We have been working on implementing ghosting - a feature where you can see your previous run as a partly visible and untouchable ball. It is working really well, and it is a super cool way to make the players really feel the competition aspect built into this amazing racing game.

This little fellow just found his way from Marie’s sketch board to Maya 3d. Angry, yes, and full of energy!

Bojan has worked hard on the UI bits lately, and we have put together a sweet collection of screens for you to enjoy. Take a look at these multiplayer screens, for example. 2, 3 or 4 players can play against each other in this mode.

In the single player campaign mode, you can instantly see your run result matched against other players, and - if you want to - try to beat a player that was slightly better than you:

So, you thought Mad Ballz would be a regular marble game? Nope. The last few days, we have been working on the ball concepts. We knew from the very beginning that we wanted balls with a personality. We could have solved that by modelling our personal... uhm... No. Inspired by Trans Formers and Bakugan, this is what we are tinkering with. 

Concepts for Mad Ballz by our concept artist Marie

There’s no arguing that sound design is one of the most important factors of a game. Who would be scared if a horror game didn’t have some eerie sounds or atmospheric music? Who wouldn’t get pumped for a platformer or arcade game if the music wasn’t vibrant and full of energy? To put it simply, you need some great music for a great game. 

That is why, for Mad Ballz, we brought on the crazy talented Barry Leitch. Our master musician has been creating music for games since 1986 such as pieces for Horizon Chase among many others. Barry was kind enough to take a break from creating our awesome game music to share some advice for all you aspiring musicians, game devs and artists out there. What can an indie music creator do? Starting out, the professional tools are usually out of budget and the expertise might not be there yet. The spirit is willing but the composer just hasn’t quite leveled up yet. “You can do a lot on a computer alone. There are plenty of VSTs out there -- use them. Start out small and work your way up. The more work you put into something, the better you’re going to get. The better you get, the better your work is and the more people will take notice. It also doesn’t hurt to do a lot of networking,” Barry shares. Some of the inspiration for Mad Ballz’s music comes from Brad Fuller, a legendary game composer in his own right that passed away some time ago. You might not know the name but Brad Fuller wrote the original Marble Madness score back in the 80s -- he’s more than enough inspiration for us. With a wink, Barry stated, “Take up programming. It’s more profitable.” You’ve got to do what you love, right? There are plenty of starving artists out there that can testify their ideas would drive them nuts if they didn’t somehow give them life. For all you composers, writers, developers, artists and creators out there, take it from Barry: Do a lot of demos / work in general and network. The work he has put into the soundtrack for Mad Ballz is proof enough that the work is more than worth it.

We’ve had a number of internal discussions over which direction to take our game. After several weeks struggling to find the right design—not just on per level basis but also the environment and world itself—we decided to step back and, as the saying goes, see the forest for the trees.

Game design can be a tricky thing; full of stop-starts, negotiations, adjustments, and moments that lead right back to the drawing board. One has to balance various concerns and make hard decisions. And often enough that is good, because the chaos eventually gives way to progress.

Primarily, we wanted to make a game that is an ode to Marble Madness, but we also wanted to give it a modern spin. So, drawing on some inspiration from Lara Croft GO, we finally settled on a look and gameplay style.

Instead of a grid, we went with a checkered floor, bringing the feel of Marble Madness while providing an impression of speed when the ball rolls along. And to give life into the area, we added some bloom, glowing lights on the totems, and some colorful décor into the environment.

The design is still a work in progress and there’s yet a lot left to do. While the technical artist continue to work on the look of the game, the developers build the core game mechanics. Currently we’re finalizing the ball controls, which we plan to include several new features not in the original Marble Madness. For instance, we plan on adding controller buttons for instant braking, jumping, and zero friction.

Who here can ever forget the nostalgia of those old, super difficult Atari arcade games? Some of the classics of the era have seen tributes and reboots even in the modern day and age – there’s just no arguing that those simple pixel graphics had a charm to them and the work put in was nothing short of amazing at the time.

Marble Madness might be one of the best examples of that video game development love from the 80s. Designed by legendary Mark Cerny, Marble Madness debuted in 1984 and was the first game to use the Atari System 1. It was also Atari’s first game that was programmed in the C languages of code as well as having its artwork designed by the surreal artist and legend in his own right M. C. Escher. With its delightful soundtrack done in true stereo, one of the first games to do so, mind you, and addicting gameplay, Marble Madness saw commercial success, ports and lots of tribute games as well as copycats. What’s more is that Marble Madness followed the video game crash of 1983 in North America yet still saw amazing success from the work and love put into it.

Mark Cerny, the lead designer, and Bob Flanagan, the software engineer, would put in ten months of development time to create Marble Madness. Cerny joked about his lack of artistic skills when it came to the minimalistic designs of the game though Escher clearly had a say in the odd dimensional planes and obstacles players guided the trackball through.

Though Cerny and his team ultimately had to omit several interesting ideas from the final product, Marble Madness still went on to see success on a broad scale and was ported to numerous systems available at the time. Following the video game crash, Marble Madness was a source of inspiration to many – us included, obviously!

Nice to meet you! We are Monkeybin, a game development studio based in Norway. Creating games is the coolest thing on earth, and we are doing our very best to create some awesome titles for you to play!

This devlog is about our upcoming title, codename "Mad Ballz". We grew up in the retro game era, and one of the coolest games we played was Marble Madness. Remember it? The marble rolling around in a boxy world, controlled by you, trying to complete the level as fast as possible. It was a real challenge!