DEVOURING KULA BLOX: THE EVOLUTION OF A GAME CONCEPT
August 25, 2011
Written by Jason Azevedo
In my experience, no two games follow the same path to realization. I’d like to say that KULA BLOX was a concept derived through some act of creative genius but the truth of the matter is... it kind of happened unexpectedly. Actually, many great game concepts come to be in the same way (but that’s another blog post for another day).
It all started when we held a ‘Pitch Your Game’ day at TG Studios last November. We encouraged employees from across the company to bring forth game ideas that followed very simple criteria: casual, simple story, marketable and fun. We were very pleased with the response we got and compiled a grab bag of a dozen or so solid concepts that really met the mark. After much deliberation, we felt that one concept really stood out: Totemals, a concept by Dave our Senior Artist.
Totemals was a physics based puzzle game that involved stacking animals of different sizes to create structures. The concept quickly evolved into a Tetris-like experience that had animals falling from above into a level. As animals stacked they would only eat animals that were below them in the food chain - consequently clearing the level. The most captivating aspects of the concept were of course the art style (comprised of uber-cute block-shaped animals) and the predator vs. prey food chain mechanic. We weren’t entirely sure how the game mechanic was going to work exactly so we 
quickly got to prototyping. First, Matt (our Technical Director) put together a physics demo where blocks were falling from the sky endlessly - piling and tumbling off each other. The demo was so much fun to watch that we knew we were onto something interesting. Second, Matt began implementing some of the puzzle game elements while at the same time toying with an arcade version of the game... enter the unexpected. He presented both prototypes which lead to many discussions about what kind of game we wanted to make. It was a really hard call, but in the end we decided the physics-based arcade experience was the most appealing and fun. We were no longer stacking animals so Totemals (although a great name) didn’t work. We decided to call the project Animalosity.
Now that we had a prototype and a working title, we plummeted head first into conceptual design. We wanted to make sure that the visual style was both unique and appealing so we took our time designing the animal blocks. We toyed with a number of shapes and configurations but ended up 
coming back to a style that was quite close to the original designs from the pitch.
From a game design perspective, we felt like the core gameplay concept of falling and eating was solid from the get go. It was the kernel of fun that kept the player engaged. Once we nailed down the core gameplay mechanics, the rest came quite naturally. Ken (our Senior Concept artist) came up with the idea for the crates at the bottom of each level - providing a satisfying ending and a away to earn in-game currency. We also felt that the animals, though very cute, lacked individuality. There was no real difference, apart from their appearance, that set them apart. To solve this we decided that giving each animal unique, innate powers would give each of them their own personality.
One thing that we struggled with for quite a while was making the game more challenging. We didn’t simply want to increase the eating goals per level as that would become frustrating - we needed something else. It was actually through focus-testing (and some great feedback from Tom Frencel of Little Guy Games) that we decided to implement a health meter that depleted every time the player was hit by a predator. After three predator hits, the player had to restart the level. This with the added challenge of making larger prey more dangerous, provided the level of difficulty we were looking for.
The biggest design challenges came later with the addition of obstacles and the speed at which the player was moving. We realized very quickly that the obstacles became inconsequential; players just didn’t have enough time to evade them before they bounced off. We didn’t want to change the falling speed so we decided to add chevrons that let the player know an obstacle was coming.
Looking back, one of the biggest challenges we faced during development was actually naming the game. We felt that though fitting, Animalosity was too hard to say and even harder to spell. A long list of names was compiled but nothing really stuck - everything from Chompimals to Animal Droppings. One of the staff even came up with darWINNING (I’m sure Charlie would be proud). Here’s the list we came up with:
Animal Rain, Blockimals, Hunger Drop, Chomp Around, The Food Chain, Animal Droppings, Snack 'n Drop, Nibble and Glide, The Crate Escape, Beast Feast, AniMeals AniMunch, darWINNING, Dropimals, Freedom Fall, Food Flight, Flight Food, Food Fall, Box Lunch, Wild Flight, Chow Down, Fall Feast, Air Graze, Chompimals, Liberty Leap.
One day, as we toiled over possible titles, Ken turned and said , “What if we use the word KULA? It means ‘to eat’ in Swahili.” We added BLOX and there you have it :)
KULA BLOX is currently in QA and we’re anxiously awaiting it’s release. Keep your eye out! Before you know it... it’ll be raining ferocious block-shaped cuteness.