Here is the first trailer for our upcoming iPad/iPhone game Magnetic Billiards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrjVSnx5_MI
The game plays just like a 'pool' type game - you touch any ball on the table, and drag backwards to control power and direction, then release to fire. It's really instant and obvious what to do. We did experiment with a few different play control methods early in development, but we found that the simplest one worked best. That's where the similarity with pool ends. The table has no pockets, and balls of the same colour stick together 'magnetically' when they touch, forming clusters of balls on the table. Clusters are removed from the table when they contains all the remaining balls of that colour, and extra rewards are earned if the cluster formed matches one of the recognised regular shapes (you can see me flipping through the shape book in the video). There a plenty of other details to do with the scoring system, which is really deep and subtle, but you don't need to understand any of that to start playing. The scoring grows on you as you get into the game.
So all of the levels will have completely scripted start positions for all balls? What happened with this look?
Fixed layouts (mostly) with randomised colours. That look is still in the pipeline on PC and future iOS versions. As well as some other very different visual styles.
Oh, than count me in! As long as the colors are randomized and therefore make it a different experience every time you play, I'm VERY interested!
The levels are super-replayable. There are so many possible shots that even if we didn't randomise anything you'd be thinking up new ways to score.
