Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Let's define the game mechanics:
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The snake advances in the direction in which its head is pointed, dragging
along its tail. Head and tail are composed of equally sized parts that do not
differ much in their visuals.
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If the snake goes outside the screen boundaries, it reenters the screen on
the opposite side.
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If the right arrow or left arrow button is pressed, the snake takes a 90-degree
clockwise (right) or counterclockwise (left) turn.
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If the snake hits itself (for example, a part of its tail), the game is over.
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If the snake hits a piece with its head, the piece disappears, the score is
increased by 10 points, and a new piece appears on the playing field in a
location that is not occupied by the snake itself. The snake also grows by
one tail part. That new tail part is attached to the end of the snake.
This is quite a complex description for such a simple game. Note that we ordered the items
somewhat in ascending complexity. The behavior of the game when the snake eats a piece on
the playing field is probably the most complex one. More elaborate games cannot, of course, be
described in such a concise manner. Usually, you'd split these up into separate parts and design
each part individually, connecting them in a final merge step at the end of the process.
The last game mechanics item has this implication: the game will end eventually, as all spaces
on the screen will be used up by the snake.
Now that our totally original game mechanics idea looks good, let's try to come up with a
backstory for it.
A Story and an Art Style
While an epic story with zombies, spaceships, dwarves, and lots of explosions would be fun, we
have to realize that we are limited in resources. Our drawing skills, as exemplified in Figure
3-12
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are somewhat lacking. We couldn't draw a zombie if our lives depended on it. So we did what
any self-respecting indie game developer would do: resorted to the doodle style, and adjusted
the settings accordingly.
Enter the world of Mr. Nom. Mr. Nom is a paper snake who's always eager to eat drops of ink
that fall down from an unspecified source on his paper land. Mr. Nom is utterly selfish, and he
has only a single, not-so-noble goal: becoming the biggest ink-filled paper snake in the world!
This little backstory allows us to define a few more things:
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The art style is doodly. We will actually scan in our building blocks later and
use them in our game as graphical assets.
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As Mr. Nom is an individualist, we will modify his blocky nature a little and
give him a proper snake face. And a hat.
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The digestible piece will be transformed into a set of ink stains.
