- Dev Update #10 - Rugby Sport Showcase - 1 November 2021
Rugby, or for our American fans - American football, is the showcase of the final Squishy Sports sport mode that we want to share with you! Although Rugby and American Football are different sports our version of this awesome sport mode takes the concept of hitting the ball over the post to score a goal - a similarity between both sports! This sport brings more vertical gameplay to Squishy Sports - as does Basketball! The main difference between the two modes is the scoring area! Whilst Basketball demands accuracy from players, Rugby has a large score area! This makes the sport mode a little bit more accessible to players as they find themselves smashing the ball over the bar to see their score increase! In the high-level play, experienced players will need to consider using their double jump and directional dashes to stay airborne and block goals! Another feature that makes this sport…
- Dev Update #9 - Table Tennis Sport Showcase - 19 October 2021
Table tennis or Ping - pong is one of those super addictive sports in real life and we thought it would be a great addition to Squishy Sports! Rather than using bats players smash themselves into the ball to return it - this keeps continuity across all of our sports modes! In this post, we will talk about how we made this feel different from other sports modes and how we put our own Squishy spin on this classic sport! Table Tennis plays very similar to Volleyball but it is a little bit more accessible for less experienced or younger players! This is due to the addition of the table occupying a lot of the play space! The scoring area is roughly half the size that it is in volleyball meaning it’s a little harder for your opponents to score and it’s easier for you to return. This adds a safety net for players and makes it a much more accessible sport to jump into and almost acts as Volleyb…
- Dev Update #8 - Basketball Sport Showcase - 14 October 2021
Basketball was the third sport mode that we developed for the game and this really added a whole new dimension to the way players play the game! In Volleyball and Football, you were largely playing a horizontal focussed sport with large goal areas. Basketball introduced much more verticality and more precision in aiming. The goal areas are much smaller so players need to get the right arc and power on the ball in the hope of landing a perfect slamdunk! We often see a lot fewer goals in this game mode, however, the intensity builds as the ball stores more velocity! (explained in our Volleyball showcase post!) The anticipation of the goals builds player excitement and the ball pings around the scene like a pinball machine, squishing anything it comes into contact with! This creates really heated matchups and again gives that great euphoric result when a player does manage to score! To hel…
- The Story so Far #4 - GDEX 2021 Crowd Favorite Award! - 13 October 2021
We managed to do a games expo in OHIO - GDEX! Through our friends in Playvue we worked closely with them to create an ARCADE CABINET build of Squishy Sports to exhibit at this expo! This follows on from the work we did with them last year when the event was fully online. Having the event in person and our game on an arcade cabinet was like the stars aligning! The Crowd Favorite award was attached to all the indie games in the showcase and players could vote using an online form! We managed to win this award last year but weren’t sure of our chances now that the event was in person with tonnes of other awesome games on the show floor for punters to play! Shockingly it turned out the arcade cabinet build of Squishy went down super well and . . . . . . WE WON THE GDEX 2021 CROWD FAVORITE AWARD! This is absolutely incredible and a massive surprise to us! We designed the game to be a laughte…
- The Story so Far #3 - EGX 2021! - 12 October 2021
We have just been to EGX 2021 and showcased our game through a rezzed session on stage! We were kindly invited to showcase through our friends at Barclays Games and eSports! Opportunities like this are super valuable to us and it means a lot that Barclays had the faith and support in us to let us do this event with them! We were on stage at 2pm on Sunday running a showcase of Squishy Sports! Starting with a short intro before grabbing some audience members up to dive into the squishy action! We had 3 wonderful groups of people up to play some of our bonkers sports! Laughter was the running theme from players - which is incredible for us to see as developers. All of our design choices were made to bring a smile to people’s faces and that is exactly what happened! Every player left with a little Squishy Sports merch bag for braving the stage! Shout out to our close studio friend and conte…
- Dev Update #7 - BALL CANNON! - 5 October 2021
We’ve just announced our latest special move - BALL CANNON! This is a powerful special move that allows the player to fire another ball into the scene! This now means that players have multiple balls to score with! It has one of the longer charge times of the special moves we have available so you will need to find the best moment to throw this curveball at your opponents! What ball will it launch in? Well, this is completely random too! You could end up with a regular bouncy beach ball, a smaller table tennis ball, an egg-shaped ball, or any number of secret odd-shaped balls we haven’t shown yet! =D Is your opponent playing really defensively? NO PROBLEM! Launch another ball at them to split their focus! Keep the pressure on and it is only a matter of time before a ball goes in! Just remember there are more balls that could come your way too! Ball cannon can be super powerful on Volley…
- Dev Update #6 - Volleyball Sport Showcase - 28 September 2021
Inception Volleyball was actually the first sport that we took from the initial prototype to a fully fleshed out sport for people to play! Volleyball was the best sport to explore with our 2d focussed gameplay and we quickly found that building up a volley between 2 players felt really fun! Our simple control system had you focussing on returning the ball as the intensity builds with each impact. When that ball finally hits the ground on the other side you feel that immense sense of victory of a volley well played as your opponent has their head in their hands! Ball Velocity We absolutely loved the intense rush of adrenaline this sport mode gave you and wanted to supercharge that even further! We found that volleys could get quite predictable with to-and-froing between 2 skilled players so we wanted to add an element that made it more difficult with each return of the ball. So we made t…
- Dev Update #5 - Football Sport Showcase - 21 September 2021
