Inside the IGF Student Competition: Bubble Blow

In a new series, Gamasutra sister site GameCareerGuide is looking at some of the games submitted to the 2009 IGF student competition. Steven Turner is a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland who helped develop a 2D arcade game called Bubble Blow (the game’s development is considered extracurricular). In Bubble Blow, players maneuver bubbles around obstacles using the indirect control of "blowers" to achieve a high score. What do you think is the game’s greatest asset? What sets it apart from other games in the IGF? Steven Turner: The control of the game environment is completely indirect. Unlike Tetris or Peggle, the player is never able to directly manipulate the path of an object in the game, adding an element of uncertainty. The control of the game is accomplished by "blowers" mimicking hair dryers, applying wind to objects in the game as they fall. Thus, it is extremely difficult for a player to replicate paths in the game and requires constant attention to attain a high score. The play is very much like attempting to balance on one foot. Bubble Blow is simple, easy to play, and has an addictive element because of the indirect approach to game mechanics. Oh yes, and bleating goats. Bleating goats? Can you explain that? ST: We were looking for a sound effect to play when balls collide with entities in the game world. Both Ryan and I found the sound of a bleating goat humorous, so we decided to incorporate several goat sounds spliced together to add a little humor to the game. What was the most difficult part of developing the game? ST: Like any project worth doing, Bubble Blow took a lot of hard work and coffee. All four of us are full-time students with tough course loads, and Steve, Ryan, and Mike are seniors all working on their own senior projects. This left the team with very little free time to develop Bubble Blow, but again, a little hard work and a good coffeemaker can get you through anything. Thankfully Bubble Blow is a fairly simple game, so the general mechanics were not too difficult to work out. The hardest part of any game, however, is not the core mechanics, but extending these mechanics to make a fun game. An idea can look really good on paper, can be easy to program, but when everything is done, the end product may not be as good as originally planned. Even if it does work out, there might not be enough for a full game. You can easily find yourself saying, "Okay, this is fun ... but what now?" Tell us one interesting thing that you learned in developing Bubble Blow. ST: We spent hours trying to solve a few key performance issues one coding night. Finally, while putting on another pot of coffee, it occurred to us that perhaps a debugging screen with frames per second, bodies, and geometries would be useful. Although primitive, it allowed us to track down not only our memory usage problems, but also some other unseen errors in the generation of collision polygons for sprites. A useful debug screen is invaluable when developing a game, especially if you are inexperienced! Since making this game, have your opinions or assumptions about game development changed in any way? If so, how and what were they before? ST: Because three of us had actually worked together on a game before Bubble Blow, we thought that since this was the second time around, it would be much easier. Of course, we were quite wrong and began to realize that every project is its own beast. You have to remain open to learning new skills and refining your knowledge, skills, and creativity. [An extended version of this interview is available on GameCareerGuide.com, Gamasutra’s sister site for information and advice about education and careers in the game development industry.]