Just do one arena, one bowl, and perfect the gameplay. Then worry about the frills. ;)
Yep, yep. I originally planned to do just this. That's why I was planning on releasing the beta version so early. But that was when I was planning on making all the alleys essentially the same as far as gameplay is concerned. I've since decided to make the alleys play different as well as look different, which means I can't tweak the controls and physics until I've got all the arenas completed. Obviously I don't need to go overboard with tweaks and little touches, and there certainly won't be anything animated in any of the arenas until the gameplay is sorted, but I do need the basic alley constructions to be complete before I do anything more on the physics and controls.
I'm actually pretty happy with the physics and controls, but I was really happy with the controls in ATB too, and that certainly met with some mixed reactions. I've had it playing over and over on the original alley, and I can hit a few strikes and a lot of spares, so I think the controls are easy enough to get to grips with. I've never actually been bowling IRL so I don't know whether the physics are what people will expect or not. Hopefully it won't be too difficult to tweak those to fit with what people expect. I'm keen to make this game much easier to get into than ATB, since even those who liked it found it difficult to play at first.
At the moment, I have the three arenas you see above, plus two more I'm working on. Then I have five "crazy bowling" alleys, which are just the standard alley twisted, bent, bumped, etc out of shape. I'll probably do another five crazy alleys without gutters to allow for a little more variety. The five standard alleys will be the main focus of the game, as "crazy bowling" is likely to be a bit of an acquired taste, but it'll be a little something extra and a change from all those blessed bowling games that just make a bunch of alleys which are all exactly the same except for the graphics ( Megaware 3d Bowling springs to mind. )