Initial Ideas
Questball is made up of a series of 3 different Pinbox machines representing different classic RPG classes, the Wizard, the Archer, and the Warrior. These different machines would be set across from each other in “battle mode” so that your balls could be sent to the other person’s board, like a 1-on-1 fight between two RPG heroes/villains. This edition of Questball is centered around the Warrior. The initial idea for the Warrior Edition of Questball was to have lots of “defensive” pieces all around your board, meaning that you’d have lots of ramps that doubled as walls for the opponent, lots of ways to redirect and slow down the ball to make it easier to calculate your hits and how you’ll get the ball over to your opponents board.
What Changed?
As I went along, creating and designing the first iteration of the board for the Warrior, I found that my original idea of “defensive” pieces on the board was going to be very hard to make work properly, because a lot of these pieces that could keep your opponents from scoring on you too quickly also often became a hindrance to you when trying to get your ball over to the opponent’s side.
Eventually, I managed to set up a ramp in the center of the board that would act as a way for you to get your ball easily to the other player’s side, and set up a rubber band bouncer so that your opponents would have a very hard time sinking their ball too quickly when sending their ball down the middle of the board. In addition to this, another ramp was added on the left-hand side of the board, and a block was added to the right hand side. The ramp allows you to have a second course of “attacking” rather than just the middle, though it is much harder to get the ball up the ramp. The block makes it harder for anyone who sends their ball on that side to get you right away with it too, while not really hindering you, since you don’t need/want your ball to go through that side of the board anyways.
User Reactions
Overall, most people found the “battle mode” gimmick a lot of fun, and “choosing your class” was a cool way to mix up the battles between players. I think a lot of people found that the Warrior Edition of Questball had a hard time “attacking” the other player a lot of the time, as it took a good amount of precision and power to get the ball through either of the holes the Warrior has easy access to. Generally though, I think most players had a great time stepping into the role of the Warrior and defeating their enemies!
