Been a busy few weeks! After a few design changes I believe the next part of the gym room is ready to be shown off a bit. This time it’s all about the punching bag.
The great thing about a punching bag is that I’ve found it’s actually pretty fun as just a standalone object. Beating around a good ol’ fashioned heavy bag is quite amusing even without having to worry about points, objectives, or anything else. That being said, this is still a game and needed a bit of flair to help keep it interesting. Of course, the punching bag will be available at all times to just wack around, but let’s get in to what happens when you push the “Start” button…
First thing you might notice is the score displays similar to the punching board appear. These are helpful tidbits which display where exactly you made contact with the bag, as well as the score awarded for your punch and your current score multiplier. Same as before, your score multiplier goes up for every consecutive hit (that is, every punch that was strong enough given your selected force requirement) and for alternating left and right punches.
Next, you’ll notice the big green square (pending a model change to something more appealing) attached to the bag. This is what helps make the punching bag more of a game instead of just another day at the gym. These squares will appear randomly anywhere around the bag and act as targets on where to hit the bag, keep those feet moving! Successfully punching one of the squares away awards a point bonus, while leaving them alive too long will result in a score deduction. The square will change colors as it gets lower and lower in health, so you’ll know when you’re about to finish one off.
Finally, the punching bag adds a style which is currently unique to this game mode. Where in the punching board you lose by allowing too many buttons to pop up and in the puzzle game you lose by allowing too many blocks to build up, you lose the punching bag game through TIME. How this works is before you start the game you are allowed to select how long you would like to go at it for (anywhere from 15 seconds to 180 seconds currently). The countdown timer will then begin and you can pound at the bag until time runs out.
Now you may be asking yourself “Why wouldn’t I just set the time to the maximum value every time?”. Simple, the punching bag game deducts points as the game goes on! If you set the game to the full 180 seconds and get tired halfway through, be prepared to lose a ton of points as the clock winds down. The benefit to setting the timer longer is that fewer points are lost as the game goes on. Do your best to keep the high intensity for as long as you can and reach new high scores!
Looking forward to a bit of polish and testing on both the punching bag and the punching board, then on to the last part of the gym room!