Just as the title implies, BattleBlock Theater is in fact a fully functional theater. From a prop room, to concession stands, BattleBlock Theater has just about everything you’d expect to see inside of a theater, on an island, overrun by vicious cats. As we added deeper story elements to the world of BBT we made sure to reflect those elements in the backgrounds and overall themes of each chapter.
Be sure to take a look at the details added in the animation process to help age this theater, and stay to the end for a sneak peek of the most recent version of the Chapter 1 lobby!
On a side note:
Don’t forget to come play part of the game in person at PAX Prime next week! Visit us at Booth #3003 from August 31-September 2.
Today, we explore our Gift Shop area of BattleBlock Theater. As we developed our story for Hatty we found his overall presence was lacking throughout the game. You would see him in the cinematics, and occasionally spread out within the game, but we wanted to make sure Hatty’s presence was more immediate so that the player would feel motivated in what they were doing in trying to save him. We expect that the Gift Shop will be the most visited area in the game and since Hatty has an uncontrollable greed with the currency of BattleBlock Theater, this would be the most natural and fitting spot to have him hang out while the game progresses.
When we first tried putting Hatty behind a register on the ground it didn’t seem right. If he’s just sitting there you should be able to just grab him and run out, right? So I ended up moving him up into the balcony of the Gift Shop. This gave him a kind of ‘Doctor Evil’ sort of vibe as he overlooked all the transactions. However, Hatty doesn’t have that kind of natural evil, so I felt it’d be a necessary idea to illustrate his unwanted servitude to the cats, or in other words show the cats intimidating Hatty all day long. I thought this might strengthen players’ bonds to Hatty.
Screen capture of original sketch for gift shop interior
In most games where the hero gets betrayed early on, the immediate reaction is to get some type of revenge, IE. Kick Hatty’s butt. This wasn’t the feeling we wanted the players to have, though. So we had to adjust. The cats in the video that were around Hatty were later removed for a whole variety of reasons even though I still like the base idea of it all. We then found better ways to illustrate important story points to the player, while strengthening the story overall at the same time. But I can’t tell you how just yet or I’d be spoiling stuff!
The ‘prisoner concession devices’ you see in the video were originally negotiation chambers where you exchanged gems for prisoners. Previously, cats would release the prisoners after you paid up, but not being able to pick what you’re unlocking wasn’t being conveyed clearly. It seemed like you could have negotiated which prisoner you’d like to free.
The best way I could think of communicating not being able to pick who became free was to stuff all the prisoners into little gumball style machines. You turn the crank and hope you get the unlock you want. This concept resonated with the players much more, and it was funnier — that is, unless you’re the one trapped in a plastic ball all day.
In our latest BattleBlock Theater video, we show some of the changes described in this post:
BattleBlock Theater has been showcased in different forms over the past few years at tradeshows such as PAX, Comic-Con and Tokyo Game Show. We first revealed the game’s Arena Modes at PAX East in 2010, and in more recent years we moved on to featuring levels that you might see in the story/campaign mode.
Our intention was to focus your attention on the various block types that will help you through to the end, or cause you grief until you rage quit out of the game. On the other side of things we have our online prisoner updates, which were a weekly special treat for us to share with the community while showcasing some of the various gameplay elements of the game. Due to time constraints, and the small size of our team, we were unable to continue these prisoner updates on a weekly basis but hope to bring that all back eventually.
There are so many elements to our new universe that we sometimes forget to update everyone on what we’ve been working on. To fix that for now, here’s a shiny new bullet point list for your eyes!
200 + characters to unlock
200 + levels to navigate and conquer
10 + unique weapontools
Variety of interactive block types
Online Multiplayer Campaign/Arena modes
30 Achievements
Avatar Awards
Soundtrack created by well known artists, and members of our community!
+ Even more to be announced!
There’s some things we have to leave out for now, that we’ll be able to announce later in the year, but for now here’s a video of Dan animating some elements of the game.
