Bricky

Hello everyone, this is my first post here. I am currently a student aspiring to be a video game designer, and I was considering to make a portfolio of some of my creations. Therefore, I will post here my ideas of game design, my experiments, and maybe even share my games! I think that way I will end up with a really awesome portfolio, but I might also get feedback from some of my readers which would help me be a better game designer!

Overview

I started yesterday evening to create a game that I call "Bricky". I'm not sure where exactly I saw this game before, as I was really young, but I remember I was amazed by its game design and immediately tried to copy it (after playing for less than an hour). What I liked about this game was its simpleness (the player only moves in four directions) but its gameplay and level design made it a really addictive puzzle game. So, at that time, I opened The Games Factory and started making the basic same gameplay, then added some things of my own, and with the help of my enthusiastic little brother we went to create some pretty cool levels. Now some 10 years later I decided to make it in a more professional way, using Multimedia Fusion 2.

Gameplay


Gameplay of Test Levels 1-4

So, in that game, you (a blue ball) move from block to block (which look like bricks, hence the name) to reach the exit. Pretty simple concept, yet some more information need to be added. When you are "in" a block, you can choose between the four directions (up, right, down or left). When you select one, you have no more control of the blue ball, you only see it going in a straight line of the chosen direction. Then it either goes into another block, or it crashes on a wall, which would make Game Over. So suppose you didn't crash, you are in a new block and you can again choose between the four directions to move to another block in search of the exit.


Level 1

Let's look at the first demo level I made. I included blacks arrows to show the walkthrough of this simple maze. Yet as simple as it looks like, you might have seen that as soon as you move to a new block, you need to look all over to find where to go next. One way is to start from the end and make your way back to the blue ball, but you might need a really good memory. Anyway, this level is pretty simple, there's only one trick (the bottom left block) and it's hard to get squeezed in a wall. Yet, we need to give the player some time to get used to this new game.

Mouse gesture
Because it is a PC game, and not a DOS game like the one I was inspired, I decided to include a way to play with the mouse. The keyboard remains a faster way to play, but yet some people are clickers, and so they will get into the game more easily. Whenever the ball is inside a block, like in the screenshot, the four directions will show in semi-transparent "bubbles" around the block. The player only needs to click on one of them to make his desired move. Here, the mouse is over the left direction, as it is shown by the brighter bubble.


Level 2

The second level introduces arrow blocks and crystals. Crystals (or diamonds, or anything else) are collectibles and are necessary to make the exit usable (when grey, it acts as a wall, so you die by touching it; it becomes yellow when all the crystals have been collected, and then you can touch it). The number of crystals left to grab is indicated in the right part of the screen (many other information could be added there, yet I don't really know what else I should put as of now). But what makes the gameplay interesting in this level are the arrow blocks. If you touch the left arrow block, your ball is going to be automatically thrown to the left. Hmmm, doesn't sound too fun, but yet it will be essential if you want to progress through the game. These arrow blocks can make combinations, can throw the ball through a wall, or make it turn in an infinite loop (speaking of that, I need to include a way to restart a level if this ever occurs). For example in this screenshot, if the player moves left, he will be thrown downside by the arrow block, then right and finally up to get back to its initial position, with four crystals collected! And while the ball is in movement in this "circle", the player has no control, he needs to wait and see what happens (hopefully he thought a bit before making his move).


Level 3

The third level brings a lot of new gameplay elements. First, a simple brick block separates the level in four parts. Then, at the bottom, four colored doors block the access to the exit. The player will therefore need to find the corresponding keys in order to open the doors (they will open as soon as the ball touches the same colored key). This level therefore consists of four little rooms where the player needs to use his brain in order to get the key. Here it's nothing difficult, but at least the player will get some satisfaction as new elements are included but not explained.

In the top-left part, the four-arrows block is a random direction block, so when the ball touches it, the ball is thrown in either of the four directions. Getting the key might therefore take some time, but it's only a question of being lucky. There is a pivoting orange arrow block in the top-right corner, and it changes direction (up, left, down, then right) every second. So if you touch it while it is oriented right, then the ball will be thrown to the right. What is a bit tricky here in our example is that in order to touch it, the ball needs to go through a "corridor" of arrow blocks. And it takes some time. So the player needs to figure out when exactly he should throw the ball into this corridor, so that when the ball gets out of it and touches the orange pivoting block, the arrow is oriented to the right. It might take some tries to figure it out, but here the failure consequence is simply a retry.

The bottom-left part includes two different bidirectional arrow blocks, which work as a random throwing direction, just as the other block we just saw. Yet what makes it interesting here is that since they are connected together, it might take a long time for the ball to get out of this corridor, as it might come and go infinitely for unlucky people (but hopefully the ball will get out quickly). Finally, the bottom-right part is really simple if you start on the block in the bottom-left part. When you have all the keys, the doors are all opened and you can access the exit.


Level 4

The fourth introductory level makes full usage of teleporters, these + colored objects. The teleporters work like this: when the ball touches a rounded teleporter (like the one just right of the starting position), the ball is teleported in the corresponding colored "thrower" (the different shaped + with curly contours). So if we take a look at our example, by going right at the starting position, the ball will touch the blue teleporter and will get out from the thrower at its right, to touch a red teleporter and be thrown at the bottom, where the red thrower is. An important aspect of these teleporters is that if the ball is going in the left direction and touches the teleporter, the ball will also be thrown in the left direction by the thrower. This therefore demands some thinking from the player. For example, in this level, to reach the exit he needs to touch a red teleporter by going up, which is only possible with one red teleporter. One will notice that there is only one thrower for every color, but could be many teleporters of the same color. The explanation for that doesn't deserve to be detailed here.

Reflexions

I have to add here that it took me a considerable amount of time to design the fourth level, yet it is actually quite straightforward to play. I was planning on doing a lot of closed corridors, but because there are only four throwers, this is impossible. For example, the bottom part is quite messy and useless; only the right green teleporter is used (yet the other ones might confuse the player, which is part of the game). The blue thrower is used only once at the beginning, and would have been a good addition if used more, yet it is quite useful to the understanding of the new objects in the level. I could have found a more suitable location (for example no brick wall around it) but as I wanted to make it simple for the player to understand the concept, so I had to let it like this. Another problem I had is the text shown (which is actually hard to read), as it stays here for the whole time (if it was a real professional game, I would make the instructions show up first in a pop-up, and then have the game field cleared of any obstruction). Another difficulty I had was that I couldn't put any "Active Object" (all objects except brick blocks) as they would show on top of the text and would make the text impossible to read.

So this is the simple gameplay of my one-day game, I have some electric fields and complicated boulders to show up tomorrow, and hopefully I'll find some other ideas by then! But for what is shown in these four levels, I'm really glad of the result. It didn't take me a lot of time to put everything together and I think some people could really enjoy playing this not-completed game, as much as I do. The best would be of course to let them create their own levels through a level creator, which is what I've been considering while I was making the game (it actually makes it easier for me when I design the levels, and it makes it harder but better!) but here I was mostly concerned about the gameplay, not the publication of the game.

Just for your information, 28 different objects were used to make these four levels. Impressive, isn't it? Try to count them!