Gameplay Enhancer: Breakable Boxes
In Restitched, the 'Hardware' chapter contains gameplay enhancement objects. Things like teleportation bubbles, trampolines to bounce on, and more.
As we continue to expand this category with new gameplay objects, we like to consider what would be most useful as a prebuilt object. In this case, we've decided to add a simple breakable box!
Breakable boxes are like fragile crates, and slashing them with your Needle 'n Thread will make them... well, break!
Rather than wiring up future logic and attaching it to your own ambiguous object, these boxes are meant to have the behavior built-in, and with effects you might not get if you'd make it from scratch.
This also keeps a consistent visual identity between players' levels, so you'll often know when a box is breakable or not.
This object had several sheets of concept art made. It's meant to be a retexture of the 'TNT' box mesh, which is another object in the game. Our idea is to keep a consistent box/crate motif for these types of objects, and only change their icon and coloring.
This object helps form simple sandbox physics gameplay. For instance, you could break a stack of them to lower or tilt a platform, clear obstacles to continue through a path, or maybe even to hide something inside or behind.
Here's the earliest clip of testing a placeholder breakable box in-game. Note that it has no proper effects, sounds, or style yet! Just a simple deletion!
Our next step is to finish the breakable box model to match our concept art, then set it up in-game with its own effects and sounds.
What do you think about having more preset gameplay objects like this?
We love the idea of having a range of basic objects that players can plop down in levels and use consistently across community content!
We're excited to improve the visuals of slashing the needle soon, and also for collection and destruction effects (like with this box). We'll show more when we've made it!
Comments (5)
I don't know if you touched on this already, but a preset gameplay object I would recommend that you add is a set of racing gates, which can be done on foot or in a vehicle (if the level has one). That, and maybe a powerup that temporarily strengthens (and perhaps even enlarges or increases the visual sharpness of) the Needle of the Needle 'n Thread.
Love the idea of sorta prebuilt gameplay objects! Although I don’t know if anything about the design reads as fragile right now. If anything they look quite reinforced with the bolts and extra tape. When I think fragile I think maybe cracks or larger gaps between the boards that make up the crate? I can see the icon is referring to a crack but to me rn it reads as a lightning bolt. I think that with the yellow strips makes it seem like some kind of battery.
I'd probably also suggest to really push for visual destinction between the TNT and breakable crate. I get wanting to reskin but when one is encouraging you to touch it and the other causes a big explosion on touch I feel like even at a very quick glance you should know the difference between them. Maybe the TNT is made of red metal and the breakable is more flimsy wooden slats type thing.
Anything that adds more functionality is always a welcome addition! These would be great for puzzles, and just that simple box design stamped a different color could make some nice looking steel girders! There’s lots of possibilities with mechanics like this!
Definitely!!