BBTAN: Elemental Expansion

My version of BBTAN expanded with custom features made in Unity.

Gameplay Additions:

• Circular Block - new type of block.
  
• New Pickups - Bomb, Sniper, Multiplier, Mega Bomb and three elemental pickups (Lightning, Fire and Ice).
• Elemental Effects - elemental pickups have both basic and enhanced abilities. Fire and Ice also introduce status effects.
• Elemental Resistance - some blocks are immune to elemental damage.
• Pickup Counter System - limits Sniper and controls the enhanced effects of other pickups.
• Visual Feedback - added effects for elemental damage and enhanced pickup activation.

Controls:
Hold LMB to aim and adjust the shooting angle, then release to shoot.

Case Study:

I made this game to explore how additional mechanics and systems would affect BBTAN's simple gameplay, while also practicing working with the engine.

I was especially interested in the idea of introducing mechanics commonly found in aRPGs and hack and slash games, such as elemental damage and stacking status effects, into a much simpler game.

Changes and observed results:

Circular Blocks:
This change is relatively small, but it does make the game a bit more chaotic sometimes because of the way the balls bounce off them. Furthermore, in some situations, gaps can form between the blocks. For example when circles and triangles appear closely together. These gaps sometimes create opportunities for players to shoot balls between the blocks and reach places they would not normally be able to.

Problem 1 - Fire Did Not Fit Traditional Damage Over Time:

Fire is almost always associated with burning and damage over time.

However, in the BBTAN, this would mainly mean low damage dealt with a delay between turns. I wanted to avoid this approach because I think that players want to destroy blocks through their own actions, which is by shooting balls. I felt that such a solution would be weak, boring and unsatisfying.

Solution:
Instead, I thought that the over time effect could be triggered when the ball hits a burning block. That way, it would happen much more often and be more satisfying.
When it happens the block takes additional damage based on the number of Fire stacks, and one stack is removed.

Problem 2 - Traditional Ice Mechanics Did Not Work:

Ice is commonly associated with slowing movement or actions, but this did not translate well to BBTAN.

Blocks only move down by one row at the end of a turn, so there was no reasonable way to slow them down. I also considered giving freezing to the base effect, but this wouldn’t work well with applying stacks, as it’s a binary state. Also, the enhanced effect would be significantly weakened because most of the blocks would already be frozen.

Solution:
In the end, I simplified things a bit. The basic effect is very straightforward and simply applies stacks dealing damage equal to their value at the end of the turn.

However, it works well with the enhanced effect, as it is very powerful, effectively giving the player a free turn with the chance to gain free pickups and the opportunity to prepare for the next turn.

Problem 3 - New Pickups Made the Game Easier:

With the introduction of new, often powerful, pickups, the game has lost some of its balance and become easier. I needed a way to compensate for this and restore the balance.

Solution:
I gave blocks a chance to appear with elemental resistance.

This can be for one specific element or for all of them at once. These blocks are completely immune to that element. They can still accumulate elemental stacks, but the damage from those stacks does not affect these blocks.

In the case of ice, blocks with ice resistance are not frozen and move down one row as normal at the end of the turn. If such block has another block without resistance directly below it (this one will be frozen), the block with resistance does not move down because it is stuck and takes 1 damage.

This created situations where the player has to consider whether a particular elemental pickup is actually useful against the current board.

Problem 4 - New Mechanics Were Harder to Read:

New pickups and their enhanced effects introduced some hidden interactions.
I wanted the player to understand when stacks actually interact with a block and when the enhanced effect of pickup is triggered.

Solution:
I added visual feedback for both situations.

When a block with stacks takes damage, an icon representing the relevant element appears in its place and fades away over a short duration. A similar effect, but slightly bigger, occurs when the enhanced effect of pickup is triggered.

Observations:

The elemental system showed me that familiar mechanics cannot always be directly transferred from one game to another and often have to be redesigned properly.

Mechanics such as damage over time or slow may work perfectly well in a certain genre, but their implementation and functionality must make sense within a different one.

This project also showed me how adding a single mechanic can cause new problems related to balance, readability, and interactions in other parts of the game.

What I would change:

Looking back, I would redesign the basic effects of Fire and Ice.

Now that I look at it, the way Fire works (stacks triggered by a ball hitting an object) fits the theme of Ice much better: "a frozen object shatters on impact".
I wouldn’t give Fire the base effect of Ice at that point, but choose and adapt one of my other ideas I considered. Of course, both effects would have to be rebalanced accordingly.

Key Takeaway:

This project has taught me how to apply the mechanics I’m familiar with from other games to new ones.
Instead of using the standard solutions for Fire and Ice, I had to figure out how they would behave in a completely different game and adapt them to its rules.

It also allowed me to gain more experience with balancing mechanics, creating reusable systems and using visual feedback to make more complex gameplay easier to understand.