First Puzzle Concepts

I have been hard at work coming up with a new game idea and I think I may be close to finding it. As I have stated in my last post I want to make a game this is like “Tetris” or “Lumines”, or a “Falling Blocks” game as it is commonly refered to. I will tell you about all of the “solid” concepts I have come up with (though I don’t want to tell you EVERYTHING, what’s the fun in that?):

Time Manipulation – This is the main point of the game; it’s such a big point that the title of the game is more than likely going to revolve around it. Other than the standard implementations of time like rewind the “undo” move. I want to be clever about it and have it really change how you play the game. I want to add things like pausing time freezes a block so you can make matching blocks in mid-air.

Different Grid Shapes – What I mean by this is instead of your regular old “Rectangular Grid” I want to experiment with other types of grids like: Circles, Squares, Triangles. I am thinking of doing this through…

Grid Pods – Instead of one solid shape I want to experiment with breaking up the grid into more than one grid. Grid Pods will help me make different shapes as well as open up an opportunity to have a level creator in the game (I really like giving the option of level editors to the player if you haven’t noticed).

Active Clusters – Unlike “Lumines” where there is a constant bar that is always sweeping across the screen clearing the clusters that you have placed I want to it to be more of a “Risk vs. Reward” system where you are the one actively clearing the clusters that you create. But if you don’t clear it in time you lose all of the clusters that are on the grid. This helps promote a skill based system which I would like to have in the game.

Multiplayer – I feel like a lot of the “Falling Block” games either don’t have this or it takes a backseat to the game; which is understandable. But I would like to flesh out this aspect a little more and have a multiplayer mode that can hold up to the singleplayer mode. I already have some ideas for this.

So these are just some of the concepts that I have come up with. There are many more ideas that I want to try out before I talk about them. As for the next thing that I’m going to do, I am  anxious to start working on the actual game and prototype things. But in order to do that I need to start 3D modeling, so I think that will be my next step.

On a side note, how do you like the backgrounds that I made? I also made some for Twitter and YouTube. I also updated the Games page and the Emerald page. But wait there’s more! I made the beginnings to new puzzles game’s page on the site… ok so there isn’t much on the page, but it’s just the beginning. Either way, go check them out!

Do you hate the concepts, or just the fact that I was using a lot of parentheses and quotation marks in this post? Comment on it below.