When creating the initial game proof of concept that would spark my main game idea, I was mainly inspired by the game Marble Blast Ultra (2006) for the Xbox 360. This original Xbox Live Arcade game is now sadly inaccessible in its original form, however it has been reverse engineered as an open source project, available online under the name OpenMBU. This franchise is perhaps one of the more popular physics-based “roll-a-ball” games, next to series like Super Monkey Ball, and has garnered a cult following of dedicated fans. In the Monkey Ball games, you tilt the world and follow the ball rolling as a result of that, but in the Marble Blast games you directly spin the marble as well as push it. This adds a surprising amount of depth to the gameplay, and a high skill ceiling, as experienced players can manipulate the ball’s spin in the air to let it perfectly bounce off of surfaces, setting up complicated chains of jumps towards the goal.
The game’s movement feels very intuitive and fluid, with the ball instantly reacting to a players input whenever they change movement directions or jump. Holding the jump button lets the player continuously jump which is vital for building up momentum, and the game also features several helpful powerups like super-jump or super-speed as well as a recharging Blast bar that can let the player jump and bounce higher. One brilliant gameplay feature was the time-travel pickups which freeze the timer seen at the top for five seconds. In the early game these are presented as a nice incentive for the player to make a potentially riskier detour for a promised time-save, but as the levels become more open-ended and dense later on, they open the possibility for finding new routes that chain all the pickups together for ridiculously low times on the leaderboard. Finding mechanics like this that are fun at low skill levels as well as raise the possible skill ceiling for dedicated players will be vital if I want to make a game with replay value in a similar genre.
The game has a glossy, futuristic look with bright, clean colours everywhere. I especially love the backgrounds, which include a lot of celestial elements that complement the floating island setting and were very popular in futuristic graphic design in the 2000’s. I am particularly reminded of the background videos of the Beatmania games around the turn of the millennium which featured a lot of similar elements from graphic designers at the time. This futuristic look is not something I am particularly looking to emulate for my project but it serves as more evidence to the fact that a bold art style is vital for a game like this that does not feature a prominent cast of characters.
Despite the popularity of this game on the Xbox 360 (owed partly to its multiplayer mode which I unfortunately cannot get a game on) it never received an official sequel, as its development company GarageGames went through several acquisitions and moved away from the video game business. However, spiritual successors such as Marble It Up! (2018) were made by many members of the original development team and have seen moderate success.
Overall, while I won’t make a clone of this style of game, I think Marble Blast Ultra is a masterclass in making a skill-based physics game that mixes the arcade and puzzle genre in a wonderfully addicting way, and I will definitely pick up some design techniques from this for my own project.
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