At the beginning of the project, I didn’t have any concrete ideas or goals.
I asked many friends for their opinions. For example, once I asked Wang the question of programming. He is my classmate and is very good at programming. When we were in China, we participated in the competitions together. We are in agreement.
We want to make a game that we once imagined more complete. The inspiration for this game comes from the alternative that we thought of when we were involved in a game jam. We think this game is very interesting. We’ve never seen such a game. The reason why we didn’t take it as our first choice at first was that time didn’t allow it. I think it is a very good attempt to realize it now.
【About the game mechanism】
First, we will list the game forms that we can achieve at present:
- 2d game
- Chessboard game
- Horizontal version clearance game
The reason why we narrow the scope to these types of games is not only to consider whether they can be realized. More is to consider our common interests. We all hope to make players feel bright through some unique and interesting game mechanisms. It is not a very complete large-scale game, but it must have unique gameplay.
We conceived an inspiration: recording and repetition.
The earliest inspiration for this idea comes from Nolan’s movie TENET, which has an interesting concept-entropy.
You can use it to go back in time, but everything in the whole world is in reverse. What you do in the reverse world will affect the normal world. This concept is very complicated. To tell the truth, I have a headache when I watch a movie to clarify the logic. Our game is not as complicated as the movie. I’m not sure whether we can make a game that perfectly combines sequence and flashback (this may be something I should think about in the future, because I’m interested in flashback and controlling time).
But this gives us an inspiration-using past operations to influence future content. For example, on a chessboard, the player wants to move from A to C. Then its movement from A to B will affect how it moves from B to C.
So we started brainstorming.
Use the operation of the upper half screen to influence the operation of the “shadow” of the lower half screen.
Manipulating two characters, the behavior of character 1 will create a new level for character 2.
Repeat its previous operations while the character moves.
We finally decided on a basic gameplay. Divide the game board into two areas. We can call it “normal area” and “pulse area”. When the player enters the “pulse zone”, he will walk according to the previous operation in the “normal zone”. This is a mechanism, and we can add more content according to this basic mechanism. For example, some obstacles, skills that can change maps.
【Details of how to play】
First, we need to establish a map. This determines how our game unfolds. Because its operation is based on “pressing the keyboard once”. So we choose to play the game on a checkerboard. This is very clear, because we don’t need linear operation by players.
We drew some squares of different sizes.
Divide the chessboard into groups of areas. Then, this mechanism naturally produces a lot of gameplay.
- Use the “pulse zone” to advance to the position you want.
- Take advantage of obstacles to carry out “misplaced” operations.