifs for marketing purposes before creating more content
- It's possible to keep prototyping in the same project until you find what you are looking for. But once you found it its probably best to start the project from scratch with that key idea in mind.
- Investing in tools and tricks to be able to change the level/randomness fast