A balls to the wall, action platformer game!
Game Geeks News is proud to bring you another great gaming project currently running on Kickstarter. Carlos Trujillo (Some Cool Studio) is currently working on a new mobile game project known as Balljefe!. His goal for this campaign is to be able to get the funds needed, to quit his day job and work full time on the game and to deliver on a dream that started after receiving his bachelor’s in Game Design.
Balljefe wakes up to find himself in a large test tube that he forcibly manages to escape out of soon after coming to. Confused and dazed, he realizes he has no memory of who or what he is, let alone where he is. Suddenly, a voice comes in and hastily asks for Balljefe to get moving, only saying that he would explain things later. Before you even get the chance to process what is being said to you, two individuals in suits approach you aggressively with guns drawn. It’s then you realize that if you’re going to have any chance of getting any answers, your going to have to escape first!
What Is A Balljefe?
I don’t really know honestly, but what I am sure of is that it is an angry-looking ball made in some secret government lab somewhere in the jungles of South America that escapes with the aid of a mysterious scientist whose intentions are unknown. With the help of your mighty finger and assortment of abilities, moves, and diverse locals to explore, discovering your forgotten past while escaping the clutches of the shadowy organization that seeks to control you can only be fun and not at all boring right?
Controls: Carlos decided to make every action/move you can do possible with just a touch, tap, or swipe of your finger. If you want to move, simply touch somewhere and you will bounce in that direction. If you double tap the screen you will dash. If you want to grapple the enemy for some fun stomping, and bloody violence, double tap when in close proximity to get into the grapple move and then tap to bash/assault the enemy into oblivion. Then when you’ve seen enough gore, touch and hold and exit the grapple. Abilities can be changed by swiping the UI in the top left corner of the screen and used by touching an enemy or an interactable object like an explosive barrel, oh yeah, there are objects in the environment that you can use to aid you.
Enemies: So far there are four different base enemies and one mini-boss. The plan is to make enemies that make sense for the level you are in. For example, if you are in the sewers ( a level you will only see if you choose a certain route) then expect to face sewer monsters. In this game, the sewers are located under the laboratory you are escaping and will have genetically created monsters that were either discarded or managed to escape themselves somehow. Rest assured, Carlos will work hard to make sure the enemies are diverse in not only their appearance but attacks.
Death/Retry: When your health reaches zero you are presented with a floating sprite that reads “Retry”. Pressing this button will quickly reset the room you are in and you will be given another shot at successfully clearing the said room, you will not have to navigate any menus or press any additional buttons. Essentially, every room you enter is a checkpoint which will temporarily save your spot until you quit the game.
Abilities So Far!: You are able to burn those who stand in your way with fire, yeah fire! Other abilities include the ability to ignite yourself and turn into some kind of comet or something, actually, you turn so yourself into a fireball and kill, should have just said that. You can even opt to use your firepower to ignite your enemies with pyrokinesis! Don’t like fire, well then you can use your wind power to conjure tornadoes out of thin air.
Visual Feedback/UI: As you probably already know, the real estate of your phone screen is limited, at least when compared to your television/monitor. For this reason, Carlos has tried his best to show everything you need to know without using too much real estate. For instance, not only will you see a health bar representing your current HP, you will see an image of Ball Jefe himself in the UI which will either look healthy or beaten up depending on your health points. This works great as it will be easy to quickly tell how you are doing health-wise since the Ball Jefe UI image is bigger and easier to read than a health bar. There will be other info such as ammo and research points which is the in-game currency you will use to purchase more ammo and other cool stuff.
Research Points: As you kill enemies and blow stuff up, research points will rain which you will want to pick up. These research points can be used to buy more ammo for your abilities. These same research points will also be used to upgrade abilities/moves. Yup, you will be able to upgrade your abilities to not only make them stronger but also beef them up visually as well (Something I love to see in games). A cool example is the wind/tornado ability which will start off as a small tornado, only being able to affect one enemy at a time but then be upgraded to be a bigger, badder tornado AOE attack and suck in surrounding enemies! The demo will be available to try out all this stuff soon!
Is There A Demo?: Carlos is currently working on a playable demo that will allow for an early access experience into what he has so far. So far It will include only the first level, up to the first boss, which at this point I think is more like a mini-boss but fun nonetheless. If the campaign goes well then Carlos will make a longer demo that will include more so that players can truly get excited about the final build. He plans on making a demo that will showcase everything, i.e., all mechanics/functionality, and what the player can look forward to like the alternate routes/secrets/collectables/alternate player skins and more.
If all goes well, Carlos will use these funds to give himself a much-needed boost by giving him the option to quit his day job so he can go full-time on this game. He also plans on using the funds to buy more assets and perhaps hire an artist to help.
Rewards for backing this project start from as little as $1 and include your name in the credits, a Digital copy of the Soundtrack, your very own NPC Doppelganger in the game or a Player skin based on your very own design just a few. For a full breakdown of the rewards available, check out their crowdfunding page on Kickstarter.
