Released: 10-01-2023 (Early Access)
Platform: Steam
Development time: 13 months
Genre: Multiplayer Racing Platformer
Gum Ball Run is a free to play online multiplayer racing platformer. I wanted to see if I could make an online racing game with in app purchases. Basically a live service game.
Development went pretty smoothly up until release. I used Proton for setting up online servers. The biggest challenge in these online games is how you communicate between players. Because of lag each player has to record their own time and after finishing a race that time has to be shared with the other players. Then a manager has to decide which player gets first and who gets second or third. So when both players finish a race the results needed a bit of a delay so that each time could first be analyzed to see who was the fastest.
I also made a customization system so that players could customize their gum ball however they wanted. At first cosmetics had to be bought with Gummies which could be purchased through in app purchases. Due to the game eventually not getting any players I decided to remove all in app purchases and use the game’s main menu to promote my other games.
All the race levels are procedurally generated. A level is made up of chunks that are then randomly placed one after the other. This was an optimal way for me to get a lot of variety out of 1 race track theme.
After release I got a lot of people playing. Because of this I kept making updates and introducing new race levels. Unfortunately I underestimated how much work these live service games require. You also need a constant influx of new people because after a while your old players move on to something else. Doing all of this on my own was not possible and the game slowly died out because of the lack of new players. As a final update I introduced a single player mode so that players can also enjoy the game even if there is no one online.