Early physics based concept
designs.
New game ideas, built far enough to play and judge. Unfinished on purpose, so they are cheap to change or bin.
Ricochet.
One button, one steel ball, and a machine.
Play it here
Space to fire · drag to look around · D for debug
You press FIRE. A heavy chrome ball gets launched into one section of an enormous working machine. Gears flick it, a hammer flattens it, a lift catches it and fires it back across. Two to four seconds later it lands in a multiplier.
The result is picked before the ball moves. The machine then plays a real physics route that ends in that exact spot, so it's showing you the answer the long way round. Ready for provably fair seeds when CoinPoker wants them.
- 100×Trips a lever, rides a rail behind the flywheel and opens the vault. The camera leans in. Rare.
- 10×The high hatch. Every route there goes under the drop hammer first.
- 2×The boiler hatch. Usually off the great gear, sometimes after a ride up the lift.
- 1×The glass tube at the bottom. Money back.
- 0×The scrap hopper. The house thanks you.
Why I don't think it's worth developing.
I've spent a fair bit of time on this one and I'm glad I built it, but I don't think it should go any further as a game. Three reasons.
You press one button and watch. There's no decision to make, so when it lands in the 10× it doesn't feel like you did anything. The win just happens to you, and I think that takes most of the buzz out of it.
The first ten shots are great. By about the thirtieth you've seen most of the routes, and you're waiting three seconds for a result Limbo or Dice would give you instantly.
It feels more like a tech demo or a screensaver than something people would sit and play for an hour. Nice to look at, but I can't see it holding anyone.
- Result first, physics second works. The result is picked before the ball moves and the ball still takes a real physics route to it. None of the few hundred test rounds I ran failed, so a physics game can still be provably fair.
- The world does a lot of the work. Going from a grey test box to the machine made the exact same mechanic far more watchable. That's worth remembering for every game we do.
- The browser can take it. A 3D world with moving parts and physics running 480 times a second plays smoothly on desktop. I haven't tried it on a real phone yet.
- It costs time. Every route is worked out in advance, so any change to the machine means recalculating them all. The big moving parts, like the hammer, sometimes have to nudge the ball to keep it on its route.
- Use physics for the reveal. On top of something where the player actually decides things, like Blocks, a Plinko upgrade or a bonus round, I think it adds a lot.
- Anything that drops or fires into a result could use this setup. Plinko, pachinko, coin pushers, claw machines. The result-first system carries straight over.
- Build one great section. A single dressed section like this one is where the effort pays off. Full 360° sets get expensive fast.
- Keep rounds short. Two to three seconds is about the limit. Any longer and people are just waiting.
Launch Test.
A car, a wall, and one very brave dummy.
Play it here
Space or CRASH to play · D for debug
You press CRASH. A barrier shoots up out of the road, the car hits it at about 130 km/h and the crash test dummy goes straight through the windscreen. The further he flies, bounces and slides, the bigger the multiplier. Really big hits can knock an arm or a leg off.
Same trick as Ricochet. The result is picked before you press anything, and the game finds a real physics route that ends in that zone, so pressing early or late makes no difference. I ran it 100 times and every round landed where it was meant to.
This is a very early concept. I built it quickly to find out if watching the dummy go is fun enough to do over and over. Pretty much everything you see is placeholder. The car, the dummy, the track and the sounds all need proper art and a lot of polish, and the maths isn't done.
- 10×Bounces off the airbag, flies off the ramp or rips through the billboard, then the giant fan blows him the rest of the way. Rare.
- 5×Clears the crate tower. Usually ploughs into the barrel pyramid.
- 2×Clips the big road sign or smashes into the crate tower.
- 1×Clears the cones and often gets stopped by the tyre wall. Money back.
- 0×Flops onto the bonnet or skids to a stop in the cones.
Early days. It needs a lot of work.
I think the idea has legs (sorry). He's funny to watch, and the bit at the end of each round where you're wondering if he's done yet is where the tension is. But it's rough, so please judge the idea rather than the look.
- Proper art for the car and the dummy. Right now they're drawn in code as stand-ins.
- A much busier track. More set pieces, moving machinery and things to smash, plus the higher zones built out.
- Bigger crash moments. A proper windscreen smash, a crumpling bonnet, more dust and debris.
- Better camera work. Slow motion on the big hits, and tighter framing so he doesn't go tiny at the top of the big arcs.
- Real sound. The beeps and thuds in there are placeholders.
- The maths. The multipliers and odds are placeholders. No real RTP yet.
- 25× to 1000×. You can see the signs for them, but those zones aren't built yet.
- Near misses. Sliding to a stop just short of the next zone only happens now and then. I want more of those.
- Phones. The layout works on a phone, but I haven't tested it on a real phone yet.
More coming.
Next concepts land here as they're built.