Gameplay Mechanic
I didn’t start out with a set idea from the get-go. So I just started to brainstorm, I knew that I wanted to make something movement-based since that is my strength. I don’t remember my exact thought process, but the thought in my head went something along the lines of “What if you threw something that ricochet.. what if you ARE the ricochet!”.
I started out just researching and googling and quickly got a wonky prototype. I started out with making a way to aim, so the player could launch at any direction. The camera would zoom-in and the player character enters a state of anitcipation. I used a line-trace as a sort of crosshair. The camera aslo sets to an offset, so that player can see where they are about to be launched.
When testing the mechanic I quickly realized that you can lose your momentum fairly quickly if you don’t land correctly and I wanted the player to be able to bounce around for a long time without landing and recharging, thus losing all the momentum and flow in the gameplay. So I made it possible to launch in air as well. When implementing that however, since the player flies around in a very fast pace I found it very hard to aim. So I made so time slows down when the Player aims.
The obvious next flaw here was that if the player can launch mid-air, what stops them form a lunch all the time and basically fly around the level? I gave the player a one air launch, and then they have to bounce on an object to recharge it.
