At this year’s PegJam, I decided it was the perfect time to put together my idea for the Experimental Gameplay Project Sifteo Cubes Competition. I’m partial to dungeon crawlers, so my first idea was to make a random map, which you can move about by connecting cubes to see adjacent screens and then moving your character between them. I also wanted to keep it very simple, so it could be completed during the weekend. So, the game became a multiplayer “Capture the Flag” game. Unfortunately due to time, I didn’t get to the random map generation part. But overall, it turned out pretty good.
Prototype Screens
Each player takes a turn where they can move 5 screens, trying to be the first to visit all three flag checkpoints. The first to do so wins. Simple enough. Players begin in a random spot in the map, each flag is also placed randomly. Each quadrant of the map has its own color floor, with a strip of white floor separating the four quadrants (it’s a 7×7 map). While playing, the other players should be paying attention to the others movement and placement to figure out where all of the flags are. When a player has used up all of their moves, a notice pops up for players to switch, and the screen focuses on the next player when all cubes have disconnected.
Taking this idea forward, I want to give the game more of a board game feel. So here’s a bulleted list of what I would add:
- 2-4 players
- Menu/options
- Orientation not matter
- Graphics/Animation!
- Randomly generated maps
- Shake to roll dice for # of screen moves this turn
- 1 time bonuses found in map, (i.e. extra moves, limit other players to two screen view limit for a turn)
- Mini-map of where you’ve been on disconnected screen(s) — if it doesn’t make it too easy
- Pac-man style wrap-around tunnels
- Other gameplay modes (Hide & Seek)
Download the prototype: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4h5maujsuts8qc1/MazePrototype.elf