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Potion Poppers

Sean Braithwaite, Once Upon A Dice Roll

Potion Poppers is a potion-popping, cork-launching, power struggle for 2 players created as for GMTK Jam 2017 in 48H.

 

Arena - Fighting

Sean Braithwaite, Potion Poppers

48-hour GMTK Game Jam Entry 7/16/17

Potion Poppers Documentation
Sean Braithwaite, Once Upon A Dice Roll
Potion Poppers
Unity

July 2017

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Sean Braithwaite

Jesse Baker

Dylan Carew

Joshua Garcia

Codi Hotte

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48-Hour Development Duration

Sean Braithwaite, Potion Poppers
Potion Poppers Blog & Design
Jam Game
Game Design

           Potion Poppers was created for the Game Maker's Toolkit Jam in July of 2017, under the theme of 'multi-use mechanics'. Players embody a pair of magical bottles trying to crack the other using the environment and their fireable cork. Our mechanics included horizontal movement, jumping, rotating in the air, collecting fluid in your bottle, and lastly collecting and firing the cork. As the cork mechanic acted as the main point of interest, we ensured our other mechanics served it. All movement mechanics are used to get around, and also aim one's cork. Read more below.

 

Challenge:

A. 48-Hour game jam

B. Create multi-use mechanics to satisfy the jam theme  

C. Encourage emergence in gameplay and systems

 

My Role:

A. Programmed finite state machine based on personal studies to keep scripts modular

B. Designed and divvied up work across the team, focusing strengths and interests
C. Implemented dozens of animations and visual effects provided by the team

Goal: Multi-Use Mechanics

           Potion Poppers' mechanics were designed to be useful in a variety of situations. Our goal was to provide the player with good tools to work with. A useful tool has a variety of applications, naturally fostering emergence with interplay.

 

The most important of the tools was the cork, whose use was influenced by all other mechanics. Corks facilitated combat and acted as the main point of contention in a match.

 

The cork itself was used to damage other players, to shield from attacks, for bouncing on one's head, for melee attacks, and for knocking oneself out of harm's way or into an advantageous spot with the shot's knockback.

Successes and Takeaways

           My favourite aspect of Potion Poppers was its subtle depth, and how naturally the mechanics layered on one another, leading to interplay. The movement itself was engaging, with the ability to rotate in the air, jump, bounce, and move around with the cork's knockback. Furthermore, the cork could be used as a point of contention if shot and being recovered, a shield, a melee weapon, for holding fluid inside when upside down, and bounced upon to extend jumps. That was all from the cork, and then there were the fluid systems, so we were very pleased with the interplay and layering of mechanics available in Potion Poppers. We definitely succeeded in utilising multi-use mechanics.

 

We kept the game simple once again and had a long design phase as in previous jams. Doing so ensured everyone was on board and had something to do most of the time. In planning and implementing the design, we succeeded.

 

Personally, the biggest takeaway for the project's development would be that I learned a lot about building on giants' shoulders, specifically that there is no shame in basing one's script's organisation upon another's. I could read and write the script I was basing my system off of, in fact, I'd written it before, but was stuck up on the fact that it wasn't my design for the code. However, making use of a properly planned and laid base was the best change I've made in my programming practice in some time. As I understood the script inside and out, I was able to extend its functionality to meet every desire we had for the project.

Postmortem and Design Thoughts

           Potion Poppers was strongly based upon a game I'd designed several months previously, and ended up prototyping out better than what I had initially envisioned for it. Seeing an idea from others' perspectives is always a humbling, enriching experience for the designers and the design, and it was a pleasure to share the idea with and work alongside this team again.

 

With that being said, the design had a significant amount of interplay between systems, creating an environment ripe with player emergence and strategizing. This was what appealed to me in the original design.

 

If we had another day to work on the project, I would have explored the full fluid system we envisioned, where one could mix potions and ingredients in themselves for different effects. Perhaps a player would brew a bomb and blow themselves up in a tense situation, or another pour hot wax on their opponent to slow them and seal their cork. Additionally, I'd have liked to have made the damage systems more reliable and thus readable.

 

A small but notable shortcoming for the prototype was that it lacked feedback for when a player was going to shoot their cork. This was an important piece of information for both players to gauge their next couple actions and was not properly working in the build we submitted to the jam. Otherwise, players may not have been aware of some of the more in-depth mechanics such as the cork shot force being reliant on the amount of fluid a player has and such, but the associated graphics and interfacing would have taken time which was better spent elsewhere, especially as these effects were minor.

 

The last and most significant problem with the submitted build was the level design. We did not have a finished prototype mechanically until the last evening, yet there was still a level designed for the game. As such, it relied on either outdated or assumed information, and thus the level we submitted was very cramped and didn't show the mechanics as well as it could have. The lesson there was that we should have been testing the level from the moment the game started working, rather than waiting for a nicely-renderer version to arrive. This would have been simple to test too, we just neglected to do so. In the future, we'll make sure to test out levels as soon as possible to ensure the metrics meet the gameplay and showcase it effectively, otherwise, one is wasting their game's potential.

Always designed with care

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Sean Braithwaite 2025

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