The Woods - WIP
Armelline
Member, PRO Posts: 5,371
Having made my first three games huddled away on my own, I thought I'd share my latest idea and solicit feedback. I'm actually really excited about this game - it's one I genuinely look forward to playing myself. That said, I should stop making games I want to play as I don't have the most mass-market taste...
My biggest problem with this game is that it's one that will need really solid music and art to work, and what it needs is well beyond me.
The Woods.
The darkness draws around you, enveloping you like a warm bed. You wish you could just curl up and sleep, forever sleep.
No! Cast such selfish notions aside! You must get home!
You are lost in the woods, surrounded by darkness. You have your lanterns and your courage.
Place a lantern to create a path of light that you can travel down. Avoid the monsters that are revealed by your light. Find your way home.
The idea for the game isn't necessarily very clear from the video with these horrible squares for graphics. It started with a table-top board game (I'll try to look up the name) which is played by moving a candle around a board, casting light between the trees and trying to locate the dwarfs hiding behind them. It was a lovely little game that turned out to be more fun in concept than in practice.
I thought though the idea of making paths of light was an interesting one and pondered how to achieve it in GameSalad. Recreating the tabletop game would have been far beyond my abilities and so I took another type of game I loved and adapted from there. Back in 2007 or so, in the days before the App Store, the first game I ever put on my new iPod Touch generation 1 was PuzzleManiak. It's still one of my most played games - a collection of lots of different and interesting puzzle games. I don't think many are unique to PuzzleManiak, but it's where I first encountered most of them. One of my favourites is Light Up and that was how I wanted the creating of light paths in my game to work.
Clicking on the screen creates a lantern (black square in the video) that spawns light in all four directions. The light will spread until it hits a wall (red-ish squares). Paths of light can cross, and removing one lantern won't affect leftover paths.
Hidden in the darkness are monsters. Monsters move up and down or left and right along beams of light. As soon as they find themselves in darkness again, they stop moving.
You can brute force most levels by simply placing all your lanterns, but the aim of the game is to complete each level using as few lanterns as possible. Placing and removing a lantern has no penalty until you start moving, after which removing a lantern does not refund it.
The aim of the game is to create a path of light between the start and the finish and then to successfully navigate down it. You move by swiping in the direction you want to travel. Movement is slow and creeping. Reach the end and progress to the next level.
The level in the video can be completed by placing two lanterns. They get a lot more complicated and trickier!
The gameplay is very simple, the puzzles can get very difficult. This is a game that will depend entirely upon mood, though, and creating the right oppressive atmosphere will be essential. Hopefully I'll be able to find an artist to team up with or to find a budget for artwork, but for now I'm just enjoying the new challenges making this game has provided.
Getting the enemy to patrol correctly was the most difficult thing I've had to do in GameSalad, and in the end I had to give up and use a solution that works completely but lacks the elegance in its logic that I normally try to achieve. (Pretty sure it's a bug in GS stopping my preferred way from working - it doesn't seem to always assess rules in the order it should.)
I've had a ton of fun making this one and getting the propagation of the light to work, in particular, was a thoroughly enjoyable challenge.
Any feedback is welcome!
My biggest problem with this game is that it's one that will need really solid music and art to work, and what it needs is well beyond me.
The Woods.
The darkness draws around you, enveloping you like a warm bed. You wish you could just curl up and sleep, forever sleep.
No! Cast such selfish notions aside! You must get home!
You are lost in the woods, surrounded by darkness. You have your lanterns and your courage.
Place a lantern to create a path of light that you can travel down. Avoid the monsters that are revealed by your light. Find your way home.
The idea for the game isn't necessarily very clear from the video with these horrible squares for graphics. It started with a table-top board game (I'll try to look up the name) which is played by moving a candle around a board, casting light between the trees and trying to locate the dwarfs hiding behind them. It was a lovely little game that turned out to be more fun in concept than in practice.
I thought though the idea of making paths of light was an interesting one and pondered how to achieve it in GameSalad. Recreating the tabletop game would have been far beyond my abilities and so I took another type of game I loved and adapted from there. Back in 2007 or so, in the days before the App Store, the first game I ever put on my new iPod Touch generation 1 was PuzzleManiak. It's still one of my most played games - a collection of lots of different and interesting puzzle games. I don't think many are unique to PuzzleManiak, but it's where I first encountered most of them. One of my favourites is Light Up and that was how I wanted the creating of light paths in my game to work.
Clicking on the screen creates a lantern (black square in the video) that spawns light in all four directions. The light will spread until it hits a wall (red-ish squares). Paths of light can cross, and removing one lantern won't affect leftover paths.
Hidden in the darkness are monsters. Monsters move up and down or left and right along beams of light. As soon as they find themselves in darkness again, they stop moving.
You can brute force most levels by simply placing all your lanterns, but the aim of the game is to complete each level using as few lanterns as possible. Placing and removing a lantern has no penalty until you start moving, after which removing a lantern does not refund it.
The aim of the game is to create a path of light between the start and the finish and then to successfully navigate down it. You move by swiping in the direction you want to travel. Movement is slow and creeping. Reach the end and progress to the next level.
The level in the video can be completed by placing two lanterns. They get a lot more complicated and trickier!
The gameplay is very simple, the puzzles can get very difficult. This is a game that will depend entirely upon mood, though, and creating the right oppressive atmosphere will be essential. Hopefully I'll be able to find an artist to team up with or to find a budget for artwork, but for now I'm just enjoying the new challenges making this game has provided.
Getting the enemy to patrol correctly was the most difficult thing I've had to do in GameSalad, and in the end I had to give up and use a solution that works completely but lacks the elegance in its logic that I normally try to achieve. (Pretty sure it's a bug in GS stopping my preferred way from working - it doesn't seem to always assess rules in the order it should.)
I've had a ton of fun making this one and getting the propagation of the light to work, in particular, was a thoroughly enjoyable challenge.
Any feedback is welcome!
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Comments
I think with the right art/music, it could be something quite special
Looking forward to updates!
QS =D
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
I too get a kick out of coding and getting it all to work. There are improvements I could code in both games to make it much more enjoyable if I could only do the graphics. If either of them make any money I will employ an artist and make the improvements.
As the devices get more powerful graphics are going to play a much bigger part in how successful games are which is a bit of a worry for someone with my limited talents. If I do another app I think I will try an app that isn't a game and I have an idea I might explore. The graphics would be a minor part and coding it would be fun which really appeals to me.
Good luck with it I hope I get to play it one day.
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