We just finished up our first Steam playtest for Let it Boom and we gotta say, it was an explosive success! (Couldn't help but throw that pun in there.)
First off, big thanks to everyone who strapped on their headsets and jumped in to test out our game. We couldn't have done this without you... well, we could have, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun.
Watching people play our game was an experience in itself! Some of you had amazing skills at blowing things up, while others looked like they might have blown themselves up. But hey, that’s the beauty of playtesting - we get to see the good, the bad, and the hilarious.
All in all, we had a blast (no pun intended this time) watching you guys play and hearing your thoughts on the game. We're excited to keep working on Let it Boom and bringing it to VR players everywhere.
So stay tuned, join our Discord, and keep an eye out for exploding llamas! 🌹
Join Let it Boom playtest đź’Ł
Hey there, chaos addicts!
We have prepared a playtest version of the Let it Boom tutorial as we crave your feedback.
For those who are interested in playing, here are some instructions:
🚀request access by clicking the "Request Access" button on the page
🚀have fun in the game 🚀join our Discord 🚀share your honest feedback with us there, or fill out a tiny little survey
Recently, we've started to make the first versions of Let it Boom with co-op. And it took us one session to understand that we're making a completely different game now. And while that understanding has only come now, but probably at the exact moment we needed it. The co-op mode has nothing we had built for the game before, apart from the core stuff – you can move, throw bombs and destroy objects.
In the very first version, the bombs didn't even explode ( ⚆ _ ⚆ )
But even playing this minimal version with a few team members, we discovered there's plenty to do on the go - tossing a burning bomb between each other (basically hot potato), king of the mountain and other stuff.
The result of our experiments was the idea that people might not need too much to have fun together. The game should have simple gameplay systems that can be combined to create physical impact (we are making a physical sandbox game, after all).
What comes to mind is, of course, the well-known Garry's Mod.
In such sandbox projects, the main fun comes from creating weird and absurd situations and game modes, such as Prop Hunt (which exists in many forms, from Garry's Mod to Team Fortress 2 or Call of Duty 4 and others).
In the end, the physical sandbox serves as at least two places at once, a place for fun and a theatrical stage. From the point of view of gameplay experience, the sandbox is an eccentric game and a performance in which the demonstration of physically obscure funny things (look what I can do!) is the main goal.
We're rethinking the concept of the game to lean towards the experience I described above. And while we'll still have a mode for players who like well-staged and explained quests and puzzles, I suspect the most fun and important role will be played by the free-roaming sandbox mode, with a number of gameplay systems that allow players to do silly things to each other or the environment.
Some of the fun things we have in mind so far are ball baskets, trolleys on rails, barrels/boxes to hide in and giant ancient cannons.
See you next time!
Let it Boom dev-blog March 2023
We've been thinking for a while about what other destructive weapons should we offer the player besides the bomb? The main motto of the game is "let's destroy everything around", so appropriate handtools would be the baseball bat, hammer or chop hammer, anything that has the ability to destroy the environment.
Well, the hammer was in Teardown and Red Faction, and we didn't want to copy that one to one..
Bat is already very popular, so we decided to skip it as well.
Obviously we all have warm feelings for the crowbar from Half Life.
We've tested a number of ideas, including a metal pipe, three types of bats - ordinary, with nails and a cricket one, a tomahawk and even a compact scythe!
In the end, we settled on a combination of an axe and an alpenstock. We think it's not overused in other games, it fits the theme of the game, it looks unique enough, and being a mixture of two tools gives us room for a variety of uses for it.
For example, it can be two-sided, one used for wall-climbing and the other for destroying things. And, of course, you would want to be able to throw the axe like a tomahawk, and you would want it to be able to stick into solid surfaces like wood.
The process of developing something as simple as an axe was, on the contrary, not an easy one. We went through a lot of difficulties because the new tool felt more like a whole new mechanic added to the game, bringing more and more use cases that we now had to consider. The axe stuck flat into surfaces, disappeared when it hit metal objects, became flat when the object it was thrown at was previously scaled, some objects started to rotate when the axe hit them, and many more.
Some bugs were so hilarious that we thought we could keep them as a feature for the release.
That's all for now, stay tuned for more posts!
Let it Boom dev-blog January 2023
The work on Let it Boom VR sometimes feels like wandering in the darkness, it might seem that you've chosen the right direction, but in reality you have no idea what's waiting for you at the end. For us as devs, the project feels so experimental that each idea needs at least a few checks before we can be sure that it'll work.
Let's take a look at such a small feature as a lighter (player uses it to light bomb fuses). We wanted to make the interaction with lighter more interesting than just clicking a button on a controller. And so the idea was to add a "flick" gesture to open Zippo-like lighters (they come with a cap) and the fire comes out and vice versa ("flick" it back, cap closes, light is off). Our programmer had to try a few variants before the cohesion between opening/closing animations, its speed and % when "flick" worked became what we wanted.
Our main focus right now is the content itself. Here are concepts for the basic hallway-like tutorial level, with tips for a new player, where we also make him familiar with the core story of the world our protagonist emerges in.
For example, in the very beginning the player appears in front of the gates, all hints at them being heaven → you might think that you're dead, but it's not that simple ;)
This scene also will have tons of small explosion particles - interacting (pushing, grabbing, pulling) with them in VR is pure fun!
If you've played 2022 Autumn demo, you probably saw an old weirdo talking on TV and crawling around the sky-map dome half naked and our beloved talking bombs. Well, the tutorial will have a proper backstory to tell you now.
The main draw is that our hero (player) is blank. We do not plan to fulfil him with the context, huge story, character, etc. We hope that if a player enjoys the game, he'll bring himself into this hero, associate with him. This makes planning the story more challenging, but let's not open too many cards here, ha-ha! I can only promise that we’ll keep it weird and fun, same as it was in the demo.
That's it for now. If you're reading this, stay tuned for more posts this year!
Status update đź’Ł
Hello, everyone!
Firstly, we wanted to thank everyone who paid attention to our game, played the ordinary and Halloween edition demos, shared all the videos, publications and added Let it Boom to their wishlist!
Overall, this post is a small status update, we just wanted to let you know that we are not going on hiatus, but instead continuing our work and are planning to break into a first half of 2023 with the new build full of explosion and destruction.
In the recent weeks, the team had fun making a stationary cannon, prototyping future explosive (of course!) puzzles and working on a very familiar for VR distant grab feature.
That’s all for now, stay tuned for the future posts, folks!
Let it Boom Halloween Event
Halloween is coming and we are ready to blow!
Try new spooky content in Let it Boom VR Demo — accustomed to chasing cute llamas with a bat? Let's see how brave you are with sinister pumpkins!
💥Demolish the location with the bombs, which is now it's a nighttime desert with an appropriate atmosphere. 🏏Do not forget to smash piñatas by launching a pike at them. 💣Load the gun with bombs and other objects and practice your wrecking skills with it. 🥇Any bashing or explosive activity earns you points.
