blipo
A downloadable game for Windows
blipo is a simplistic 2D Puzzle game. The aim is to move the player from the starting point to the finish tile. I have never made a puzzle game before. This was something completely new for me and I thought the freestyle week would be a great opportunity to just go for it.
The game's forte is that its rules are extremely clear. You have:
- 1 player starts on bottom left tile
- 1 goal win condition, always top rightmost tile
- hazards lose condition met if they are on same tile as player
- neutrals can be used to traverse the level, not harmful
The entire game revolves around solving small to medium-sized puzzles in as few turns as possible. I wanted to make sure that the player was having fun while also maintaining a challenge for them so I used extremely short iteration cycles while trying to make puzzles deep enough that they could not be solved through basic brute-forcing.
In his book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", Raph Koster writes about something he calls "groking". This is where a player intrinsically absorbs a game's mechanics in order to gain the ability to understand and replicate them. His theory trudges along the lines of "if you're learning, you're having fun" and that once a game has stopped teaching you, it becomes stale.
This, as well as concepts of "flow" inspired me a lot and I always wanted to make sure that my puzzles were filled to the brim with grok and consistently immersed the player completely.
Furthermore, I desired to keep the game very pure, that's why I used primitive shapes instead of sprites or models. I didn't want any distractions during game play and I needed to make sure that even the shape of something would be meaningful in identifying it (see Bouba-Kiki study)
Designing a solid game: "What does the player feel when they see this? What do they feel when..."
I believe in using an emotional approach rather than a numerical one for game design.
Technology Used:
Game made entirely in Gamemaker Studio
All music was composed and recorded in Sunvox
All Sound Effects were made in SFXR
Game Icon and Banners were designed in GIMP
Status | Released |
Platforms | Windows |
Author | NeoTalon |
Genre | Puzzle |
Tags | 2D, Cozy, freestyle, Lo-fi, Minimalist |
Average session | A few seconds |
Accessibility | Color-blind friendly |
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