Critter Balls
Apr 2013
HvA
Interaction-, UI Design, Illustration & Development
Inspired by a carnival game
Remember Angry Birds? This casual game's phenomenal success story inspired me to give game design & development a shot. Hogeschool van Amsterdam was giving out study points for home-brewed interactive projects: Win-win, extra points and a chance of becoming a millionaire.
I dived into Corona SDK, a mobile game development framework based around the 2D physics engine BOX2D. Hours of tutorials later I was writing LUA code comfortably and ready to build my first casual game: Critter Balls was born!Simple but addictive concept
I wanted to bring the carnival addiction into a game. I remember as a kid I loved the thrill of rapidly throwing balls in a hoop under the stress of a timer. I tried to recreate that feeling: Balls randomly pop out of a box and with a flick of a finger you fire them towards a basketball hoop. Combo hits give you more points and time, misses lower your chances to shoot and gives a time penalty. Add some Angry Bird sauce and voila!
One of my friends approached me one day and mentioned he caught his little brother playing Critter Balls together with a bunch of his classmates at school: That put a big smile on my face.