Driving a tank upside-down is disorienting. It’s tough to make the right moves when right means left, especially if you’re also spinning around or soaring through the air—we think that’s what makes Treadnauts so much fun! Pulling off crazy mid-air tricks can leave you feeling dizzy, excited, and seriously skilled.

In the Dreamland zone, we wanted to give pilots that have already mastered the basics another dose of that addictive dizzy delight. We also wanted to keep things as simple and clear as possible—learning a bunch of new buttons and difficult combos is no fun. For that reason, we chose to add variety with prop objects like the conveyor belt instead of building unlockable upgrades for the tanks.

Conveyor belts appear in lots of videogames—they’re world-famous stars! Most players have interacted with some kind of conveyor belt in a game before, be it in Mario Kart 8 or Limbo. Even if they’re unfamiliar, conveyor belts have the awesome advantage of strong visual readability. Moving gears and tracks offer a clear indication of how a conveyor belt will affect you at a glance, including which direction it will go and how fast it’s turning. (Our conveyor belts still need a visual tune-up; excuse our dust!)

Basic play on conveyor belts is exactly what you’d expect in Dreamland. You can hop on a conveyor belt to ride it, drive in its direction for a boost of speed, of drive the other way to fight the current at a crawl. Of course, Treadnauts is all about “Moving with Chutzpah”, so there are a few twists—jumping between treadmills, driving upside down, and looping around a belt is baffling fun!

Advanced moves in Treadnauts are made up of simple parts that work in harmony. Rocket jumps, for example, use a jump, spin, and shot, basic moves that add up to create a tremendous soaring leap. In the same way, we designed the treadmills to reward creative pilots who use their basic moves to create cool combos. Hold slide on a conveyor belt and you’ll slip right past it, ignoring its directional pull—fire a shot and the recoil will send you soaring, even if the belt is moving in the other direction.

Of course, that wasn’t enough for the maniacs at Topstitch Games; we had to take it one deeper.

Ladies and Gentlemen, now presenting: the Conveyor Ball! It’s a wrecking ball! It’s a conveyor! Look out, it’s going to squish you!!!

The conveyor ball takes all of the characteristics of the conveyor belt and wrecking ball props and combines them into one big Frankenstein bundle of gears. Best of all, it allows even more crazy combos than either one of its parents alone. You can shoot the ball to swing it, jump on it and go for a spin, use your slide to fight the current, or shoot its chain to free it. When the conveyor ball hits the ground, it keeps on conveying: the force of the belt will move it across the ground, even sending it climbing up walls with a little help from a nearby shot.

The conveyor ball sits atop a giant pile of gameplay parts—it rides the coattails of basic mechanics to create something new and funky. Simple tank controls are at the bottom of the pile, holding up environmental props, combos, and all of the complex interactions that they can combine to create. Slide the wrong way on a grounded conveyor ball, then fire a charged shot to send it up the wall with the recoil force and squish your unlucky friend. That’s Moving with Chutzpah!

For more Treadnauts, stay tuned right here on Game Jolt.

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