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Feature: Gaijin Games' BIT.TRIP BEAT Postmortem
by Staff [Console/PC]
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June 3, 2009
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One step the Gaijin Games team took that Neuse believes benefited BIT.TRIP BEAT's development is set the title's gameplay and controls as the foundation, letting that inform their decision on what platform to release on:
"I've heard it said that American/Western developers work from the TV out, and that Japanese/Eastern developers work from the controller in. As our company name implies, we have unlimited respect and admiration for Japanese developers, even though we recognize what we are -- gaijin. However, that did not deter us from trying to work from the controller in.
I knew that I wanted to make a series of classic-inspired games and as a big fan of "paddle" games, I knew where to start. However, lacking a spinner controller (insert rant here), there really isn't a good way to control a paddle game. I've played countless paddle games with D-Pads and Analog Sticks, each being an exercise in frustration.
In our prototyping phase, we had the bright idea to try out the Wii Remote's Motion Sensor. The moment we controlled the paddle using the Wii Remote, it was crystal clear what platform we needed to develop this game for.
Working from the controller in paid off, because if the player can't control the game well, what's the point?"
Not everything turned out as planned for the studio, and due to time constraints, the team needed to rush its implementation of BIT.TRIP BEAT's bosses:
"In the original design, there were no boss battles. Why there weren't seems silly in retrospect, because as a gamer I love boss battles. Regardless, I chose not to include them in the design. The more we played the game, the more we realized that we needed something. However, this realization came quite late in the project, after all of our other tasks had already been scheduled.
And due to the small scope of the game, as acting producer, I didn't want to cut anything in the schedule to make time for the new work we'd have to do to implement bosses. So, we piled them right on top of the crunch that we were already doing. Because we were so far along in the development process, each boss had to be done in roughly two to three days. As you can imagine, that doesn't lead to well thought out design, nor does it lead to enough tuning or difficulty balancing.
In the end, the bosses were rushed, and while I think they ultimately add value to the game, they definitely feel rushed when I play it."
You can now read the postmortem at Gamasutra, which includes more examples from Gaijin Games' Alex Neuse on what went right and wrong with its WiiWare release BIT.TRIP BEAT (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from other websites).
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