Here’s a very, very early preview of a game idea that I’ve been playing around with for the last week or so. My plans around this idea are still extremely vague, and everything here is subject to change. I’ve already scrapped the earliest seed of this process completely, and I’m not yet sure that I’ve arrived at the final game that I’ll commit to finishing. To get out of the block I’ve been experiencing lately, I’ve been trying to push myself away from my comfort zone as much as possible. Sharing something in the brainstorming to early prototyping stages is part of this process. For science!

The idea here is that it’ll be an escape the room by moving things around, setting up mechanical contraptions, and deactivating obstacles sort of game. As you go from room to room, the puzzle solving gets more complicated. I guess it’ll be kind of like Portal, but without the portals (and in 2D, obviously). The player will be be a bit more omnipresent, though. It won’t involve controlling a character restricted to the world necessarily. I may have a “token” that must advance to a specific goal in each level, but the player will be able to manipulate the entire level from a higher plane. I want to try to make multi-touch an important component too, as this game will be targeted at tablets and phones.

As you can see from the artwork, I’m going for kind of an ancient temple theme. Yes, it’s looking rather pristine at the moment. That’s just me fighting myself over how complex I want to make this thing. Ultimately, I don’t think it will look right without some wear and tear. Though it’s not too detailed yet, I have a feeling that this will become some of the most ambitious game artwork I’ll have created so far. Earlier this evening, I started considering an idea of ever increasing damage to the structure as the player advances to higher levels. As you get deeper in this temple, these changes may be part of a simple narrative of some sort. Maybe puzzles will start to work incorrectly, and odd workarounds will create a “new” solution. I think it’s possible make this game fun, even without a narrative underlying the player’s progress, but this is just another place where I think I can benefit from pushing myself to try new things.

The code I’m running at the moment is targeted at Corona. I wanted to play around with Lime, a tile map library for Corona, and I’m experimenting with the built-in physics too, which Lime integrates with rather nicely. I was a little wary of using Lime because there are supposedly performance issues on devices (which the website makes abundantly clear), but I found that my initial test “level” is running great on a first-generation iPad. It’s likely that people developing platformers and other games with Lime have much larger levels than I intend to build. Additionally, my tile size is currently 138px, which is probably enormous in comparison as well, and I assume that can end up making the level simpler to draw due to fewer tiles filling up the space.

Side note: I’m stubbornly and irrationally opposed to using graphics with dimensions at powers of two. Ever since I realized how often people suggest it, I’ve had the quirk of purposefully choosing something else. Yes, I realize that it’s generally suggested for good reason, but my inner artist will not be obstructed by silly technical restrictions.

As I get further along, I’ll try to share more. Perhaps when I begin experimenting with more puzzles and obstacles, I’ll highlight a few and explain how they came about. I expect things to continue being experimental going forward for a while. The artwork itself involved some playing around in Photoshop on one boring Saturday afternoon. I had some basic ideas for a physics stacking game that I wasn’t really committed to. I made the block with the gem in the middle (from the first screenshot above), and I immediately felt how it could be manipulated by touch, and I could start to imagine the temple-like environment that would surround it. With that small success as a foundation, I intend to continue using play and experimentation as my primary motivator for continuing to build upon this idea.