Brief

Baseballoons is a home run contest game I developed for iOS. The design inspiration came from a local arcade game called Baseball Pro. Which is the name of the Unity project! The game immediately jumped out to me because I am a sucker for simple yet difficult skill based games. While the physicality of an arcade experience was very fun, I thought a video game version could be even better. The game design needed to adjust the main swinging mechanic for mobile devices, replace the ticket rewards, and ease up on the difficulty.

The arcade game Baseball Pro, image from youtube.

Adapting the main mechanic

The Baseball Pro arcade game works by pulling back a big physical baseball bat to hit the ball, which is really fun! But when getting to work on the prototype for my version, it became apparent that style wouldn't work great on a mobile device. Pulling back on the 3D model of a baseball bat just isn't the same. It felt inconsistent, and the available screen space to try to control the swing was limited. A single touch hold to pull back and let go, with a slower bat pull back speed was immediately more controllable, and more fun. After a ball is hit in the original arcade game, the targets are simply holes for the ball to fall into. I wanted something to actually hit the ball into and created a balloon model with a scrollable texture to show it’s base value, and a bit of vertical movement to encourage timing. Also there’s a bomb to avoid, because what signifies an out better than hitting missing a lovely balloon and hitting a scary bomb.

Early Baseballoons prototype.

New rewards

Rewards are where I thought the mobile design could really shine. Arcade games of course reward with tickets which can be redeemed for different trinkets. For the reward design in Baseballoons I thought a big cast of fun and wonky unlockable figurines would be great. In the Baseball Pro arcade game, hitting singles or doubles results in a light on the play area blinking to move around. In Baseballoons, you can watch your unlockable figurines bounce around the bases. After accumulating enough coins a new character can be unlocked and selected from a scrollable list of unlocked characters.

Sample of Baseballoons unlockable figurines.

Revisiting difficulty

After sharing builds around to different play testers, the difficulty was a recurring piece of feedback. The game was just too difficult, even with making the bat swing slower and easier to control. The arcade game was of course very difficult with many swings blasting the ball all around the machine only to find an out, and misses were instant outs as well.

I decided to let clear misses simply not count for anything, play on! Only hitting the out bombs would count as an out. This of course created much longer play sessions, but that just means more coins and more rewards, why not? Players found the game to be more fun and accessible, and I think a wider audience was able to enjoy the game.

Screenshot of the final game.