Hippos Gameplay Video

It’s still a work in progress, but I wanted to share the previously promised gameplay footage. Being such a simple game, there isn’t a great deal to showcase… but it certainly gives you a sense of how the game will work.

As you can see in the footage, you control your hippo by simply rubbing its back. The actual mechanic needs to be tweaked as it doesn’t feel quite natural yet, but it certainly works. However, there is issue with the texture of the surface itself. It’s slightly rough, which is great for general use… but it’s somewhat uncomfortable when you quickly rub your finger back and forth. I have a feeling we may need to reconsider a tapping interface, or we might actually introduce a physical object as the primary interface element.

We’ve modeled the environment and if you look closely, you’ll notice that we even animated the water. We still need to add some trees and shadow animations, plus I’d love to make the water respond to the actual gameplay… although I think that’s a little too ambitious for our initial release.