More Balls, A New Stage, And THE FOURTH CHARACTER : Ball Busters Devblog #2

Heyo! Dai here!

Welcome to Ball Busters Devlog #2!

If you're new here, Ball Busters is an action roguelike where you keep a ball in the air for as long as possible. Every time the ball touches the ground, you lose a try. Lose all your tries? Game over!

Today, we'll look at Maki's new stage, two new balls, the game's fourth character, and the target date for the first playtest.

Maki's Stage

Back in May, I decided to rework Maki's stage since I feel like it could look a bit better.

The old version was a city. The new version is inspired by Las Vegas.

There is still a lot of work left to do. The biggest thing I want to add is traffic.

Basically, cars will drive through the stage and act as hazards for the player.

I'm also thinking about adding fireworks. They could become another hazard players need to watch out for.

New Balls

I've added two new balls to the game: the Baka Ball and Ballander.

These are what I'm calling "Enemy Balls." They don't just sit there. They fight back.

First, let's talk about the Baka Ball.

The Baka Ball has two modes: Tsun mode and Dere mode.

In "Tsun" mode, it will either randomly charge at you or shoot a projectile that freezes you on contact.

Meanwhile in "Dere" mode, players get bonus points for hitting it. It also has a small chance to not cost a try when it hits the ground.

Finally, Ballander is a parody of Homelander from The Boys as you'd expect.

Like the Baka Ball, it can charge at the player. However, unlike the Baka Ball, it'll randomly shoot lasers at the player.

I still need to improve the charge attacks for both balls. Right now, they track the player too well and can feel unfair.

With these two additions, I have now finished about half of the balls I want in the game.

Got an idea for a ball? Let me know in the comments!

Emo

After many delays, I finally started work on the fourth character: Emo.

In the game's story, Emo is Hana's younger brother. After Hana left her clan, Emo became the next in line be head of the clan.

Because of this, he was forced to endure RUTHLESS training by his dad.

Emo is also the game's first character with transformations.

The image on the left is his standard transformation while the one on the right is his Dark one.

Now, let me talk about his Dark form for a sec.

It was inspired by Sora's Anti Form from Kingdom Hearts II and has a small chance it'll appear in a run.

To make things a bit simpler while making it more unique from his regular transformation, I'm thinking about having it lock out your heat moves but giving you more basic combo attacks.

Players will also be able to increase the chance of getting it through upgrades.

Right now, I'm finishing his basic animations. After that, I'll work on his combo attacks and Heat Moves.

If you have ideas for special moves, let me know below!

First Playtest

I'm making good progress on the game, so I'm aiming to release the first Ball Busters playtest on July 16th.

This date could still change. It depends on how quickly I can finish the tutorial. For now, July 16th is the goal.

I'm also thinking about creating a Daitomodachi Labs discord server to help manage the playtest so be on the look out for that!

If you'd like more updates, follow Daitomodachi Labs on YouTube and TikTok.

Thanks for reading! Hope you have an awesome day or night. See ya!