LD48 Game Design

Ludum Dare 48 : Beneath The Surface is underway, nearly halfway done, and I only just finished my design. That was sort of intentional. I have two young kids and I was probably up early enough this morning that other LD participants were still awake (6am...nice sleep in for me.)

I considered doing a Dig Dug Retrospective, where you drill down into the ground and find dinosaur bones and old game references that were from the same year as the original Dig Dug. Would be fun and pixel artsy, but there's no real "game" creation there.

Writing a short song

The art and craft of making games is like other forms of art creation. If you want to write a song, you don't start with an 8 minute power ballad. Try making some 2 minute ideas that have a short solo section and simple lyrics. I did that for awhile and it was great. So I'm approaching LD48 in the same way. It's super compressed already so there's a discipline in scoping.

In fact, one part of how I thought of this is like a two minute song. If someone can play my LD submission for 2-3 minutes, get some delight and joy out of it, then mission accomplished.

It's a game not a place

So what is a game, right? Beneath the Surface is a great theme, but I believe that approaching it as a location or a noun is incorrect.

Games are all about verbs. Finding something beneath the surface is about exploration -- one of the oldest and greatest game themes. Exploration it is. And that is exploration of mechanics that take you below the surface of something.

A lot of my brainstorm came while dealing with the kids, eating pizza, making sandwiches and watching them play. Kids play naturally. It's all about fitting things, and moving things, and how things open and close. It seemed interesting to me to compose those elements into a short puzzle experience that adds the element of things beneath the surface to a tile game.

 

Part of the joy of the game is the discovery (exploration) of the mechanics, which are intentionally not spelled out. That increases the whimsy and reduces scope for me. I took the time to compose all the elements of the game, from colors to fonts to verbs to programming elements.

Part of this game is going to be discovery for me too! I intentionally did NOT design the risk/reward elements. I want to get the core verbs working and then discover where things are myself. I know iteration and polish are what will make it good, so I am not going to worry about that. Again, this is like writing a great song. Leave the solo for later and let it come on it's own. Don't force it!

A good game has three elements: Information, Randomness and Risk. I've got the Information part mostly sorted. Randomness should be easy in a tile puzzle game. And Risk is going to be balancing. Notice that I am not focusing on Reward. That is usually just good animations and ching ching noises when you win and particles and such. I'm not saying it's not important, but it is polish. And the real stickiness comes from good design that leverages those things.

Here is my Game Design. This actually means something to me. I'll drop the scope below that. I estimate 13 hours of work, which is already too much. Oh well.

Crafty - a tile puzzle game

Theme : Beneath the Surface                                                                   
Mechanic : Exploration, Puzzle with several layers on tiles                                   
Personality : Crafty
Game Scope : Tile Puzzle Game where tiles have multiple levels of verbs and imagery           
Name : Crafty - a tile puzzle game
Verbs :
    Slide
    Flip Horizontal
    Flip Vertical
        Fold Open Horizontal
        Fold Open Vertical
        Fold Open FourWay
            Stay As One
            Split Into Two (two ways - vertical or horizontal)                                
            Split Into Four (three ways - double vertical, double horizontal, or four way)    
Art Theme :
    Size : less than 320 x 480 (iPhone4)                                                      
    Font : Antenna if I can get it, and a Runic font                                          
    Inspirations : kids toys, pb&j sandwiches, northern european runes and stone tiles, little kids finger paint art
    Crafty Animations : things open and close and fold and such                               
    Game Element Colors : Yellow, Red, Blue, Green                                            
    Neutral Color : Denim Blue, Grey                                                          
    Foreground Color : Cream, Off-white                                                       
    Hilight Color : Mushroom Red                                                              
    Tile Shapes slightly rounded off squares                                                  
Tech : DART
Design Elements :                                                                             
    Board Size : 1x1 (start), 3x3 (first real level), 5x5, 7x7 (mushrooms), 9x9 (eggs), 11x11 (final level?)
Design Iteration Elements :
    Rewards : Mushrooms and Eggs - not sure how this works yet, but drop them in the board at start of new levels.
    Risk System : cost system. there has to be failure. don't know this yet. how can it be "crafty"?
    Compulsion : it needs to be satisfying to do every verb [in a crafty way] - likely animation and sound
    Scoring System : very important - TBD but need a score board
Programming Elements :
    Basic 3d Rendering with textures
    Mouse or Touch Input
    Simple Animations
Polish :
    Particle System or Short Animations
    Sound on Clicks
    Background Music
    Ability to separate data from code - load new levels

Scope:

Total: 13 hours
o  4:00 : making art
    o  0:15 : doing layout and sizing
    o  3:00 : painting "runes" with kids
    o  0:15 : getting photos loaded from phone and sized
    o  0:15 : cleaning up textures
o  3:00 : making sound
    o  1:00 : making sound effects
    o  2:00 : writing and performing background music
o  2:10 : basic framework with tiles
    o  1:00 : basic dart framework visible
    o  0:20 : board with background, title, copyright
    o  0:10 : board with six board sizes (1x1 - 11x11)
    o  0:20 : render a basic tile
    o  0:10 : ability to change rendering color/texture
    o  1:00 : simple animation system
    o  0:10 : simple scoreboard
o  2:30 : gameboard verbs:
    o  0:15 : slide square
    o  0:10 : slide rectangle
    o  0:05 : slide double rectangle
    o  0:20 : flip
    o  0:20 : fold open
    o  0:30 : fold open four way                                                              
    o  0:20 : split
    o  0:30 : change board size
o  2:00 : polish
    o  1:20 : better animations : fades, pulses, etc
    o  0:30 : sound on clicks
    o  0:10 : background music