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Mobile Pie explains the moves of B-Boy Brawl: Breakin' Fingers

Let your fingers do the dancing

Mobile Pie explains the moves of B-Boy Brawl: Breakin' Fingers
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| B-Boy Beats (iPhone)

Dancing is that most personal of behaviours.

We might think we can pull off moves like John Travolta, whereas in reality, we're more like an arthritic Bez from the Happy Mondays.

Still, it's an activity that gets people excited, and there's nothing more enthusiastic than a bunch of B-Boys doing their stuff on the dancefloor.

Which is where Bristol-based developer Mobile Pie's iPhone game B-Boy Brawl: Breakin' Fingers comes into play.

It's been in development for a while, so we thought we'd catch up with creative producer Will Luton and programmer Tom Dowding to find out about the hows and the whys.

Pocket Gamer: What was the inspiration behind B-Boy Brawl: Breakin' Fingers?

Will Luton: There were a series of videos on YouTube where people were breakdancing with their fingers which were really cool. So, when I came on board with Mobile Pie, we discussed making an app that taught you how to do it. As we drilled down, it became a game and we started thinking about using nerdcore artists and we got really excited about it.

The other game we were working on stalled after the initial prototype because it wasn't fun so even though it was almost finished, we decided to kill it off and start work on B-Boy Brawl.

How has it changed during development?

Will: We're on the third or fourth version of the core gameplay mechanics, so it’s changed a great deal.

Because it plays so differently from anything else out there, we've had a great deal of difficulty in getting people to understand it right off the bat, which has meant a few compromises to our high-level design ideals. But ultimately it has led to a game which is refined and ultimately really fun and that is the most important thing.

Now it's much less about teaching people to do the moves and more about getting people to do them right away without even realising.

It'll still teach you to breakdance with your fingers, but it no longer feels like a piece of educational software. It feels like a new rhythm game sub-genre and that is a huge success. We take it down the pub and pass it around our friends and where we used to get frustrated faces and, "It's good, but..." politeness, we now get smiles and "That's awesome... when is it out?"

What have been the technical challenges?

Tom Dowding: I was initially developing the game using OpenGL ES, which became time consuming as we started to require more graphical effects and animations.

Despite being a fair way into development, we made the decision to redesign the architecture around Cocos2D - a free game library that sits on top of OpenGL and has lots of very quick and easy APIs that can make the look of your game come to life. It was a pain to do but has definitely been worth it and saved us lots of time in the long run.

How near is it to being finished is it?

At the moment, we're at a stage where we're adding more moves and designing the levels and menus, but we're still looking for publishers to partner with. That's mainly as we don't have resources in-house to market the game and license the tracks.

What plans do you have in terms of updates - more music etc - and social networking features?

Will: We aren't 100 per cent on all the features yet, but yeah, certainly bonus levels and tracks, which are either separate from the main narrative or appended to it, will emerge after release as well as new moves.

We want to be reactive to what people are saying, so if Facebook connectivity or the ability to create custom levels are requested from enough people then we'll add it in. The game is for iPhone and iPod touch gamers and we will serve them and provide them with what they ask for.

Thanks to Will and Tom for their time.

You can keep up-to-date with what Mobile Pie are up to with B-Boy Brawl: Breakin' Fingers over at its website, and via Twitter.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.