Dong Clang Boom

My goal with this prototype was to take a single action and make it as juicy and satisfying as possible while only using simple 2D shapes.

My first challenge was to pick an action, and I settled on a game where the player could use their mouse to shoot at falling metal cans. It seemed like promising ground because of how intense the impact of a bullet with a metal can could be, and how many fun sounds I’d be able to incorporate.

After an hour implementing the core mechanic of shooting cans and tuning the physics until it felt right, I went straight to the gamefeel.

In total, I made 15 different effect types, 10 of which are triggered every time the can gets shot:

1. The can flashes
2. Paint splatters appear behind can
3. Sound of shot being fired
4. Sound of can being hit
5. Slow motion
6. Lens distortion
7. Chromatic aberration
8. Particles from shot
9. Camera shake
10. The can expands slightly before shrinking in size

If I had to keep only 3 of them (not counting sound effects), it would be the paint splatters, the camera shake, and the slow motion.

The slow motion actually ended up being a crucial game mechanic: hitting one can would slow down all the others and allow you to chain together more hits if you were fast. It was so important I actually extended its duration when the player got the last hit on a can, which made them choose to hit cans in specific orders and lent a tiny bit of strategy to an otherwise purely mechanical game.

At the end of the project I took all the effects code I wrote and compiled it into a little library. It’s definitely not clean enough for the Asset Store but it’s perfect for me when I’m trying to quickly add juice to something, and I used it in many future prototypes.