Thoughts on BounceShot
After spending years making casual mobile games, prototypes, and jam games, I decided to finally take a stab at releasing a game on Steam. BounceShot was born out of an Idea I had for a game jam in late 2021. The game jam feedback was good but it was clear that the idea would need a lot of polish and a little more depth to become something more. Still I felt like the core game mechanic and loop was strong so I decided to take some time, polish, and release it on Steam.
I am really proud of the core mechanic of BounceShot. As the name may give it away, BounceShot is a puzzle FPS game where all of your shots must be bounced. I am a big fan of FPS games and I wanted to do something unique. I was inspired by other unique puzzle FPS games like Portal. Part of what I think makes Portal so good is that its core portal mechanic at first seems simple, but the game does a masterful job at exploring all of the ways the portals can be used. From the beginner friendly party trick puzzles all the way to the mind bending physics edge cases. It takes something that seems initially simple and squeezes every bit of juice out of it. I am proud to say with BounceShot, I explored the ricochet mechanic in full depth.
Through good level and puzzle design, I was consistently able to slowly introduce new ways of thinking to the player. For instance earlier levels introduce the bounce mechanic with easy, one bounce puzzles. I allow the player to have time to figure out how to position their body and understand the angles of different shots. Its easier to get shallow longer bounces of the floor vs a wall for instance. I tried to pace the introduction of harder multi bounce puzzles so that the player could start to think once bounce ahead. With new found skills they were able to solve 2, 3, and 4+ bounce puzzles.
I am also happy with the reward medal mechanic. The game tracks every shot and when it does something that satisfies a certain criteria for a “Trick Shot” a medal pops up and rewards the player with extra points. With this addition, there was now a reason to do a puzzle more than once. Even if the player knows the solutions, the game becomes about finding the coolest solution. All of the puzzles have a intended solution, and if a player is taking to long and getting stuck, a “ghost” will appear and help the solve it. This is intended in keeping the player engaged and to lower frustration.
Even though there are intended solutions. I did my best as level designer to keep things “open”. With this style of level design, players where able to find many solutions that I did not consider. Many that were very stylish and had strategies that I did not consider. I implemented higher skill mechanics like being able to reflect your own shots with a melee attack, in order to encourage these freestyle solutions.
What went well…
What went wrong…
I playtested this game ALOT! Easily 100+ hours making sure the puzzles worked, feeling out the level and planning new puzzles, and testing the difficulty of enemies. I playtested the game so much that I got really good at it. Unfortunately, I got so good that I started to loose touch with what it took to get a hold of the mechanics for beginners. I was aware this may be a problem, and to fix it I recorded some play sessions with beginner playtesters. Despite this, I still over estimated the beginning skill level of players. Due to this, many players never got a chance to explore the mechanical depth of the game. Its unfortunate because I believe that is where the game shines the most. Many players did make it past the initially steep learning curve and these are the players who I received the most positive feed back from. If I could do it again, I would implement a practice or training mode, and incentivize players to use it. BounceShot has a very unique shooting mechanic and requires some skill that isn’t built up in playing other FPS games.
“If you enjoy challenging action games and get a thrill from _mastering_ your skills to earn high scores, then I think you’ll enjoy BounceShot.”
— Murphy’s Dad (Steam Review)