Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
blocks on the grid, while not new, became mainstream, and thus acceptable as an interface to
further the casual puzzle game genre.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the people at PopCap devised the next great evolution
combining some ideas from both Columns and Minesweeper to create Diamond Mine. In this
game, the player was given a board consisting of colored gems that lined up row by row in
square. The player's job was to swap two gems at a time, to make three in a row. When three
gems were matched, they would disappear, and more gems would fall down into place from the
top of the screen. While the concept of matching three remained from Columns, the action
elements were removed to make a game based on thoughtful planning like Minesweeper.
PopCap later revised this game as Bejeweled, and a ground-breaking game genre was born.
These
match-three
games
have grown into their own genre complete with subcategories and
designs, expansions into role-playing games, and many other manifestations beyond the concept
of simply matching three items.
Although causal games come in many forms, games of this type generally have common features
that make them instantly identifiable to game players:
Objects appear in (or fall into) a grid-like form of some type.
Objects fall down the screen in some way, either on their own or after user interaction.
Matching items on the screen (not necessarily three) is part of core game play.
In many instance, objects are controlled with the mouse.
Time limits are generally not preferable, because they limit the thinking involved.
The core process of clearing space is common denominator.
So while casual games have evolved and continue to evolve as a game genre, they have also
built on the ideas of one another to create new and interesting games. There are more facets to
casual games than just puzzles, but to follow up all the angles of their story could take an entire
topic itself. The fact is that many games currently considered casual can trace their lineage all the
way through to the grid-style games we just described. We believe that there is no better way to
design a game than to look at what has already been successful and attempt to design your own
twist and functionality into the idea, so in this chapter, the game we will build—Color Drop—is a
simple game based on this evolution of casual puzzle games.
Designing the game
For Color Drop, we will use ideas from match-three-style games to create our own style of game
where the object is to create the biggest chain of connecting colored boxes as possible. Here is
breakdown of the game design concepts behind Color Drop, and Figure 8-1 provides a screenshot:
Game name
: Color Drop
Game genre
: Click to remove matching colors games.
Game description
: A grid of colored blocks is presented to the player. When the player
clicks a block, all blocks of that color that are touching that block in some way disappear.
Player's goal
: Make the number of blocks displayed in the Score Needed field disappear
before all the plays are used up.
Enemy's description
: None
Enemy's goal
: None
