Introducing SphereSquared

Game Jam 2014 was rather successful for us at SphereSquared, we came in on the Friday with the idea “Keep it simple, stupid” and stuck to it. All of us (myself, Jonni, Leanne, Ali and Drew) had attended Game Jam several times before and all made the mistake of biting off more than we could chew. Through the theme “we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are” the concept of a colour based game was derived. We all worked on the skeletal structure of the game and decided to use colour as a mask for the player to prevent them from seeing something. After tinkering around with different ideas, a few were merged together. We thought, what about a game focusing on rolling spheres into coloured boxes and changing the colour of the background to hide some of them? Thus, our Android App Quadbox was born.

Our interpretation of the theme is, as a player, you do not see the game as a game itself, you see it as the person you are. Are you brave? Strategic? Scattered? Your personality comes to life through our little game. This is key when trying to progress; the aim is to roll spheres into corresponding boxes of colour. The background changes colour, masking some of the balls so you cannot see where they are going making it more difficult to see what is going where. You lose points if the wrong colour goes into the wrong box, making this colour changing malarkey even more fun. So far the game has a time limit and if you get the correct colour in the correct box you gain 5 seconds and if it is the wrong one then it will lose you 5 seconds. What the player has to try and do is survive as long as possible, the longer they survive the more obstacles they will come across. For example, at ninety seconds, the screen will rotate changing where the boxes are, meaning the player has to re-orientate themselves in the game.

SphereSquared presents to you:

QuadBox!

This is our pretty main menu so far, it gradually changes colour hiding parts of the letters, a little indication into what the game is like. It received great feedback with regards to its aesthetics and hinting at the player’s aim. The five colours were chosen purely on how well they seemed to flow together, people commented on the almost relaxing vibe they felt from it. Several colour schemes were trialled but this palette won overall.

The initial prototype intrigued people but had some obvious gameplay issues that needed to be ironed out. The movement of the spheres was quite sluggish and they bounced off walls making it harder for people to control the movement. People still loved the overall concept and could not wait to see how it would develop further.

From this point we understood what players wanted and began fleshing out some nice balancing mechanics and fine tuning that movement that people wanted to be more responsive and smoother.