
Chris Carollo
Pigplow

Four-player simultaneous.  Each player controlls a bulldozer and tries to get as 
many pigs into their tractor-trailer as possible within the time limit.  They have
a number of powerups at their disposal:

- Explosions: pushes pigs away from the player's bulldozer.
- Attractors: instantly attracts nearby bigs to the player's bulldozer.
- GravUps:    temporarily creates a force towards the top of the playing field.
- GravDowns:  temporarily creates a force towards the bottom of the playing field.

Each of these powerups can be claimed by driving over them and can be used by
pushing the X button.


The biggest challenge I ran into in doing a physics-based game was getting the
challenge to be about the game itself, rather than the controls.  Because physics
is often fuzzy and indirect, it's very easy to make a game that would be trivial
if only you could control the game well.  This can be fun if the control system is
entertaining in its fuzziness, but I've never much liked these control systems.  My
analogy is that of the typical "water levels" in games -- they are typically
challenging largely because the controls are so sluggish.

In the end I spent quite a bit of time tuning the player movement to get it to feel
responsive, but still physical.  In addition to trying to make powerups as 
physically visceral as possible.