Mad Rantz

I’ve been browsing through a little marketing book called Positioning. Ick, I know - marketing - nasty. However, I still believe it behooves me to at least understand some fundamentals when it comes to marketing products I make, even if right now I have no products out under the Lumpy brand.

I haven’t really finished the book, and it tends to spend way too many words on a particular subject, citing many many examples for each point they try to get across. Essentially they had to put more filler in to justify calling this a book that they could sell, rather than a pamphlet that should be given out at Marketing 101 courses. At any rate, after reading it a short while I’ve determined that I need to alter my and Lumpy’s image a little.

Lumpy is no longer an independent game development studio. We are now known as the world’s first UNdependent game development studio. Just like 7-Up is the only UNcola out there.

Wait till you see our commercials…

I’m not a big player of bubble-popping games except on my handheld, but I can appreciate the design that goes into them and I enjoy dinking around with them. I spend a lot of time perusing the GarageGames forums and .plans and idling in the GG IRC channel, but I don’t see as much discussion about game design as I’d expect - it’s predominantly techie-related discussions. Making a game starts with the design, and in my opinion is the most challenging aspect of the entire process. So, I thought it would be fun to write down (a) what my popper is and (b) where my inspiration comes from, and maybe spark up some game-design-related conversation. If you have some ideas after reading my brain dump here, feel free to share. And now I present…Bethellowed!

Basic mechanics

I am using pretty simple stuff, as found in most bubble-popping games. In my case I draw a bit of my mechanic ideas from Othello, especially the basic move and result. In Othello there are only two colors, but in my game there are currently five. Instead of starting with an empty board like Othello, I start you off with a filled board full of random colors like Bejeweled and its ilk. When you place a piece in Bethellowed, you place it on top of an existing piece, essentially replacing it with your new piece. You can only place pieces on the board where there is a legal move. In order for it to be considered a legal move, you must place a piece such that at least one other piece somewhere on the board directly to the north, south, east, or west matches the color of the piece you are playing. This matching piece must have at least one intervening piece that can be of any other color.

As the piece is played, it will “flip over” (in Othello fashion) all of the pieces between it and the matching piece (called a chain), and then will remove all of those pieces from the board, causing the remaining pieces on the board to fill in downwards and other pieces to fall in from offscreen to fill in the vacant spots at the top (again, ala Bejeweled).

The game has levels, and you have to reach a certain point score to get to the next level. If you can survive the end-game scenario long enough, you get a fresh start on the next level.

End-game

The biggest problem I had getting a fun working version of this type of game was determining an interesting end-game scenario. I didn’t want to use a timer like Jewel Quest, for instance, though I could have quite easily. Just have the player make a certain number of points before the time expired for the level, otherwise game over. Instead, I wanted an end game scenario that would work either with a timer or (more imporantly) with a turn-based game.

I first looked to Bejeweled for inspiration, but it is sort of like a hand of Solitaire where you don’t end up winning, in that no matter how good you play there is eventually an end-game situation that is no fault of your own. I found that it was not easy to create such a situation with my Othello-like mechanics. So, I stole the burning tile concept from Bookworm for my end-game. I admit it and I don’t care

You have pieces in the game that appear near the top that I’ve currently nicknamed ‘buggers’. The bugger pieces swap with the piece directly south of itself after every time the player pops a chain (ala Bookworm, who probably stole it from a game from twenty years ago…but I digress). If a bugger gets to the bottom row, the game is over. A bugger can be removed as part of a normal chain, but it cannot be an end-point in a chain, as it matches no color. There are two types of buggers so far: one that gets removed if it is part of a chain that is popped, and one that needs to be part of two different plays (essentially has to be popped twice). If you pop type #2 bugger once, it turns into a type #1 bugger. The type #2 bugger idea came to me while thinking of Gauntlet of all things.

I like this type of end-game because it really forces the player to worry about doing more than just popping normal chains and collecting bonus pieces. The player now has compelling decisions to make during play and much of the end-game scenario is now based on how well you play, not purely random chance. However, there is something about this that I’m not sure I really like. If you pop a north-south chain underneath a bugger, it essentially gets much closer to the end-game scenario very quickly (it falls down). That almost feels like I am punishing you for using north-south chains.

I had also considered allowing you to continue until more than one bugger was on the bottom row. Try something like if you have one (or more) bugger on the bottom row for three turns in a row then it’s game over. I haven’t tried that yet because so far it works fairly well the way I have it already. If I wanted to change up the board size or something else I might need something like this mechanic in order for it to work well.

Scoring

Scoring right now is simple, but there are some nice things I like about it. You are given 10 points per piece popped in a chain. I drew some inspiration from Scrabble, which has the concept of double letter scoring and double word scoring. In my game if you pop more than one chain at once (say, one to the north, one to the east), then you get a multiplier on both chains. You’ll earn more points by popping two short chains at once then one long chain in many cases, for example. This is my version of double word scoring. There are multiplier pieces that are colored like normal pieces, but which give you either x2, x3, or x5 whatever you would normally score for just that chain it is a part of. This is my version of a double letter score.

You are also given extra points for each bugger you pop, and I’m considering giving you a serious bonus if you can manage to pop a lot of buggers at once. The last thing I’ve added (so far) are star pieces. These too are colored like normal pieces, but your goal is to collect five silver or gold stars. Once you do you are given a hefty bonus and you then start your star counter over.

I don’t think I’m done with the types of pieces and scoring, yet, however. I really want to give players stuff to look forward to, and although it appears I have a good list it feels incomplete. There’s a bit more I can do with the design that’ll make it more strategic and more rewarding to the player. I know that when I play games I like discovering stuff. So, a good example of a piece I’m thinking of adding will be a wildcard piece that when popped will give you some type of bonus or better yet give you something that helps you play more strategically, like a piece that pops all buggers that currently reside on the board. Stuff like that just sounds fun to me.

Conclusion

Well, that’s my brain dump. Once I get a T2D-based prototype working, I think I might put it up for download so people can tinker with it and give feedback. I believe I have to wait for GG to release the EA version of T2D first, but once the stars align I think I might very well do it. Maybe we could have a contest of some sort, where you have to keep to a certain set of basic mechanics and see who can come up with the most compelling game play? Sounds cool to me, sorta like a Game-In-A-Day possibility.

Some more pics after a little more time tinkering tonight on the bubble-popper.

Messed up a datablock setting and..hm…that might be an interesting game too

Lotsa purty colors

Purty silver color for blocks to be popped

Added in some bonus pieces to pop now