The StarPop Story

The history, design, and ideas behind StarPop!

Part 3 : Pops, Pings, Glittery Sparkles!

Pops, pings and glittery sparkles

Part of the reward of the game is in the popping - the feedback you get when you make a successful pop. There's a visual part, and an (optional) audio part.

The visual part helps in two ways, it gives a nice shower of what we call "sparkles" that are fun to see, and it also helps with the transition from one bigger object to several smaller ones. We call them sparkles, even though on each level they're something different. Tiny little stars on the stars level, droplets on the fruit level, and confetti on the balloons level - my favourite of all of the sparkles, I'll admit!

The audio part is important too - it needs a sound appropriate to what you're popping (even though some are abstract) but also to add a bit more - the sounds change in pitch, going up as you complete and pop the smaller objects. This is very satisfying! There's music in the game too. In a future version we might try to adjust things a bit more to make the musical notes that you play by tapping coincide with the notes in the music, but that's a lot harder than it sounds! It is the kind of detail I notice, but not too many of the people in the office pick up on. (Then, my hearing is a bit strange...)

The backgrounds are nice and bright, but still simple enough that you don't get distracted from the game itself.

One of the features that was added quite late was a "glow" round each of the objects for a while after they're created. If you pop them while they still glow, you get some extra bonus points and some of the glow fills up a little meter at the top of the screen. If you fill this (lighting up three smiley stars along the way) you'll be rewarded with the bonus "shower" round. While it isn't critical to earn this every time, it is something nice as an option to aim for. We tried to adjust the game so that it was quite easy to earn the bonus especially at the beginning and the end, so that players would start and end feeling especially rewarded.

Brainstorming and levels

We did quite some thinking about what objects to include. We wanted to have 10 different levels - so that meant 10 different objects. In fact, we came up with about 15 straight away, but some didn't feel quite right.

Mama!

One of the ones we started with - stuffed toys - seemed like a good idea at first, but didn't make it to the end. We had a sample while trying these ideas out, from another game of a cute baby dinosaur saying "Mama!". Each time you "Popped" one of these toys, it played the audio sample and said "Mama!", and popped with stuffing fluff into three smaller toys. The effect was bizarrely both cute, and at the same time strangely disturbing. We decided it wouldn't make it to the first release, but might be worth reserving for later!

End game?

If you can't lose, then the game has to go on for ever... well, that doesn't really work, because part of the fun is a "completion", and you can't complete something infinite. We decided that once you'd played through a set of each level, that you'd be rewarded with a "congratulations", and maybe a chance to be on a high score table. We reckoned on a game taking 2-3 minutes, and you could start and go through again nice and easily.

Transitions

Since there are lots of different levels, we had to come up with a way to neatly go from one to the next. I'll admit that I succumbed to one of the current fashions in casual games, and we have a "map" screen in there, but with a cute toy rocket flying between planets that represent each of the themes. The effect is nice and not too long, but importantly it shows progress through a game - how close you are to completion.

I was surprised how some of the first people I showed the game to noticed something subtle we built in - that the planets are "faded out" until you've visited them, when they're lit up to show you've completed them.

Bonuses!

We had an idea when doing the second design of extra special toys on one or two of the screens. Just things in the background that you could press and they'd animate. In the Stars level there's a moon sleeping in the corner. He was titled "moonman" early on, and later earned his name "Maurice". You'd tap on him and he'd wake up with a bounce, smile for a second, then go back to sleep. You could keep on tapping, and he'd keep on animating for as long as it amused you.

David (our chief technical officer) had a great idea as we were discussing this one day... what if the player could earn them as they went along? And there the idea of unlockable characters was created!

Each level would have its own character that would be there to entertain you, and you would earn them by completing games! Just one game through to earn and see Maurice (and the Stars level is always the first you play through!) A couple more games, and you get the next! Always something to look forward - and lots of hours of gameplay to unlock them all!

<-- Part 2 : Designing the game!

Part 4 : It all comes together! -->