Fast Ball Prototype
This is the second level of an experimental game prototype I made for a uni assignment. It’s a game where you are a ball and can hold a button to fall faster. You get faster by falling down onto slopes quickly.
The game (more of a demo, actually) has three levels that you swap between by pressing 1-3 keys on your keyboard. They’re all small challenge levels made to test what gameplay is fun with this movement mechanic.
This is completely inspired by Haste, an incredible game built around the same core mechanic.
To be honest, I had super high hopes going into that game. I followed the development of Haste closely, watching all the teasers and sneak peaks Landfall (the devs) posted. From what I saw anyway, they experimented a lot with what gameplay goes well with this movement mechanic. At one point, the game was going to be a multiplayer racing battle royale thing. By the end of it, they released a roguelike with mostly inconsequential items and procedurally generated levels that all feel samey and don’t scale well with super high speeds. In between we saw a lot of ideas, some super cool (3 links), that never made it into the final game. If you wanna see more, I invite you to hunt down old videos of Haste in Landfall’s YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
Don’t get me wrong though, I love Haste. It is still the best execution of going fast that I’ve ever seen in a video game. I just courageously believe I can do it better.
Not with this demo of course. My main idea for the proper game is to import 1:1 scale terrain data of the entire state of Queensland, Australia into Godot and have the player race from the south side of that to the north (about 2000km) over the course of a few hours, reaching speeds of hundreds of metres per second and zipping through real mountain ranges. It’d be like an epic convergence of Haste and Desert Bus. I’ve never seen anyone make such a large map in Godot, the technical underdog game engine, but dammit I’ll try. I want to experience this fantasy so bad.
If you want to try this game/demo for yourself, you can download it here. You can also find my full dev journal for this game here (in weeks 5-6).