Super Springbreak Speedboat Hero SD Beta.

Hey, look! I made this, along with the other people at PLA Studios. (it was released a while ago, but it took me ages to move this post from ‘drafts’)

After the success of get182.com , we were really excited to release our next game.

It’s more mainstream than get182.com, but it is far from conventional. At it’s core is a competitive racer,complete with custom track builder, but with an interesting take on social network sharing, we really think we’ve got a unique way to share your content.


We really wanted to focus on the game gameplay mechanics in order to make sure that at the heart of the game was a well balanced, competetive, and fun experience.

I’d like to offer an insight into the design process behind some of the key features of SSSHSD, and in this blog post I’ll be looking at the reason behind the track pieces that are in the game.

There are currently a limited number of track tiles, but each one was carefully picked to offer unique challenges, working on a risk and reward system. The track builder is also a big part of our game, and we wanted to make it as accessible as possible, without restricting each player’s creativity.

Keeping track pieces to simple straights and turns means that we can add more traditional features, like speed boosts, or non traditional features, such as the sharks and dinosaurs, that allow us to inject not only gameplay, but also character and charm. The aim was for the player to easily understand what each track tile does on a functional level, allowing them the opportunity to work out fun, unique combinations.

The dinosaur corners are a perfect example of our risk and reward approach. Do you risk taking a tight line down the inside, knowing that you have a higher risk of hitting a dinosaur, but possibly cutting a vtial half-second from your time? Or do you play it safe and go around the outside?

Similarly, the shark works on the basis that you can risk it and go through the mouth, activating that all important speedboost, or ensure you wont lose time by going around it. Combine the dinosaur corner and shark piece together, and you start challenging the player to not only deal with the immediate dangers, but also plan for the ones ahead. There’s a massive difference in time between taking the inside of a dinosaur corner and nailing the shark piece, to playing it safe around the outside. But if you hit either one of them, then you’re lap is done for.


You can play SSSHSD by heading over to http://www.springbreakhero.com


There are other features within the game that I’d like to talk about, but we’re busy doing some cool stuff at the moment…