Hi, I'm Ricardo Bess and I work as an artist for around 10 years. For the last 4 years I have been working as a game artist. In 2020 I decided to take a lot of what I've been learning and make a game by myself.

Idea

It all started when I thought to myself "How hard it is to make a ball roll using the gyroscope of the cellphone?"

First prototype

At first I started using the gyroscope to move the scene and trusted gravity would make the ball roll accordingly.

That didn't work out. The gyroscope was not precise enough.

After some research I decided to use the rotation information to add a torque to the ball.

That worked!

Since I don't know much of programming I decided to use Playmaker to handle my code. Playmaker is a visual programing tool (to learn a bit more you can visit: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/visual-scripting/playmaker-368)

Playmaker settings for ball

Playmaker settings for ball

Testing different interactions

After that I started to wonder what kind of interactions the ball could have. I realized I needed a goal to reach (like a finishing line). Later I thought of different grounds that would make the ball slide or stick and a dash (so I could force the ball out of the sticky ground).

I prototyped these 3 ideas and made 8 levels testing what I thought could be interesting.

The 8 levels

The 8 levels

The first was more of a sandbox with a jump interactable (blue squares) and diferent kinds of floor (sand, concrete and ice).

The second was a maze with a very linear path.

The third was a bigger maze.

The fourth was a big maze with lots of paths to choose.

The fifth had three bridges you had to cross without falling.

The sixth had and S shaped bridge.