Reinventing Ramps: From Flash Curiosity to iOS Success

When I made the original Ramps back in 2007, my goal was not to prototype a game that Apple would eventually recognize as an iPhone Game of the Week—there wasn’t even an App Store at the time! I was just trying to learn some basic programming skills in Flash.

Most of the lessons I learned from making the game were pragmatic, unconcerned with and unaware of any potential audience. Ramps was a sandbox I created to play with fundamental ActionScript physics, flawed as they were.

My point-of-view shifted dramatically when the game found an audience, even moreso when a platform appeared that seemed tailor-made for its style of play. Working in newfound collaboration with Tim Sears, I began to reexamine the game not just as a tinkerer, but as a designer.

Character

The original game’s style was spartan yet industrial. Objects were unburdened with excess detail yet garishly rendered with glassy highlights and metallic gradients. Aside from the quirkiness of the robot piranha (an unsubtle tribute to Sonic the Hedgehog), the visual style was stale and unmemorable.

I didn’t want Ramps for iPhone to feel hermetically sealed. I wanted it to feel friendly, approachable and alive.

So I gave the ball a face.

When the ball was inanimate, only the player’s pride was at stake. The introduction of another personality, however subtle, elicits their empathy. The ball’s well-being is in his or her hands.

We’re all social creatures by nature. Our emotions are amplified by everyone around us; our best friend, our pet dog, even a non-descript circle rolling across our iPhone’s screen. Our sense of accomplishment, and thusly our level of satisfaction, is heightened by their expressiveness.

Variety

Most of my favorite games are painted from a fairly limited palette of core elements. There’s not much more to Super Mario Bros. than running and jumping, but the variety of enemies, worlds and power-ups elevate the game from mere Pitfall! successor to international phenomenon.

Ramps is much more limited in scope: Guide the ball into the cup by moving and rotating ramps. It’s easy to pick up and play, but that simplicity becomes a double-edged sword if new elements aren’t introduced periodically to sustain a sense of progression and excitement.

The original Flash game boasted a few different enemies, but the levels were entirely set against an unchanging, sterile blue wall. Boring!

For the iOS version, we separated levels into two unique worlds. The first was an expanded redesign of the Flash game with more cohesive visuals and support for scrolling levels. The second was completely new, an icy tundra designed to contrast World 1’s lava and robotics with snowcapped mountains and malicious penguins.

We also used variety to appeal to different skill levels. For every complaint we received claiming Ramps was too easy, there was another bemoaning its difficulty. Our solution was inspired by one of Team Meat’s additions to their stupendous platformer, Super Meat Boy, as documented in the booklet accompanying the Ultra Edition:

The dark world is an expert mode set parallel to the main game. As the player completes levels they will unlock expert versions in the dark world if they complete the level under a set par.

[…]

All in all the dark world system allows for Super Meat Boy to become 2 full games, 150+ main game levels fo the average gamer and 150+ expert levels for the hardcore gamer, but set up in a way that an average gamer who completes the main game can easily transition into the difficulty of the dark world levels and the game will unfold even more.

We thought this was genius, so we stole borrowed the concept as a reward for completing normal world challenges.

Presentation

I played Valve’s Portal series out of order. Despite the first game’s universal acclaim, I was too intimidated by first-person shooters to participate as anything more than a spectator. I enjoyed watching my friend Peter triumph over the final dystopian challenge, but couldn’t imagine my comparatively meager gaming abilities yielding the same results.

Portal 2 arrived about four and a half months after we released Ramps for iPhone. It was easy to ignore the series as a casual gamer, but as a game designer? That would be downright irresponsible!

Portal 2 blew my mind. I’d never experienced such an approachable and polished puzzle challenge so lovingly draped in masterful presentation. After completing the game, I immediately purchased the original title… yet surprisingly, I found myself unable to sustain interest past the first dozen or so challenges. While still a groundbreaking game, it withers in the shadow of its successor’s depth and ambition.

The history of gaming is filled with similar evolutions. Super Mario Bros. 3 retained the fundamentals of the series’ 1985 debut while introducing overworld maps that provided a much greater sense of setting and atmosphere. The core elements of Tetris haven’t changed since 1984, yet developers continue to modernize its presentation.

The old Ramps game cut many of these corners. It lacked any sound or music. There was no way to save progress (unless you counted the funky password system). There were no meaningful unlockables, and levels were organized in a bland, linear and predictable fashion.

We took care in the iOS version to put thought into every screen and dialog, to make sure they were all rendered thematically in the context of the little world we’d created (however simple and cartoonish it was). By filling out the game with these presentational elements, we hoped to make the player’s traversal of challenges feel natural, seamless, immersive and fun.

We don’t know what we’re doing

I do not reference seminal games of the past to suggest that ours compares in some way. Frankly, I don’t believe it does. Tim and I had no experience making games prior to Ramps; the fact that it exists at all (not to mention that it broke the US App Store Top 10) is a testament to the games that entertained and inspired us over the years.

When I inadvertently created a Flash game, I thought I was making at least a tech demo, at most a toy. Remaking the title taught me the error of my ways. In the trailer for Indie Game: The Movie, Polytron designer Phil Fish described video games as “the sum total of every expressive medium of all time, made interactive.” I owe it to the art form to educate myself, and there’s no better teacher than practice, practice, practice.

Who says learning can’t be fun?