Football is a sport that is loved by millions around the world! It gives people a sense of pride and belonging in their local teams - no matter how big or small. It unites nations globally on events like the Euros or the World Cup even in the toughest of times! So how could we not have it in Squishy Sports?! :D Football in Squishy Sports has one of the lowest barriers to entry with its largely horizontal gameplay. It is also a sport that most people recognize meaning that most players can easily understand how it functions with little direction from us! They spawn on either side of the screen with a goal at the other end and instantly know that’s where the ball needs to go! One of our goals with Squishy Sports is to get as many members of the family involved - even if they are typically non-gamers! In football, you can get involved with just using the analog stick in the direction of th…
- The Story so Far #2 - Inception - 13 September 2021
A - So this is a super cool story! =D The crux of the story is that Chris and Matt both wanted to build indie games that were bigger than just one person! As we mentioned in our previous ‘The Story so Far’ post we met teaching game development at a college. We help students build awesome games and always spoke about building something together with Chris handling the technical production and Matt handling the art production! Chris is an avid fan of game design through prototyping and iteration. He had numerous projects he was playing around with in engine to find a game design concept he really connected with. During summer 2018 Matt was away in Athens and Chris messaged him with some ideas and concepts for a physics-based, party, sports game where the characters were shapes. Chris sent over some gifs of initial Squishy Sports prototypes using super basic sprites to convey this vision f…
- The Story so Far #1 - Our Dev Team - 7 September 2021
A - We are MADE BY TITANS, an awesome indie games development studio! We are a 2 person startup studio based in the beautiful North East of England working on our first studio title, ‘Squishy Sports’. Our studio mission is to create fun, quirky and daft gaming experiences to be enjoyed by all as well as supporting the growth of the next generation of aspiring game devs. We want to add to the growth of the North East’s video games industry and build the bridges between education and industry to provide aspiring game developers with the opportunities we would have wanted at the start of our careers. Our goal is to build quirky video games that can be enjoyed by the whole family through enticing visuals and family friendly themes. We also want our games to be accessible within our control systems so that they are easy to pick up and play. This is to create a low barrier of entry and contin…
- Dev Update #4 - Introducing...... Environment Hazards!!! - 1 July 2021
In this update, we really wanted to add more gameplay and add unique mechanics to each environment - we did this during the environmental overhaul stage as it made sense to give each environment a purpose whilst we were designing them.... and I'd love to show you some of these today!! Mucky Marsh Introducing.....THE SWAMP MONSTER. This gruesome glob lives in our swamp and doesn't really like folks hanging around. They will pop out of the swamp at random intervals to throw sludge at your screen and obscure your vision for a few seconds! In playtesting we've really found this changes the pace of the game, especially if players can't see a thing! Sunrise Sands Introducing.....CAPTAIN BAM BAM. YARRR! Captain Bam Bam will launch huge cannonballs from their ship.... into the play area! They get in the way - you can push them but they're heavy too! What do you think? We'd love to hear more fro…
- Dev Update #3 - A New Trailer Has Arrived! - 21 June 2021
New Gameplay Trailer We've got a new trailer! It shows off a lot more gameplay from Squishy Sports - and some of the new changes to environments too! We hope you like it!
- Dev Update #2 - Fan Art In Squishy Sports - 10 June 2021
We've put our first fan-designed character into the game - and made a young kid and his family's day by doing so! 😁 At events, we usually run a "create your own character" station - allowing players to design a Squishy Sports character themselves! This has always been a blast and we've always had some great entries. At the last Yorkshire Games Fest (Before the world turned upside down), we told players we would choose a special character and put them in the game - and we finally did just that. Well... we did! We've followed this design and this has spurred on a wave of design passes that we've done on each environment to add more interactivity as the pirate does in the scene below (We spoke about this on the last post, so check it out if you haven't!). Creating a family-friendly game, centered around friends and families being able to play together at any skill level has been so so rew…
- Dev Update #1 - Environmental Art OVERHAUL! - 18 April 2021
We've been BUSY BUSY BUSY over the last few months overhauling our environments, We'd love to share a few of these changes with you and give you a bit of an insight to our creative and technical decisions. We wanted to bring even more life to our environments and bring a greater balance to the foreground and background elements. We wanted to retain our epic 'Saturday morning cartoon' aesthetic but draw a clear line between play areas and background elements. We did this by removing the black outlines from background assets and leaving them in the foreground to make them really bold. Mucky Marsh Mucky Marsh was an environment that we felt didn't quite hit the mark the first time around although in concept was absolutely solid. We took the core concept of a sludgy, stinky, and overgrown swamp and reworked the assets to add to this. Reeds and grass now shoot up from the slimy water, fog ha…
- Join our community! - 11 April 2021
Discord stuff Hey! You! Join in the conversation on Discord! We've set it up as a way to build a community around Squishy Sports and our indie studio Made by Titans. Come chat with the devs and even get some sneak peeks of what we're working on! We wanted to bring our COMMUNITY closer together so we created a DISCORD server! 😄Talk to the devs! 🎮See updates! ✨Ask questions! 🎤Make suggestions! 🎨Share your creations! 🙌Meet other SQUISHY fans! ✔️Join the fun: https://discord.gg/HhgGxkvuuF Future Steam News Plans This also marks our first post here on Steam. Keep your eyes peeled as we plan to show off more of Squishy Sports with Steam news updates! 👀 Our next Steam news post will cover a huge environment overhaul that we finished and implemented not too long ago - not just an art overhaul either.... these affect gameplay....!
