BBTAN: Elemental Expansion

My version of BBTAN expanded with custom features made in Unity.

Gameplay Additions:

• Circular Block - new type of block.
  
• New Pickups - Bomb, Sniper, Multiplier, Mega Bomb and three elemental pickups (Lightning, Fire and Ice).
• Elemental Effects - Elemental pickups have both basic and enhanced abilities. Fire and Ice also introduce status effects.
• Elemental Resistance - some blocks are immune to elemental damage.
• Pickup Counter System - limits Sniper and controls the enhanced effects of other pickups.
• Visual Feedback - added effects for elemental damage and enhanced pickup activation.

Controls:
Hold LMB to aim and adjust the shooting angle, then release to shoot.

Case Study:

My main goal was to explore how additional mechanics could change the decision-making in a simple physics-based game without completely replacing its core gameplay.

I was especially interested in bringing mechanics inspired by aRPG and hack 'n' slash games, such as elemental damage and stacking status effects, into a much simpler game.

Changes and observed results:

Circular Blocks:
The effect is relatively small, but it makes some situations more chaotic and can create new gaps between blocks. When circles and triangles appear close to each other, these gaps can sometimes create new opportunities for the player to shoot balls between blocks.

Problem – Fire Did Not Fit Traditional Damage Over Time

The obvious way to design Fire was as a standard damage-over-time effect.

However, in BBTAN this would mostly mean small amounts of delayed damage between turns. Since the player's main interaction with the board comes from hitting blocks with balls, I felt that this would be weak and unsatisfying.

Solution:
When a ball hits a block with Fire stacks, the block receives additional damage based on the number of stacks, and one stack is removed.

The stacks remain between turns, so Fire still has a persistent effect while making the damage directly connected to the player's actions.

Problem – Traditional Ice Mechanics Did Not Work

Ice is commonly associated with slowing movement or actions, but this did not translate well to BBTAN.

Blocks only move one row downward at the end of a turn, so there was no meaningful way to slow them down. I also considered making the basic effect freeze individual blocks, but this made stacking less meaningful and reduced the purpose of the stronger effect.

Solution:
I replaced the traditional slow concept with Ice stacks that deal damage at the end of the turn.

The enhanced effect has a completely different role: it freezes the entire board for one turn, preventing blocks from moving down and preventing new blocks from spawning.

This gave the basic and enhanced effects different purposes while keeping both connected to the idea of Ice.

Problem – New Pickups Made the Game Easier

Because elemental pickups could provide additional damage and board control, they could potentially make certain board situations much easier.

Solution:
I added elemental resistance to blocks.

Blocks can resist Fire, Ice, Lightning or all three elements. Resistant blocks can still receive elemental stacks, but those stacks cannot damage them.

This created situations where the player has to consider whether a particular elemental pickup is actually useful against the current board.

Problem – New Mechanics Were Harder to Read

Elemental stacks and enhanced pickup effects introduced more hidden gameplay information.

I wanted the player to understand when stacks were actually affecting a block and when a pickup had reached the point where its stronger effect was activated.

Solution:
I added visual feedback for both situations.

When a block takes damage from its elemental stacks, the corresponding elemental icon briefly appears at the block's position, slightly larger than the original pickup and fading out shortly afterward.

I also use a similar effect when a pickup with the 1.5x counter reaches zero and activates its enhanced effect.

Observations:

The elemental system showed me that familiar mechanics from other games often need to be redesigned to fit the game they are being added to.

Fire and Ice both started from familiar ideas, but their final implementations were shaped by BBTAN's turn structure and the way the player interacts with the board.

The project also showed me how adding one mechanic can create new balance, readability and interaction problems elsewhere in the game.

What I would change:

Looking back, I would redesign the basic effects of Fire and Ice.

The current Fire interaction could fit Ice very well: hitting a frozen block could feel like breaking the ice and triggering the stored effect.

For Fire, I would instead use one of the other concepts I considered during development and adapt it to the game's turn-based structure.

Both effects would then need to be rebalanced.

Key Takeaway:

This project taught me how to take familiar gameplay mechanics and adapt them to a different gameplay loop.

Instead of directly copying common Fire and Ice mechanics from other games, I had to consider how they would interact with BBTAN's physics, turns and board progression.

It also gave me more experience with balancing mechanics, creating reusable systems and using visual feedback to make more complex gameplay easier to understand.