Moon Moon Returns: Quick, Simple, and Out of this World (Android/IOS/PC DEMO)

brantsmith

  • Posts: 151



"The Game"
Moon moon returns has been a work of love, and humor, for me over the past half a year or so. The start of this game was actually rooted in a few old school retro games. Some of you guys may remember the old Homestar runner stuff and the games that went along with it. Well, of of my buddies was obsessed with the tire game on there http://www.homestarrunner.com/pop_tire.html and was trying to get me into it. After playing with it, my general consensus was that this game had a cool idea, but was old as the fricking hills. It needed an updated art scheme, fresh idea, and most of all, a better bounce noise. So I started work on a game that employed this idea, but I realized that after bouncing this ball for a while, it became quite boring. There was nothing very dynamic. So brilliant me started playing around with scrolling background and came up with the idea of bouncing the ball higher and higher into the sky. Well, at this time, I had no idea on the art, and no clue as to the idea behind the game. Until suddenly, I was hit by it. I was scrolling through the internet, like we all do, and came upon the "moon moon" meme. If you dont know what that is... your life isn't complete and you need to look it up. Like now. Open a new tab and type that shiz in. Anyway, I knew I didn't want a bouncing wolf, but a moon was round and could be bounced (sure.....physics) so I went with it. I then turned the scrolling background into a travel through the stars to add some Atmosphere and action to the game.

The art
Well, because this game was based in an old school homestar runner game and an internet meme, I figured I needed to go with a little bit more comical art. Of course, the game is about bouncing an incredibly disproportionate moon up into the sky with your thumb, so If that doesn't scream cartoonish then I dont know what does. So I started with the base design of a bouncy, soft, and cartoon looking moon and went from there. The text and the icons are all meant to look fluffy, puffy, and loud to add to the happy-go-lucky nature of the game. And the bouncing sound, well, that has a story of its own. Our team was working on this app and one of the guys mentioned how that the stupid bounce sound on the original homestar runner game was quite stupid, but at least added a cool effect. So of course, In jest, I asked him to come up with the most annoying and irritating sound he could come up with for a cartoon bounce. Well, he delivered, and for fun we stuck it in. Needless to say, we haven't taken it out and it has become a cool part of this funky game.

The Mechanics
Well, as you may have heard from the beginning, the goal of this game is to bounce your moom back up to the stars. The sad part is, no matter how far he goes, he can never reach home. Depressing thought of the day! Moving on. You start on the ground and slowly bounce your moom higher and higher attempting to unlock new moons and characters as well as proving to your friends that you can moon moon better than they can. Because seriously, who doesn't want to be able to moon the best! Think about it. So of course, in order to make the game fun, the moon is nearly the size of an overgrown mailbox and physics is completely out of question here. But who cares right? It's hard as balls and if you dont believe me, go grab yourself a miniature moon that fell from the sky and try to bounce it up with your thumb. Couldn't do it? See, I told yah.

Scoring
Well, like flappy birds taught us all, every game is about high scores. And let's be honest, we all want to prove to our friends that we have immense skills in tapping our phones with our thumbs day in and day out. Duh! So we invented this cool page that pops up after each death (*gasp* thats right!) that you can screen shot to prove your beastliness with. Each time you go higher, it records it under best and get's displayed nicely on a puffy little cloud. Of course, this little cloud is hovering over the carcus of your fallen moon who sadly couldn't make it up to his home because YOU JUST WEREN'T GOOD ENOUGH. But hey, you can try to redeem yourself next time. And the next time, and the time after that...and Yah, nevermind.

Trophy Moons
As if bouncing a single moon up into the sky for hours isnt fun enough, we threw in an entire selection of all different kinds of moons to play with. But we aren't quite that nice. You have to reach high levels before you can unlock them. The moon above gets unlocked when you reach a high of 25. Sound easy? Yah.... come back to me when you've tried the game. Anyway, each time you progress higher and hit a goal mark, you get awarded with a beast looking new moon to bounce higher with the next time. Thankfully, the moons are all the same size and all have the same bounce feel to them.This means that using one moon versus the other doesn't give someone the advantage of getting higher or getting a better score. It just means they will look boss doing it. Plus, it feels good to be rewarded with some cool swag (swag in its original usage, not the Justin Bieber meaning of today) after you've put the hard work in. Each moon has a little something special about it and some of them even change colors, ping, and bust apart. All things regular moons do.. right?
Who are we?
That's a good question. We dont solve world hunger, we done create global peace, and we definitely dont educate the nations. No, We save lives! The lives of those stuck in boredom because they don't have an addicting game to take up their spare time. That's where we come in. We are a team of college students who figured we could at least tack a stab at reducing the number of those suffering from excess time syndrome. But all jokes aside, we are an indie game design group (not company) that works together to create quick, funky, and unique games. We don't try to compete with the big name companies and 3d visualizations because there is already enough of that going on. Sometimes it's just fun to pick up a game and be able to hop right in and have a bit of fun while you're waiting on somebody or standing in line. So that's what we strive to create. Simple games that are fun, addicting, and can fill in a little space of time that you have no clue what to do with. And if our game does that for you, then we are feeling pretty boss.

Release
We are releasing this game at the beginning of the Fall college semester. For those non college students, That is around the Middle of August.

Please let us know what you think of the game. Any and all feedback, positive or negative, is appreciated. We hope you found it at least a bit fun.
Coding is Awesome.
Stencyl is Better.